BOSTON, Mass. — Novell was to have announced at LinuxCon that users will be able to run their own customized instances of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 and 11 on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. While the announcement was pulled at the last minute, I’m told that the marriage of SLES and AWS is going ahead.
Markus Rex, Novell’s SVP and General Manager of Open Platform Solutions, told me prior to the formal announcement that users will be able to create their own special SLES blend with SUSE Studio and then upload and use it on AWS. Once it’s there, you can pay Amazon to take care of all its updates, patches, and support. Or, if you’d rather, you can pay Amazon for a generic ready-to-run SLES server on the cloud. They’ll be happy to ‘sell’ you one.
This new offering will be available around the world, and you can pay for using it on an hourly basis. Essentially what Novell is doing here is making AWS a SLES reseller. In the background, Novell will be doing the heavy-lifting on support, but business users will have only one throat to choke if there are any problems: AWS.