IBM and Novell have teamed up to drive Linux adoption among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with new packaged bundles of Novell’s Linux distribution and IBM’s software and servers.

The first bundle, called the Integrated Stack for Linux, combines Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise Server with IBM’s WebSphere Application Server Community Edition—a free J2EE application server built on the Apache Geronimo open-source application server project—and IBM’s DB2 Express-C database server, a free, scaled-down version of its DB2 Universal Database Express Edition. The offering is initially available for SMBs through distributor Avnet’s reseller channel. Avnet will preinstall the software on IBM’s xSeries Intel based-servers for resellers.

To help ease Linux deployments in Microsoft Windows environments, Avnet will also preload startup Centeris’ Likewise application for Active Directory integration and management. The Likewise application makes Linux servers appear as Windows servers in a Windows environment, allowing system administrators to manage both through a Windows console.

Avnet will also offer the Likewise application with a second bundle from IBM and Novell, the Integrated File and Print Server for Linux, to help users manage Linux file and print servers in a Windows environment.

IBM this week will also roll out a new version of WebSphere Application Server Community Edition with new clustering and load-balancing capabilities and new development tools to ease application creation, debugging and deployment. Web Sphere Application Server CE is based on software IBM acquired from Gluecode Software last year.

-Shelley Solheim, IDG News Service

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