SAN FRANCISCO, (LinuxWorld Conference & Expo), Aug. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Novell today announced the selection of key open source application partners as part of its growing Market Start program. Novell(R) Market Start, announced earlier this year, aligns open source solutions with Novell's open source operating infrastructure to bring new, cost-effective solutions to market. The first partners in the program include Astaro, GroundWork, InsynQ, Lumen Software, Pentaho and SugarCRM. As a result, customers benefit from enterprise-ready open source applications that increase their IT choices at extremely competitive prices, backed by enterprise-class support from Novell.

"Building and maintaining a community is a critical success factor for any Linux distribution," said Dan Kusnetzky, IDC vice president of system software research. "Novell is seeking to create a strong community based upon the foundation of its long history of working with partners and its position as an enterprise software provider."

David Axmark, co-founder and vice president of open source relations for MySQL AB, said, "By sharing its experience and sales network, Novell's innovative program can help fast-growing open source and Linux software vendors gain valuable visibility in the corporate IT world. Novell is encouraging its customers, resellers and partners to become more familiar and comfortable with the benefits of open source. In turn, this helps everyone in the ecosystem -- from the largest companies to the solo programmer."

The Novell Market Start program was designed to meet the growing demand from companies who desire to implement and integrate open source applications into their operating environments. While many open source application providers exist today, they lack a global infrastructure for sales and support critical to gaining adoption of their solutions. Under the Market Start program, they will receive marketing, channel and support services from Novell, enabling them to grow their solutions without worrying about growing their go-to-market infrastructure.

"Our customers want to leverage the growing number of open source application providers, but also want to minimize their implementation and deployment risk," said Bill Hewitt, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Novell. "With Market Start, they get leading-edge innovation with world-class support. It's a win for our customers, our partners and for the entire open source community."

See attached quote sheet for comments from the initial Novell Market Start partners. For more information about the Market Start program, please visit http://www.novell.com/linux/marketstart .

About Novell

Novell, Inc. is a leading provider of infrastructure software and services to over 50,000 customers in 43 countries. With more than 20 years of experience in data center, workgroup and desktop solutions, Novell's 6,000 employees, 5,000 partners and support centers around the world are meeting customer requirements for identity-driven computing and Linux* solutions. By providing enterprise-class software and support for commercial and open source software, Novell delivers increased operating flexibility and choice at a lower total cost of ownership. More information about Novell can be found at http://www.novell.com/ .

NOTE: Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Quotes from Novell Market Start Partners Aug. 9, 2005

"Novell has proven to be a great partner for us and our Novell Security Manager powered by Astaro network security product. With Novell's support, the benefits of Astaro's unified threat management solution are reaching a wide spectrum of customers and Novell channel partners across the world. Their customers and partners win by gaining access to exciting new products, while companies like Astaro get a boost from Novell's global reach."

Jan Hichert, CEO, Astaro

"GroundWork and Novell understand customers' demonstrated need for powerful but cost-effective tools for managing IT infrastructure. Working together, we are delivering practical and affordable open source solutions that change the economics of IT operations management."

Ranga Rangachari, CEO, GroundWork Open Source Solutions

"Novell's Market Start will empower us to reach more customers with our Linux-based Appgen MyBooks Professional and Custom Suite accounting and financial packages. Through access to Novell resources, sales channels and their global reach, we can more quickly meet our goal to develop a strong market presence among Linux users and migrators by providing affordable, scalable and customizable accounting software which delivers proven business lifecycle financial management."

Michael Camp, Direct of Marketing, InsynQ

"The Market Start program has been invaluable to Lumen Software. We could not have accomplished a fraction of the exposure that Market Start has afforded us, especially as it relates to penetrating specific target markets in the emerging space surrounding Linux. We have truly benefited from Novell's very well choreographed system allowing us to quickly establish channel partner relationships, market presence and a customized go-to-market strategy. It is my opinion that for ISVs and channel partners, this program is going to change how products and services are brought to market. The results we are experiencing bear this out as we have dramatically reduced product-to-market ramp time, targeted collateral development and decreased sales cycles."

Ted Lymer, CMO and Co-founder, Lumen Software

"Market Start is an excellent initiative. Novell shares our goal of exposing as many organizations as possible to the benefits of open source and showing them how easily these solutions can be deployed to deliver tremendous business benefits at dramatically lower cost."

Richard Daley, CEO, Pentaho

"Market Start is an important program because it focuses on accelerating the adoption of Linux-based, open source business solutions. The success of Novell and SugarCRM testifies to the market's willingness to embrace the benefits of open source technology, and this alliance will expand these advantages into new markets."

John Roberts, CEO and Co-founder, SugarCRM

CONTACT: media, Kevan Barney of Novell, Inc., +1-801-861-2931, or
kbarney@novell.com

Web site: http://www.novell.com/linux/marketstart

Web site: http://www.novell.com/