Ethno-Design, under the directorship of Novell Zwangendaba is one of the chief organisers of the designers' workshop. Novell, who organised last year's first ever fashion week dubbed the Ethno-Design Fashion Week, urged all designers to fully utilise Hifa 2008 to market their wares. The dreadlocked designer said they expected some tertiary students majoring in Cutting and Design and related fields as well as independent designers to grace the occasion. Among the list of designers gracing this festival would be Chidochemoyo Nemhara who made headlines at last year's EDFW-a designer's forum.

The 20 year-old designer could not hide her excitement after being considered for Hifa 2008. "I am glad for being included in this year's Hifa. For your own information, I will be going there for the first time and I wish to fully utilise the festival to market my wares. "I am also happy to be gracing the festival doing something unlike visiting stands a patron," she said. Even Novell spoke highly of Nemhara whom he described as a creative genius destined for the stars. "She is good. She has shown us a lot of potential at last year's EDFW and I hope she will have an opportunity to show the world some of her outstanding garments when the festival springs into life," she said.

Other designers expected to grace the occasion include Tendai Manuel who will be promoting his label called Sword. Ester Mujuru, who specialises in sculpture designs, will have her wares on display together with Tawanda Zawanda of Limit X among others.

Through the existing Novell-Microsoft technical collaboration agreement, Novell was an early participant to the Server Virtualization Validation Program and helped Microsoft fine tune many of the parameters of the Server Virtualization Validation Program. This work included helping to define and validate the technical tests and using the joint Microsoft/Novell Interoperability Lab in Cambridge, Mass., as a test-bed resource.

As part of its extensive interoperability agreement with Microsoft, Novell holds a unique position as SUSE Linux Enterprise is currently the only Xen hypervisor on which Microsoft will provide full support today for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 running as a virtual guest. Microsoft's Server Virtualization Validation Program is designed to provide customers with additional peace of mind.

"We continue to hear from customers that they want to run Windows Server 2008 as a virtualized guest on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise," said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for Linux and Open Platform Solutions at Novell. "Novell is excited to extend the on-going technical collaboration efforts between Novell and Microsoft to the Server Virtualization Validation Program, which will give customers the performance, security and reliability that comes with running Windows Server 2008 as a virtual guest on SUSE Linux Enterprise."

The Server Virtualization Validation Program defines a set of technical tests that third party virtualization solutions must pass to become validated by Microsoft. The program also enables vendors to validate various configurations so that mutual customers deploying Windows Server on those configurations can receive cooperative technical support in virtualized environments. Customers with validated solutions will benefit from the support provided by Microsoft as a part of the regular Windows Server technical support framework.

"Novell played an important role in helping us architect and fine-tune this program," said Zane Adam, senior director of virtualization strategy, Server and Tools Business, Microsoft Corp. "This is just one more illustration of how Novell and Microsoft are working together to develop interoperable virtualization solutions."

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux* platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com

Novell is a registered trademark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

CONTACT: Ian Bruce, Press Contact, Novell Tel: +1 781 464 8034 e-mail: ibruce@novell.com Rebecca Paquette, Press Contact, SHIFT Communications Tel: +1 617 779 1849 e-mail: rpaquette@shiftcomm.com

M2 Communications Ltd disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com.

Customers such as Audi, MTU Aero Engines, NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division, Porsche Informatik, Seoul National University, Swinburne University of Technology, Tokyo Institute of Technology and Wehmeyer are running supercomputers and computer clusters on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to handle mission-critical workloads with minimal downtime.

Three supercomputers at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division currently operate on SUSE Linux Enterprise from Novell. These computers are used to evaluate next-generation technology to meet NASA's engineering and science requirements, control system operation and launch programs, and support NASA's aeronautics, science and space operations initiatives. NASA's next supercomputer, scheduled for completion this summer, will also run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and when deployed will be one of the largest SGI Altix ICE systems, on par with the current third-ranked most powerful supercomputer.

"At NASA we are working to solve some of science's most complex challenges, so an operating system that can help us achieve the highest level of computational functionality is very important," said William Thigpen, engineering branch chief in the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division. "In selecting an operating system, performance and flexibility are two of our top considerations. The right operating system helps us to push the boundaries of computing performance and bring new levels of innovation to our space, science and aeronautics programs."

Partners Leverage SUSE Linux Enterprise

Companies like Appro International, Atipa Technologies, Cluster Resources, HP, Penguin Computing, SGI and Teradata are incorporating SUSE Linux Enterprise Server into the high-performance computing solutions they are providing to their own customers.

"We recently introduced a new family of platforms from entry-level to active-enterprise data warehouses that addresses many customer needs," said Scott Gnau, chief development officer, Teradata Corporation. "Our solutions are designed to drive powerful business intelligence and real-time decisioning applications, including fraud detection and prevention, customer segmentation, human resources and forecasting. Our solutions run on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, which, thanks to its extreme scalability, reliability, flexibility and ease of use, is the optimal Linux operating system for our customers' businesses. We selected Novell and its SUSE Linux Enterprise platform because of its full range of industry-leading Linux services to support large-scale, mission-critical enterprises."

Irene Qualters, SGI senior vice president of software, said, "At SGI, our focus is on high-performance computing and robust scalability, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the operating system of choice for many of our Altix and Altix XE customers. As the requirements for high-performance computing continue to grow more complex across industries, the collaboration between SGI and Novell ensures that SUSE Linux Enterprise will continue to be the leading operating system for high-performance clusters that meet those new business needs today."

Michael A. Jackson, president of Cluster Resources Inc., said, "Our partnership with Novell is helping to overcome the complexity and supportability limitations of the HPC market. The resulting Moab Cluster Builder for SUSE Linux Enterprise installs a turnkey, HPC-optimized version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with easy-to-use resource and workload management. In addition, with Novell's interoperability alliance with Microsoft, we can enable a dynamic hybrid OS cluster. This next-generation solution causes a single cluster to be a mix of both SUSE Linux Enterprise and Windows and to dynamically change the OS mix based on the workload submitted. Novell is truly a centerpiece of both next-generation HPC and making it easy to use, commercially reliable and supportable."

SUSE Linux Enterprise has been a leader in the high performance computing market for more than a decade, based on the strong engineering heritage of the distribution.

"SUSE Linux Enterprise has become the HPC operating system of choice, thanks to its scalability and performance capabilities and the wide variety of open source software and development tools available," said Carlos Montero-Luque, vice president of product management for Open Platform Solutions at Novell. "By leveraging industry-standard servers and clusters running SUSE Linux Enterprise, customers and partners can build and deploy the world's best HPC-class products and applications."

More information on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for High Performance Computing can be found at http://www.novell.com/hpc.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit http://www.novell.com.

Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries. *Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Novell, Inc.

http://www.novell.com/

According to the company, as a result of Novell's participation in the programme, customers will be able to run Windows Server 2008 as a virtualized guest on top of the Xen hypervisor in SUSE Linux Enterprise 10 and receive cooperative support from either company. SUSE Linux is currently the only Xen hypervisor on which Microsoft will provide full support for Windows Server 2008 and Windows Server 2003 running as a virtual guest.

Through the existing Novell-Microsoft technical collaboration agreement, Novell was an early participant to the Server Virtualization Validation Program and helped Microsoft adjust a number of parameters of the programme, the company said.

The company is currently running the tests required by the validation process in the program, and expects the tests to be completed by August 2008. No financial details were disclosed.

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