When we hear the word "appliances", we tend to think of things in the kitchen — blenders, mixers, juicers, espresso machines. When IBM thinks of appliances, however, they think of something else: Quick and easy software stacks, ready to run right out of the box.

Novell is preparing to launch an app store called SUSE Gallery. It's designed to help partners and customers find SUSE Linux software appliances that fulfill specific business application needs. Plus, SUSE Gallery effort shows signs that Novell and VMware will continue their joint attack on Red Hat. Here's the scoop.

IBM is turning to technology from Novell to build Linux OS powered software appliances -- a move that aims to deliver easy-to-deploy software for physical, virtual and cloud-based environments in use at small to midsized businesses.

Novell has launched a new Web service called SUSE Studio that simplifies the process of building Linux-based software appliances. It provides a convenient interface for creating custom versions of Novell's SUSE Linux distribution with specialized configurations. The service is part of Novell's broader SUSE Appliance Program initiative.

Novell has announced the launch of the SUSE Appliance Program for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs). With the Appliance Program, ISVs can can create software appliances, such as an email server for a small office, using SUSE Linux Enterprise or openSUSE and SUSE Studio, test their appliances and get them to the market.

At the end of July, Novell launched SUSE Studio, which it calls a "simple and fast appliance builder". It provides a free and easy-to-use, web-based user interface to roll your own customized (SUSE) Linux distribution. The resulting image can be deployed on bare metal or as a virtual appliance on a hypervisor.

Since earlier this year, commercial Linux distributor Novell has been working to get a set of online tools together, which it hopes will make it the force behind virtual machine server appliances. Today, the online tool, called SUSE Studio, and the related SUSE appliance program go into production.

Novell partners with database vendor Ingres to make it easier to build and deploy software appliances -- but what about MySQL?

To date, Novell has had strong usage of its online SUSE Studio Linux appliance development service, with over 250,000 software appliances built. Even with that success, Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) sees a need to expand the effort with a new SUSE Appliance Toolkit providing an on-premises version of SUSE Studio, as well as a new Lifecycle Management Server to manage appliance updates.