It would appear Novell is putting a heavy investment into Linux, as they are restructuring their business to concentrate on two key categories — Linux and Identity Management.

If this goes well for Novell, I think it could show other companies that Open Source products can indeed be profitable. Enterprises may also be more likely to evaluate or adopt Linux with such a major vendor behind it, and Novell of course already has its foot in the door in several places thanks to NetWare.

Many Illinois schools, for example, have NetWare and other Novell products running their back end. If Novell can come up with a suitable upgrade/migration path, these schools may soon be running Linux systems. And with Ximian now a part of Novell, this may in turn lead to the same schools evaluating Linux on lab and administration desktops.