OS News are reporting this article on Computerworld that says Novell Australia will be used as Novell's test bunny for moving its entire organisation to a Novell Linux Desktop environment, similar to IBM's move to Linux Desktop this should make the corporate desktop environment a interesting arena in a year or 2.

Novell's local operation is taking a leading role in an ambitious year-long plan to move all the company's 6000 worldwide staff onto Linux desktops.

The migration, which will see staff across the globe using SuSE Linux systems running OpenOffice, is partly motivated by broader commercial concerns. Novell completed its $US210 million acquisition of SuSE in January this year, and the company wants to use itself as a showcase for both SuSE and Ximian, which it also purchased last year.

However, Novell Asia Pacific CIO Sam Gennaoui said that there was also a basic financial argument for the shift. "We are like any other company; we still have ROIs to deliver," he said.

Around 90 per cent all of the company's 350 Asia-Pacific staff, half of whom are based in Australia, have started using OpenOffice as a replacement for Microsoft's Office suite.

promoted forum item