Novell Plans Big Cloud Computing, Virtualisation Push

With the IT industry being significantly swayed by the slew of changes brought upon due to the emergence of cloud computing and virtualisation, Novell Inc. too has chalked out its future plans to capitalise on the emerging opportunities with its signature Intelligent Workload Management (IWM) tools.

The company is all set to lay a roadmap on Tuesday, aligning its security, development, systems management, as well as business services products with its core strategy surrounding IWM applications.

Novell will disclose a layout of its plan to introduce a range of new products in each of those aforementioned categories in the next year.

The company is looking ahead to establish itself as a leader in the IWM domain, but this appears to take some considerable amount of time.

Part of the reason, according to John Dragoon, senior VP and chief marketing officer of the company, is that it has yet to establish itself as a recognised vendor in “cloud computing” sphere.

Citing the analysts' forecasts, Dragoon said that virtualised systems are currently handling around 15 percent of the total IT workloads, with this figure is expected to reach 50 percent by the end of 2012.

Novell’s plans involve the launch of Identity Manager 4, which would incorporate role-based access controls that pave the way for real-time access provisioning on the basis of a user’s identity, scheduled for the official launch in the second quarter next year.

In addition, it will further include Novell Cloud Security Service, which will enable virtual administrators to send out their security management protocols and identities to SaaS providers.