By Eron Howard
Novell Open Workgroup Suite was first released in 2006 with Open Enterprise Server, GroupWise, ZENworks Suite, SLED and OpenOffice to great success. Novell Open Workgroup Suite (NOWS) is a soft bundle, essentially a package of software licenses. NOWS includes OES, ZENworks, GroupWise, OpenOffice, SLED, and now Teaming.
After a few months, we realized that a small business solution that had some of the same components along with other applications would be an ideal fit for the small business market.
Novell Open Workgroup Small Business Edition is a new product that includes Novell software and open source software to give customers 200 users and below a complete small business server solution. NOWS SBE includes OES, Groupwise, OpenOffice, SLED plus solutions for firewall, VPN, anti-spam, anti-virus, backup, remote management, helpdesk.
NOWS SBE ties all of these components together into a single simplified installer and management framework designed specifically for the small business user and reseller. An example of the power of the simplified framework, called SIMBA, is the interoperability between components. For example if the firewall is installed anytime you install another piece of software the firewall knows what ports should be open for that software to work properly. If you install a set of software then install the firewall it will look at the installed set and open the ports accordingly.