Novell Chops Tags on SLES for IBM Mainframes
Novell says it’s going to “simplify” pricing and discounts on SLES for mainframes for the rest of the year. That means it’s going to cut prices by 33%-47% by offering a three-year subscription for the price of a two-year subscription or a five-year subscription for the price of a three-year subscription. The discounts apply to workload consolidation from non-System z platforms and renewals of existing SLES subscriptions.

Caveats on App Engine
Gartner thinks Google’s App Engine, its new cloud formation, which currently lets developers only write web apps in Python, a language Google has relied on for its internal offline processing, may eventually add Java but not .NET, which would indirectly support Microsoft, or PHP, which would validate Facebook’s language of choice.

Gartner also observes that it uses a subset of the Python runtime and introduces other dependencies than may lead to platform lock-in and thinks that, since it doesn’t address support for OpenSocial or the Google Gadget component model, it “comes primarily from one corner of the company or has many phases left in its evolution.”

HP Backs Citrix
HP says it’s going to support Citrix’ XenDesktop on its industry-standard ProLiant serevers and Compaq thin client come May. HP hopes to sell management software on top

HP Imports New PC Sales Boss
HP has tapped Enrique Lores, the head of its Inkjet Commercial Division, responsible for its large-format printing business for the last five years, to head up worldwide PC sales and run its Solution Partner Organization, reporting to PC boss Todd Bradley. He’ll be seconded from Barcelona to Silicon Valley to replace Jim McDonnell, who’s now leading global sales for the company’s enterprise storage and server business unit. Lores, once an R&D engineer, has been with HP for 20 years with management roles on the printer side.

Wind River on Niagara
Wind River is going to port its carrier-grade Linux and Workbench development suite to Sun’s eight-core multithreaded UltraSparc T2 Niagara chip, which doesn’t have a carrier-grade Linux yet.

Back in the Chips
It’s been a happy week for beaten-down tech sector what with Intel and Google resurgent and IBM stock rising to its highest price in six years after its earnings.