Novell Inc. is upbeat about NetWare, even though its flagship networking software won't be available as a stand-alone product next year.

The Provo, Utah, company announced at its BrainShare conference here last week that NetWare will be a core part of its upcoming Novell Open Enterprise Server platform when it ships at the end of this year.

Novell CEO and Chairman Jack Messman said in an interview that the company has not sacrificed NetWare at the Linux altar and that NetWare will be supported into the future. In fact, Messman said, the kernel from the next release of NetWare, Version 7.0, will be included in the first version of Open Enterprise Server.

The SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 kernel will also be included in Open Enterprise Server—but in addition will be retained as a stand-alone SuSE Linux product—as will a collection of networking services, including Nterprise Linux Services, which will interoperate between the two environments, Messman said.

SuSE Linux, which Novell acquired earlier this year, will roll out SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 9—which is based on the new Linux 2.6 kernel—around midyear, giving users performance improvements, Direct I/O and improved memory support, SuSE officials said.

Click here for the full story.