11.15.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday – Part III: Novell Report, Schmidtism and More
SCO
Most of this story/saga was already covered in the middle of the week, but here is an unexciting addition from Groklaw. It’s about bills.
More bills are in for SCO to pay in the bankruptcy. Tanner, Berger Singerman, and Pachulski Stang all have filed for mo’ money. From the bills, we can discern through a glass darkly what’s been going on. Here’s what: the Swiss SUSE arbitration shows activity. You can find it on page 11 of Berger’s Exhibit A, where we see a notation that SUSE has filed a “submission” to the tribunal. It references “SUSE arbitration statement to tribunal” also, but it could be the same thing. This happened on 10/1/08.
Finance
Speaking of money, Novell’s business was analyzed by Companies and Markets.
Novell continues its transition after several significant developments in 2006, the partnership with Microsoft and the shift from a strategy for using the Open Enterprise Server (OES) product released in 2005. As a result of the strategy shift in the OES product, Novell is focusing on the other two large units, security and management to drive overall top line growth.
Zenworks
Here is a new article about Zenworks.
Novell’s Zenworks is its suite of automated system management tools for the end-user environment and datacentre.
Zenworks is really two main products. One is Configuration Manager, which manages desktops or servers running Microsoft Windows or Novell’s Suse Linux Enterprise (SLE) platforms – a throwback to Novell’s local area network (Lan) management origins. The other is Zenworks Orchestrator, which manages datacentre server technologies and the associated issues.
A new case study might be this implementation story from Marion Community Schools.
The Marion Community Schools Technology Department has finished implementing Novell ZENworks throughout the district, an important piece of the network infrastructure that will make it possible to upgrade and make repairs from a central location within the district. This drastically improves the efficiency of the IT department and is another step toward taking full advantage of our fiber optic wide-area network that was installed at MCS in the summer of 2006.
Groupwise is still where it’s at for Novell. Compatibility with it is the main reason for having it mentioned every now and then. It’s said to be supported by Google’s Android, which uses Linux and Java.
I was pleased to read that CompanionLink Sofware now has a way for you to sync your PIM data (no email) between Outlook, Lotus Notes, Palm Desktop, Novell Groupwise, and other clients to your T-Mobile G1. CompanionLink for Google Android is available now for US$29.95 with a free 14-day trial.
GWAVA made this appearance in another press release.
Over the past six years, Marvin Huffaker Consulting has earned a reputation for top-notch services in messaging and collaboration. As a Novell platinum partner, they specialize in GroupWise-based solutions. They have several hundred active customers with a wide variety of needs and configurations.
Identity Management
Novell’s relationship with Fujitsu [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 returns to light in the following press release about digital rights.
“We look forward to extending to Dolphin Digital Media the current and new brands to be developed as a result of this six-picture slate so that Dolphin Digital Media can create ‘secure’ branded social networking websites built around these films. Dolphin Digital Media’s proprietary Internet safety technology, developed in association with Fujitsu and Novell, is based on fingerprint identification, and provides a safe online atmosphere for our young audiences, while providing parents the added assurance that their children are utilizing the Internet in a protected online environment.”
Novell was also mentioned here for its role in the Information Card Foundation.
Parity managed an open source project to work with tech companies to design a single standard for user-controlled release of information. And this past June, they helped form the Information Card Foundation, a consortium of tech companies including big names like Google, Microsoft, Novell and Pay Pal.
People
Novell’s former CEO, Eric Schmidt, declined and dismissed apparent interest in making him the States’ chief technical officer. Will it be Vinton Cerf of Google instead?
On Friday, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said he wasn’t interested (Techmeme). Schmidt told Mad Money’s Jim Cramer that he’s happy to stick around at Google. And why would Schmidt take the job? Schmidt knows mission impossible when he sees it. He was at Novell and Sun and has the scars from battling Microsoft.
David Bradford used to work for Novell and report to Eric Schmidt. He has just entered Fusion-io.
Bradford brings more than 30 years experience in the fields of law and technology to Fusion-io, including 15 years spent at Novell, Inc., where his responsibilities spanned four different divisions, including legal, government relations, business development and security. Prior to leaving Novell, in his role as senior vice-president and general counsel, Bradford reported directly to Eric Schmidt.
For some history, see this and also some background relating to SCO
How about this career change from Novell to the milk industry?
While the company retained some of its original staff, it ended up hiring most from scratch. Close says this was primarily because the current staff either did not have the requisite skill set — for example, they were Novell engineers, but Danone no longer had Novell in place — or were unwilling to relocate to New Hampshire. “We probably kept three or four people who decided to move up here,” he says. “The rest transitioned off in about a 12-month period.”
Partners
Novell’s partnership with SAP is far from news and Novell will attend its Middle East event.
Some of SAPSAPLoading…’s partners include global industry giants such as IBM, Siemens, Deloitte, WiPro, Novell, as well as regional IT firms such Al Bilad Arabia, Trust Technical Services, IHS, MindTree, MENA Systems, Report Edge, and IT Worx, ISS Consulting, ProCons-4IT, CIC, L&T Infotech, CCS IT Services, BizAps.
Novell has also had a close relationship with AMD and it was mentioned as a key partner in this report about the launch of the Shanghai processor.
He added that AMD Opteron processor represents the most dramatic performance and performance-per-watt increases for AMD products since the introduction of the world’s first x86 dual core processor by AMD nearly four years ago. AMD’s major technology partners include HP, Microsoft, Dell, Sun, IBM, Citrix and Novell.
Utah
Here is an historical story from Utah. It contains some of the familiar local superstars, including Novell. [via Groklaw]
Bastian was a young father and director of the BYU marching band when he took a computer science class from Ashton. Ashton became Bastian’s thesis adviser. Together, they drafted a precocious computer program with early pull-down menus and function keys tailored for personal computers. In 1978, they founded WordPerfect. Sixteen years later, they sold to Novell.
At the same time, Bastian’s marriage was coming apart. Things haven’t been the same between them since.
The following bizarre video showed up in YouTube last night. Novell is in it.
It’s kind of cheesy, is it not? █
