IBM is delivering a portfolio of software appliances across IBM brands, all powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Leveraging the SUSE Appliance Program from Novell, this initiative enables IBM to provide "plug and play" appliances that lower the cost and complexity of deploying applications for small and medium-sized businesses and help independent software vendors simplify the packaging of their solutions for multiple environments, allowing them to test, deploy and scale their offerings to their customers' specific needs.
"We see tremendous value in software appliances as it gives our customers and partners unprecedented flexibility combined with greater speed-to-market and lower overall costs," states Jean Staten Healy, director, Linux strategy, IBM. With pre-configured combinations of an application, middleware and operating system integrated into a single image and tailored to run on industry-standard hardware, software appliances provide an easy way to package and distribute software. Now, with just a few mouse clicks, IBM customers and partners can easily deploy customized and fully-tested software appliances to physical, virtual or cloud environments, and IBM is offering virtual stacks on the IBM Smart Business Development and Test Cloud.
IBM's new appliances based on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are available in these areas: IBM Lotus Foundations, providing a complete technology and collaboration solution for small and medium-sized businesses; IBM Lotus Protector for Mail Security, protecting IBM Lotus Domino and mixed email infrastructure from spam, viruses and other threats originating on the internet; IBM WebSphere Application Server Hypervisor Edition, offering the robust features of the WebSphere Application Server Family for virtual environments; IBM Cognos Now!, delivering operational dashboards for real-time monitoring of key performance indicators and metrics across disparate data sources, and IBM Smart Analytics Optimizer, enabling a new class of high-speed business intelligence and analytic queries.
Watch an interview Dr. Bob Sutor, vice president, open source and Linux, IBM Software Group, gave at Novell Brainshare last month in Salt Lake City, in which he discusses the leading-edge work that IBM and Novell are doing with regard to appliances here.
For more information about the Novell and IBM partnership, go here.