Novell's Nat Friedman Named Technologist of the Year

VARBusiness honors Novell engineer for innovative work on Linux desktop

24 October 2006

VARBusiness Magazine has named Nat Friedman, Novell's chief technology and strategy officer for open source, as its first ever Technologist of the Year. Friedman was honored for innovation in Novell's most recent desktop Linux* offering, SUSE® Linux Enterprise Desktop 10, the first truly usable Linux desktop operating system for corporate environments. Shipped in August 2006 and named Best of Show at LinuxWorld* San Francisco in September, SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 provides customers a compelling alternative to Windows* at a fraction of the price. VARBusiness, which covers the business of technology integration, honored Friedman at an awards ceremony held Oct. 23, 2006, in Huntington Beach, Calif.

“Innovative technologies always start with innovative individuals, so we decided this year, for the first time, to honor a technologist of the year, rather than simply technologies and products. Innovations like what we’ve seen from Nat Friedman demonstrate the vibrancy and vitality of the industry,” says VARBusiness Editor Lawrence M. Walsh. “They represent breakthroughs that will benefit our solution-provider readers and, in turn, the users of technology.”

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop delivers ease of use and features new to the desktop operating system market, including 3-dimensional desktop effects, integrated desktop and web search, complete multimedia support, plug-and-play capabilities, interoperability with Microsoft* Active Directory* and Exchange environments, and an office productivity suite, fully compatible with Microsoft Office, through the Novell® edition of OpenOffice.org 2.0. SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop can serve as a complete end-user desktop replacement, retail point of service solution, thin-client deployment or engineering workstation.

“It's a tremendous honor to receive this award, but this was a group effort. I am proud to share this honor not only with our team of great engineers at Novell, including the SUSE team, but also the open source community that has built the Linux desktop and supported our own innovative contributions,” said Friedman. “SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 is a perfect example of how corporate contributions can drive innovation in the open source world. The real winners, of course, are the customers who can now get a secure, reliable desktop and cutting-edge features, all at one-tenth the cost of proprietary desktops.”

Friedman will be recognized in the VARBusiness Dec. 4 Tech Innovators issue, which will also include profiles, features and in-depth explanations of the various technologies and products winning VARBusiness Tech Innovator awards.

Both a developer and an entrepreneur, Friedman cofounded Ximian, Inc. in 1999, which was acquired by Novell in 2003. Since joining Novell, he has served as development lead over the company's Linux desktop efforts, and today helps to craft the company's overall strategy and technology vision for Linux.

About VARBusiness Magazine

For the past 19 years, VARBusiness’ strategic resources have been the gateway to the Solution Provider community. VARBusiness provides strategic insight for technology integrators through industry-defining research, in-depth editorial, channel events and innovative Web services, enabling these IT professionals to make educated decisions for their businesses, partnerships and customers. VARBusiness has been the recipient of numerous industry awards for both editorial content and design. Additional information about VARBusiness products, events and services, is available at its Web site, www.varbusiness.com.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers Software for the Open Enterprise™. With more than 50,000 customers in 43 countries, Novell helps customers manage, simplify, secure and integrate their technology environments by leveraging best-of-breed, open standards-based software. With over 20 years of experience, 4,700 employees, 5,000 partners and support centers around the world, Novell helps customers gain control over their IT operating environment while reducing cost. More information about Novell can be found at http://www.novell.com.

Novell and SUSE are registered trademarks and Software for the Open Enterprise is a 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.

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