Novell Touts Power Management With ZENworks 11

Novell has announced the general availability of ZENworks 11, and is touting the power management capabilities of the systems management suite of tools.

The open source company said it was the industry’s first ‘single pane of glass’ solution for endpoint management.

Essentially ZENworks 11 is a tightly integrated systems management platform, that combines ZENworks Configuration Management, ZENworks Asset Management, ZENworks Patch Management and ZENworks Endpoint Security Management.

One Stop Shop

The idea is that by offering a single integrated solution, it will help IT administrators in their day to day job of managing devices, patching applications, securing endpoints and tracking software license compliance, albeit across physical, virtual, and cloud environments.

“ZENworks 11 builds on Novell’s management heritage by delivering the industry’s first identity-based, ‘single pane of glass’ solution to manage and secure endpoints across physical, virtual, and cloud environments,” said Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager for Security, Management and Operating Platforms at Novell.

“Whether migrating to Windows 7 or managing remote offices, ZENworks 11 allows organisations to manage users, minimise interruptions and improve service levels,” he added.

ZENworks 11 comes with identity-based management and new location awareness capabilities, so administrators can manage devices based on who is using them and where those devices are located, thereby delivering higher levels of productivity and security.

Other features include the ability to configure Windows power management settings, perform out-of-band power management tasks using Intel vPro, and manage and patch Windows and Linux devices all from a single console.

Power Management

“This announcement by Zenworks fits with the overall trend we are seeing of more systems management providers integrating PC power management into their software,” said Andrew Donoghue, eco-efficient IT analyst with the 451 Group.

“Zenworks had some power management capabilities in previous releases but this latest update improves on those including support for Intel vPro,” Donoghue explained in an email to eWEEK Europe UK.

“Power management is increasingly being used as a Trojan horse by suppliers to encourage companies to adopt their entire suite of systems management tools,” Donoghue added. “Other suppliers are simply offering power management as an extra addition to the tools they already provide as it’s not actually that hard to develop some straightforward desktop power management functionality.

“Microsoft has made some power management improvements to its System Center Configuration Manager tool, which alongside the PM improvements in Windows 7, we believe poses a long term threat to providers of stand-alone PC power management tools,” said Donoghue. “Other factors such as the rise of desktop virtualisation, generally more efficient hardware will also play a part in undermining some of the need for standalone tools over the long term.”

Portfolio Concerns

The arrival of ZENworks 11 will ease concerns about the future of Novell’s product portfolio, following the announcement that Attachmate was buying Novell for $2.2 billion (£1.4 billion) after the open source company was sold in November.

Attachmate is a system management firm run by venture-capital financiers, and it gained the bulk of Novell under the deal. Attachmate said it would split up Novell so that the open source SUSE business is in one division, while other Novell products for networking and systems management is merged into Attachmate’s business.

However a Microsoft-backed consortium also got Novell’s intellectual property worth $450 million (£280 million), which led to concerns within the open source community about the IP falling into Microsoft’s control.