In line with its strategy to focus on a few parts of enterprise software and work with partners on other software and services, Novell announced Wednesday a Suse Appliance Program for ISVs (independent software vendors).

The program will enable ISVs to create appliances combining their applications with Suse Linux Enterprise in an integrated package.

Novell also announced the beta release of Suse Linux Enterprise JeOS, a minimized version of the Suse Linux Enterprise platform that ISVs can use for creating appliances.

Repositioned as an infrastructure software company, Novell is focusing on a few areas such as offering the Linux operating system from the desktop to the data center, and software for desktop management, logical identity management, server consolidation, virtualization and optimization, said Ronald Hovsepian, president and CEO. Products from PlateSpin, a company acquired by Novell earlier this year, allow the movement of workloads between physical and virtual environments regardless of platform or operating system, he added.

In other areas of enterprise software such as the database, middleware and application servers, Novell will be agnostic and plans to work with various ISVs, service providers and systems integrators to integrate its products with third-party software for customers, Hovsepian said. The company expects to generate more than US$2 billion in services business for its partners this year as it implements its plan, he added.

The company is not positioning itself as an open-source company, but rather as one that offers interoperability among software that may be open or proprietary, Hovsepian said. "We think that the market will operate and stay in this 'mixed-source' model for a long time to come," he added.

Novell also announced Wednesday that it will officially participate in the LimeJeOS project, which is an existing community-led project building a minimized version of the openSuse Linux distribution. Novell will release several new components of the Suse Appliance Program, including an automated tool to build appliances, it added.