Novell has acquired SiteScape, a developer of open source team collaboration technology.

The purchase is designed to boost Novell's unified communications and collaboration strategy.

Analysts welcomed the move. "Advances in web 2.0 technologies are driving new opportunities for unified communications and team collaboration," said Mark Levitt, a program vice president at IDC.

"Enterprise and SMB customers are looking for solutions that combine real-time messaging, conferencing and IP voice calling along with online workspaces, social networking, blogs and wikis to improve productivity and innovation.

"Solutions that combine team collaboration and unified communications represent the next major step forward for business collaboration."

Founded in 1995, SiteScape provides collaborative technologies for communication and management of distributed teams across a range of business and government customers.

Novell partnered with SiteScape in 2007 to add to its collaboration portfolio with Novell Teaming + Conferencing, a team workspace and real-time conferencing offering centred on the ICEcore open source technology.

Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.