Novell and Tencent on Thursday announced the establishment of a research laboratory in Shenzhen, China to jointly develop an Internet Data Center (IDC) cloud computing platform. Tencent, China's largest Internet service portal with more than 480 million active users, is adopting SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server and PlateSpin Orchestrate as its auto-deployment system. As part of the agreement, Tencent will also utilize intelligent workload management solutions from Novell, including PlateSpin Workload Management, to create a flexible and easy-to-expand IDC cloud platform that will allow users to build, purchase and run business applications in a faster and more convenient way.

"Tencent has recognized the value of our solutions to its business," said Dr. Sen Ming Chang, managing director of Novell East Asia. "This cloud computing laboratory will create a powerful IDC cloud platform that will not only promote IDC industry development but also help companies improve productivity and reduce costs. Our collaboration with Tencent further proves Novell's leadership in cloud computing and the intelligent workload management market. We spare no effort to provide customers with excellent solutions and services, and hope more companies like Tencent will adopt our virtual solutions."

Typically, IDC vendors lease resources from solution providers and make a profit by then leasing space, bandwidth and other resources to customers. With the rise of Web 2.0 and bandwidth-intensive multi-media sites, as well as increased business usage, demand for the IDC solutions has grown.

Because of this rapid development, the IDC industry and a number of Tencent's operations have met with considerable challenges. To address these challenges, Tencent built its virtualization and data center engine using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Xen Virtualization and Novell® PlateSpin Orchestrate. To date, the engine has achieved significant results including more efficient utilization, operational flexibility, improved productivity, lower costs and greater compatibility and security.