Novell Pulse Enterprise 2.0 goes beta

Novell is ready to begin beta testing its Pulse enterprise social-networking and collaboration suite, reports PC World.

Attendees at the upcoming BrainShare conference will be the first to get access to the beta preview version of Pulse, which Novell plans to unveil in final form in the second half of this year.

"We'll provide them over the course of the following weeks, in a controlled manner, with an account to the Pulse preview system and give them five invites for colleagues," says Ken Muir, chief technology and strategy officer of Novell's collaboration business unit.

Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst has revealed that IBM has selected Red Hat's Enterprise Virtualisation platform for its new cloud computing service for development and test, writes eWeek.

Last June, IBM unveiled three cloud system models: IBM Smart Business Test Cloud; Smart Business Development & Test and Smart Business Application Development & Test; and IBM CloudBurst.

The underpinnings of these are Tivoli Provisioning Manager 7.1 and Tivoli Service Automation Manager, which automates the deployment and management of computing clouds.

In its continuing battle with leading virtualisation vendor VMware, Microsoft has unveiled initiatives to try to take market share in the desktop virtualisation space, concentrating heavily on making virtualised desktops and virtualised desktop infrastructure (VDI), cheaper, states Computing.co.uk.

Accordingly, the software giant has announced an expanded partnership with enterprise software vendor Citrix, and introduced simpler and cheaper licensing models along with new features.

Microsoft marketing communications director for server and tools, Patrick O'Rourke, says the key offer for firms deploying desktop virtualisation and looking for cost savings was its 'Rescue for VMware VDI' offer.