VMware vying for Novell to address vendor lock-in loophole

September 17, 2010 1:08 PM EDT

Virtualization pro VMware mulls over buying Novell primarily its SUSE Linux operating system to address its vendor lock-in loophole.

A report by WSJ says that VMware is in the fray with Attachmate which is eyeing its remaining assets including NetWare.

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However, industry analysts have touted VMware as the most eligible of the twenty odd suitors who are eyeing Novell.

VMware's interest in Novell would have been accentuated by the recent launch of a cloud management product by Novell called Cloud Manager which addresses vendor lock-in issue.

Vendor lock-in issue is cited as one of the major deterrent to cloud adoption. Also prior to VMware's conference in the first week of September, Microsoft had issued an ad in USA Today warning customers to refrain from signing long term contracts with VMware, pertaining to vendor lock-in issue.

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Novell's Cloud Manager can help VMware with its solution that uses an umbrella OS to interact with multiple OS working on hypervisors set by different vendors. It provides inter-operability through its SUSE Linux Server. It basically uses an application server which acts as an interface and connects it to the orchestration server that sits on data centers and can communicate with different hypervisors.

Novell Cloud manager currently supports hypervisors including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Xen and operating systems SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Microsoft Windows server and Red Hat Enterpries.

Novell's acquisition will also add to VMware's stack of software's it is buying to build its cloud services. Not to mention that it is buying an open-source Linux platform which it can leverage to generate value.

Currently VMware does not offer cloud services and thus this acquisition can offer it the required tools to build one and also provide an interoperability feature that it lacked compared to its competitor Microsoft in the form of Systems Center software. With this, it gains a virtualization platform, VSphere, a cloud operating system, email integration platform and SUSE an operating system.

Also Novell Cloud Manager allows users to use cheaper hypervisors for less complex applications that do not need support from expensive hypervisors like VMware. Thus, VMware can possibly use the acquisition to curtail such migration by allowing operability with other hypervisors.

This article is copyrighted by International Business Times, the business news leader