Novell Buys Tally Systems to Improve Asset Management

Initially, Novell will ship Tally's technology as ZENworks Asset Management, a separate module that will offer some integration with the forthcoming ZENworks 7.0. Deeper integration is planned for the next release. Tally's product-development team will move over to ZENworks--meaning that Tally's asset-scanning functionality, which accurately finds and inventories installed desktop applications, will live on.

It's not clear how the merger will affect current Tally customers, but Novell says it plans to offer "entitlements" to Tally users. Other desktop configuration management vendors, such as Altiris, BMC Software, LANDesk Software and Microsoft, may not be worried yet, but they'll undoubtedly have another competitor to watch.