Novell Expands Market Start Program to Accelerate the Adoption of Open Source Application Software

Novell Expands Market Start Program to Accelerate the Adoption of Open Source Application Software

Strengthening its position as a leader in driving open source software adoption, Novell today announced a near doubling in the size of its Market Start program to help young open source companies gain commercial success. Open source companies Alfresco, Black Duck, EnterpriseDB, SpikeSource and Novacoast have become members of Novell’s Market Start program, joining leading vendors like Pentaho, SugarCRM, MySQL AB, Lumen Software, and Groundwork, making the program a veritable “who’s who” of open source innovators. Launched in 2005 to accelerate open source adoption worldwide, Market Start gives enterprise open source companies access to Novell’s global sales and marketing channels to bring their solutions to the marketplace. As part of the expanded program, Novell will now allow Market Start partners to tap into Novell’s network of more than 900 training partners worldwide. Novell will introduce new instructor-led and kit-based training on open source software solutions delivered by Novell and its Market Start partners. As a result, customers can gain new cost-effective, fully supported open source options for meeting their infrastructure and applications needs.

“We’re seeing a tremendous interest in a range of customers for new open source applications like our content management solution,” said John Powell, CEO of Alfresco. “Novell’s Market Start program will help us reach customers we couldn’t get to on our own. More important, through Market Start, customers gain access to a greater range of supported open source applications, increasing flexibility and choice.”

Novell is adding new training features to the Market Start program that will help both customers and partners get more value from open source-based solutions. Novell will provide the option to create and globally distribute administrative and end-user training kits for all Market Start partner solutions. Offering Market Start partner education kits leverages Novell’s proven education infrastructure to accelerate the adoption of leading open source solutions through increasing customer options for training.

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