Novell 'aggressive' about internal adoption of Linux desktop

Novell's UK MD has revealed that a wholesale internal migration to the Linux desktop is definitely on the cards, as it would follow the company's traditional commitment to using its own software where possible.

Speaking to ZDNet UK on Tuesday following the completion of his company's acquisition of Linux distributor SuSE Linux, Steve Brown claimed that Novell fully supported an earlier commitment by IBM to roll out desktop Linux internally but would not be drawn on a date for a similar commitment.

"The intention from Novell is fairly aggressive. If you look at what we have traditionally done with our own technology, which is we have always run our own business on our technology, I don't see that changing as we go forward."

But Brown did reveal that Novell may make an announcement about internal adoption of the open-source client software at the company's annual user conference in March.

"I'd say again that the monitor to watch is BrainShare. That's where a lot of these kinds of announcements will be made," he said.

Brown explained that Novell UK is already carrying out several internal trials of desktop Linux across around 15 percent of the organisation. These have been running since the late summer of last year following the acquisition of Linux desktop specialist Ximian.

"Locally I think people are very excited by what you can do with the Ximian desktop and I have certainly got my staff here running several pilots here. It would be nice if we could get as many people off the Windows environment as possible so we didn't have to pay any recurring licensing costs to Microsoft," he said.

BrainShare 2004, will be held on 21-26 March in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Click here for the full interview with Steve Brown.