Novell has announced plans for SUSE Linux Enterprise 11. While the actual launch won’t happen for another year or so, Novell is highlighting the key themes of the new release to let developers in the open-source community know the feedback the company has gotten from customers and what the new release needs from developers.

Justin Steinman, director of product marketing for Novell’s Linux & Open Platform Solutions, told us the “core tenets,” such as focusing on mission-critical data-center technologies and “green IT,” won’t change amoung releases. There are three areas of critical importance to small and midsize businesses (SMB) on which Enterprise 11 will focus, he told us: interoperability, Unix migration, and virtualization.

Interoperability

Novell has made efforts to build a successful partnership with Microsoft, and Steinman said Enterprise 11 will expand that relationship. “I would suspect that the majority of SMBs have Windows in some shape or design inside their organization,” Steinman said, “so one of

the things we want to continue to deliver in Enterprise 11 is extending our interoperability leadership in working with Windows. We like to say that SUSE Linux Enterprise is Linux that’s been optimized to work with Windows. We think that’s a core differentiator and additionally a core benefit for customers who are trying to form a Linux decision.”

One example of Windows support is Novell’s plan to include the Mono 2.0 development framework, which allows .NET applications to run on Linux, in Enterprise 11. A Mono migration analysis tool will plus be included in the new release; Novell said that tool “helps customers determine the readiness of their .NET applications for migration to Linux.”

Unix Migration

Another key theme of Enterprise 11 is Unix migration. “For SMB customers, Unix is an expensive platform that’s not very flexible, and you’re really tied in to an expensive [Sun] SPARC server,” Steinman…

Orginal post by Top Tech News