Enterprise Linux vendor Novell has announced a new Suse Appliance Program, which will allow independent software vendors (ISVs) to create software appliances by integrating their applications with a customised version of Suse's Linux Enterprise platform.

Novell has just released in beta a customised version of Suse's Linux Enterprise platform, allowing ISVs signing up to the program to be 'early adopters'.

The Just enough Operating System (JeOS) is a software appliance which can be run natively on commodity x86-based hardware or as a virtual appliance. Novell pointed out that customers using such software appliances would save on deployment and management costs, and get better security and performance, whilst ISVs would save significant costs on software development.

JeOS has a 'paravirtualised' kernel designed to deliver optimal performance in virtualised environments, and Novell said the full production version of Suse Linux Enterprise JeOS will ship later this year.