ReadWriteWeb

Novell is providing the first glimpse of Pulse, its new real-time collaboration service. The new service will eventually fully integrate with Google Wave. This version does not include Google Wave as part of its service. But there is an expectation that eventually the integration will serve as a federated platform that may serve as the basis for new open-source collaboration efforts.

Novell is releasing the service initially to analysts and participants at BrainShare, its user group meeting next week in Salt Lake City. Each person will get to invite one new user, Novell will provide a fuller release in the next few months. A release at the end of the year will include OpenID as a core aspect of the platform.

IBM is extending its cloud infrastructure to the IBM Cloud and enhancing its offering with commercial- and enterprise-grade test and development services with a broad reach of partners and collaborative approaches. The effort follows its launch in November of a test-and-development cloud-based service. With this announcement, IBM is laying the foundation for a cloud ecosystem that will differentiate the company from Google, Microsoft and Amazon.

Perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of the news is that PayPal is joining IBM as a partner to offer services to enterprise clients. This puts IBM on a a direct trajectory into the heart of the market - with Amazon in its sights. By partnering with PayPal, IBM is laying the framework for more transaction-oriented services with smart phone customers the prime target for applications developed in its partner community.

Earlier today Novell demoed it's Google Wave-like product to the enterprise world. Pulse is the latest workplace collaboration platform to announce at this year's Enterprise 2.0 Conference and ReadWriteWeb was lucky enough to catch up with Novell's VP of Engineering Andy Fox for a demo of the new tool. The beta product is expected early next year.

More than 70 major companies, academic institutions and high profile technologists have launched a campaign to educate US government agencies about the benefits of open source technology. Announced earlier at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, groups such as Google, RedHat, Novell, Linux, Mozilla, Sun Microsystems and the Electronic Frontiers Foundation have teamed up to create Open Source For America. The joint effort is a coalition aimed at lobbying the US Federal government to consider using open-source software over proprietary code. O'Reilly Media CEO Tim O'Reilly and Executive Director of the Linux Foundation Jim Zemlin are just some of the board advisors.