Novell has announced its image building SUSE Studio to be ready for production and the Linux distributor has simultaneously started a partner-program aimed at software manufacturers who want to use SUSE Linux Enterprise as a base for software appliances.

The innovations-project SUSE Studio from Novell's chief technician Nat Friedman, has been in alpha and beta use since the start of the year. The virtual service has as kern the image tool Kiwi, which was used to build the distros SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 and openSUSE 11.

As a productive stable version 1.0, SUSE Studio will enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to pack and market their virtual appliances on a SUSE Enterprise base. Novell is also offering Technical Partner Support (TPS) which provides ISVs with affordable level 3 support to build and maintain their applications. Starting price for the partner program is around 1500 USD a year with 5 service requests.

An on-site version of SUSE Studio is to be set up in the fall which can be run by larger ISVs with their own servers, with a SUSE Lifecycle Management Server planned for the last quarter of 2009. This solution should ensure that no incompatible applications reach the end-user between updates.

Novell wants to be the “most suitable Linux distributor” for producers of Linux software, said Dr. Gerald Pfeifer, Director Product Management at openSUSE/ SUSE Linux Enterprise in conversation with Linux-Magazine Online. “This is what customers want.” he added, “operating systems manufacturers and producers of applications should work as closely together as possible.”

More news from Novell: SLES 11 is now available in a version for Amazon's cloud computing service EC2 with Novell's developers cooperating with Amazon to optimize the Enterprise Linux kernel for the Hypervisor. SLES is also available in the “Just enough Operating System” variation, (JeOS) as minimal operating system.

WebYast, Novell's beta version of a web interface for its administration application is expected next month. The administrator connects via the browser to appliances that without X-Server and display are unable to utilize Yast.

Novell has announced its image building SUSE Studio to be ready for production and the Linux distributor has simultaneously started a partner-program aimed at software manufacturers who want to use SUSE Linux Enterprise as a base for software appliances.