Novell Releases Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise

Novell Inc. on Tuesday released the latest version of Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise, the first Ximian product to ship since it acquired the developer in August.

Ximian first released Red Carpet Enterprise last October. The product provides enterprise software package distribution for Linux, including dependency resolution, distribution, installation, rollback, repairs and reporting.

The latest software, which automates the central management of software on workstations and servers running a variety of Linux distributions, is available immediately at a cost of $200 per managed system.

Red Carpet Enterprise 2 offers users centralized and automated management, maintenance and updating of Linux servers and desktops, which Novell chief technology officer Alan Nugent said significantly reduces the cost of Linux ownership for customers, allowing them to concentrate resources on other strategic projects.

“Its ability to integrate with external repositories allows for automated enterprise Linux updates. Red Carpet Enterprise offers the industrys broadest support of Linux distributions and applications, including SuSE Linux, Red Hat and Ximian,” Nugent said.

With the purchase of Ximian and the pending acquisition of SuSE Linux announced last week, the Provo, Utah-based Novell continued to fulfill its commitment to provide a full range of Linux solutions, Nugent said.

Red Carpet Enterprise 2 further simplifies the administration and automation process of distributing software and updates. Software packages can now be grouped into package sets; and inventory support for managed servers and workstations now collects network information, including hardware, software and system specifications. The versions enhanced enterprise software distribution uses caching servers to more effectively transfer packages across slow network connections, Nugent said.

Some customers, like Marilyn Kain, a vice president at Crossbeam Systems, welcomed the new product. “By leveraging Red Carpet Enterprise as part of our security management system, our customers are protected through automatic software updates, and they can always access the administration console from any location to change their configuration,” she said.

Ximian Red Carpet Enterprise, which is part of Novell Resource Management, also extends the Linux capabilities of Novell ZENworks, a solution for managing of desktops, servers and handhelds, Nugent said.

/zimages/5/28571.gifClick herefor more information on Novells ZENworks management solution.

In other news, Ximian, which is also working on the Mono Project,which started in 2001 as an effort to implement Microsoft Corp.s .Net Framework to Unix, has again pushed out the roadmap for the release of Mono 1.0.

That is due to the number of new technologies Microsoft Corp. announced at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles last month.

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In the latest Mono roadmap, Miguel de Icaza, the chief technology officer for Ximian, now predicted the release of Mono 1.0 in the first quarter of 2004. “From the Mono release schedule perspective, we should think about these technologies from their release time standpoint, and the features that must be supported,” he said.