Novell Acquires Collaboration Enabler SiteScape

Longtime networking and infrastructure software vendor Novell has picked up open-source collaboration vendor SiteScape to improve its unified communications and social networking reach.SiteScape is known for its Web workspace and conferencing solutions and also has products to address the burgeoning social networking phenomenon. The two companies have been in partnership already: Novell's Teaming + Conferencing conferencing solution incorporates SiteScape's ICEcore open-source "Integrated Collaboration Environment," which brings together blogs and wikis, instant messaging, Web conferencing, VoIP, and other team communication options, a real-time conferencing solution based on ICEcore open source technology.

"The melding of the two firms creates the industry's clear leader in open, enterprise-strength collaboration and social networking offerings," Novell's press release said. The release went on to quote Mark Levitt, program vice president for Collaborative Computing and the Enterprise Workplace at IDC: "Enterprise and SMB customers are looking for solutions that combine real-time messaging, conferencing and IP voice calling along with online workspaces, social networking, blogs, and wikis to improve team and enterprise productivity and innovation. Solutions that combine team collaboration and UC like those offered by the combined Novell-SiteScape, which are based around open source for rapid innovation and open standards for interoperability and platform flexibility, represent the next major step forward for business collaboration."ChannelWeb