The announcements came on the second day of BrainShare Global 2006, the weeklong conference that has drawn more than 6,000 Novell users, developers and sellers to the downtown Salt Lake Convention Center.

Antti Nummiranta of Finland's Ministry of Defense cited stability and security features as prime reasons for his country migrating from a Unix-based system onto Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to handle messaging, its intranet site and other core services.

"Our key operational and decision-making processes rely on our ability to access our . . . systems 24/7, securely and with no glitches," he said. "We have not had a single second of downtime on the Linux platform."

Tom Francese, president of Novell's Europe, Middle East and Africa operations, said the Finnish contract is an example of how an open-source, or freely developed and distributed, software core can be meet military secrecy needs "for their most critical applications and services."

Terms for the deal were not disclosed, but the Finnish deal is only the latest Novell has made with government agencies worldwide. Municipal governments in Munich, Germany, and Bergen, Norway, are Novell clients, as is Jefferson County, Colo. So are schools systems in Baerum, Norway, and in Indiana; the Swiss Federal government; the United Kingdom's National Health System; the U.S. National Institutes of Health; and the New Zealand Ministry of Education and Inland Revenue Service.

Other deals announced Tuesday included:

l Webster Bank N.A., subsidiary of New England's Webster Financial Corp., the region's largest independent bank, with more than $17.8 billion in assets. The bank selected Novell's SecureLogin and ZENworks products to monitor user access and automate desktop-computer-based management.

l Continuum Health Partners, a 3,000-bed nonprofit hospital system in New York, chose Novell to secure, update and manage elements of its computer networks and services. Novell will also implement and streamline security measures.

Ken Lobenstein, Continuum's chief technology officer, said the family of Novell and open-source programs it has obtained helped the health care operation save the $8 million it would have spent to upgrade its system through Microsoft.

"In three months, Novell stabilized our entire e-mail system and put us on a path to managing all our desktops," he said. "We've made more progress in the last few months than we had in the previous two years."

Market watchers were cautious in their praise of Tuesday's announcements.

"Systems management and security is a key area of growth for Novell, especially as it reinvents itself and transitions from its core NetWare business to its open-source-software business," said David Friedlander of Forrester Research.

"Nonetheless, I think Novell has a lot of challenges ahead of it. . . . [It] needs to get the message out there and highlight bigger, more strategic customer wins to continue growing its business."

John Enck of Gartner Research sees the deals announced Tuesday as proof that Novell is successfully growing beyond its proprietary-networking-software past.

"The Finland and Webster customer engagements show Novell's growth in Linux and security, respectively. The Continuum engagement . . . [shows] the scope of Novell's offering and customers' willingness to deploy Novell technology for multiple solutions."

Novell's stock closed Tuesday at $7.45 per share, up 2 cents.

bmims@sltrib.com

Who and what

* The Finish military will move from Unix-based programs to Linux server applications.

* Webster Bank N.A. of New England selects Novell software to monitor customer access and automate desktop-computer-based management.

* Continuum Health Partners of New York goes with Novell to secure, update and manage elements of its computer networks.