Novell has launched its Cloud Manager, which it claims will allow users to avoid vendor lock-in and securely manage cloud computing applications in private clouds.

The latest product from Novell's WorkloadIQ range, Novell Cloud Manager, simplifies and automates business processes to provide the benefits of cloud computing without the security and compliance risks of public clouds, said the firm.

"Customers want to be able to manage cloud environments securely as a seamless extension of their existing data centre, and they are looking for solutions that avoid vendor lock-in and interoperate across a broad range of technology stacks," said Jim Ebzery, senior vice-president at Novell.

Ryan Klose, CIO of Premium Wine Brands for Pernod Ricard, said the company will use Novell Cloud Manager to simplify its IT service provisioning by combining physical resources with its virtual infrastructure within a private cloud.

Novell Cloud Manager supports hypervisors and operating systems including VMware, vSphere, Microsoft Hyper-V, Microsoft Windows Server and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

BMC Software also launched its cloud management tool, BMC Control-M 7, to automate IT workloads in real time across applications as well as physical, virtual and cloud platforms.