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Bangalore bang in Linux-Windows bonhomie
By siliconindia
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Wednesday, 14 February 2007, 18:30 IST
Bangalore: It is no secret that the open source community and the Windows domain inhabitants have been at loggerheads all through, but Novell's novel tie-up with the Win-group could change equations in major way. Some time in the later half of 2007, Linux based Open Office documents will open in Windows powered machines, courtesy Novell's interoperable application scape.
The new fleet of applications seeks to plug the translational woes that plague users of open source software: Though the Linux desktop functionality with open office is 90 times less dearer than it counterpart-the MS Office Suite, users shy away from the former due to the fact that documents on Open Source platforms do not does not open on Windows. Novell is concentrating on building translators that will power the "seamless interoperation between the two primary operating systems", with its Bangalore R&D facility contributing around 25-30 percent of the efforts.
This is part of Novell's larger corporate realignment strategy, announced its Chief Technology Officer Jeffrey Jaffe here today. The new strategy focuses on sewing the operating systems into a single cohesive operating structure. As part of this, Novell, which develops open source software for the enterprise market has tied up with Microsoft to address the interoperability issues. "This is a pressing need in the marketplace," noted Jaffe. "At the business level, every CIO needs to interact with the two operating systems and their complete incompatibility gives rise to numerous bottlenecks in the product lifecycle."
To take care of the yawning gap, Novell is working on, apart from addressing interoperability issues, developing an enhanced set of open source products, while tackling security, manageability and virtualization issues. The Bangalore R&D center has been particularly upbeat in developing the entire Linux suite, complete with browsers, chat applications, and open office in 5 vernacular languages, viz. Bengali, Hindi, Gujarati, Tamil and Marathi. "We will be introducing 7 more languages in the coming months," informed Revathi Kasturi, Managing Director, West Asia