Storage software provider Novell has released Novell Cloud Manager, its cloud computing solution that helps customers create private clouds over their existing data center resources.

Novell Cloud Manager is primarily designed for heterogeneous IT environments. It acts as an umbrella operating system that controls virtualized operating systems working on multiple hypervisors. It currently supports hypervisors including VMware vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V and open source Xen operating systems, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Microsoft Windows server and Red Hat Enterpries.

It offers its customers a single interface that all stakeholders can use to access information and relay requests across their entire infrastructure.

"Customers want to be able to securely manage cloud environments as a seamless extension of their existing data center, and they are looking for solutions that avoid vendor lock-in and interoperate across a broad range of technology stacks" said Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager, Security, Management and Operating Platforms, Novell.

The primary concerns for movement to the cloud are security and vendor lock-in issues. Novell's cloud solution attempts to address this issue through its Cloud Manager that allows creation of a private cloud and also interoperability across various vendors used for virtualization.

Cloud Manager comes as a two set console, an application server that acts as an interface for the tool and a provisioning server that sits over each data center served by the Cloud Manager. Thus it offers an interface for users to access underlying virtualized infrastructure.

It uses Google Tool Kit and Java for the interface code and uses SOAP-based APIs to create web based requests that can interact with the underlying hypervisors.

Novell is pitching its hopes on cloud to save its fortunes. In March Novell had faced an unsolicited offer from hedge fund Elliot Associates LP for about $1.8 billion; a price Novell said was too low. Its fiscal third-quarter profit dropped 5.9 percent based on lower revenue. It joins other big players like Dell and HP that are also looking to ride the cloud-computing wave.

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