Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: Mostly Videos, Kablink 2.0 Release, and Utah Event

Bryce Canyon



Summary: The rest of Novell's news (from two weeks)

THE past week has been slow and the company's staff has been mostly dormant, so let us start with a couple of new videos. Novell carries on posting instructional videos -- a practice it has been following for several months now. This first one is about ZENworks:





And another one:



Finance



The following person claims that Novell's debt is $121 million. Can this figure be confirmed?

To manage default risk, Kaufman sticks with solid companies that have a lot of cash on their balance sheets and are generating free cash flow. A favorite holding is a bond from software maker Novell(NOVL Quote). The company has $1 billion in cash and only $121 million in debt. "I am not interested in distressed debt," Kaufman says. "I am interested in getting double-digit yields from high-quality issuers."


Here is a nice recollection from one former Novell employee:

[O]ne of Red Hat's early investors was...Novell, an investment that made Novell over $100 million. That's foresight!


Novell's performance currently looks poor compared to Red Hat's.

The enterprise Linux maker revealed some stonkingly good quarterly figures last week, laughing in the face of the global downturn and making the Linux vendor that relies on Microsoft's trust fund money (Novell, in other words) look like a right old Charlie.


Novell suffered a bit of a blow some days ago.

NOVL Novell Inc. -6.49% 78% (18 of 23) 17


Older Days



Here is a new opinion piece that compares Novell to Leeds United. It is also mentioned here.

Novell would be Leeds United They used to be huge when I were a lad.


More memories of Novell in:

i. A Jacobian Value Search: Invert, Always Invert!

Screening the lower EV/Assets ratios results in a list of many fairly healthy software businesses with excellent balance sheets. I have posted at length on Novell Inc. and RealNetworks, but Microsoft and Cray Computer (a software business disguised as a hardware business) also look good to me in the longer run.


ii. WinInfo Short Takes: Week of July 13, 2009

"I just gave up," Schmidt said, while simultaneously forgetting about the OS beating Microsoft handed Novell when he ran that company.


Novell's NetWare gets labeled a "dying IT skill". It makes #2 in the list (among a total of 10).

2: Novell NetWare

Novell’s network operating system was the de facto standard for LANs in the 1990s, running on more than 70% of enterprise networks. But Novell failed to compete with the marketing might of Microsoft. Novell tried to put up a good fight by acquiring WordPerfect to compete with Windows Office, but that move failed to ignite the market, and Novell eventually sold WordPerfect to Corel in 1996. Novell certifications, such as Certified Novell Engineer, Master Certified Novell Engineer, Certified Novell Certified Directory Engineer, and Novell Administrator, were once hot in the industry. But now, they are featured in Foote Partners’ list of skills that decreased in value in 2008. Hiring managers want Windows Server and Linux skills instead.


Virtualisation



PlateSpin makes a rather rare appearance here.

PlateSpin’s partner program will be amalgamated into Novell’s channel structure from November 1 as part of efforts to bring the two organisations closer together.

PlateSpin channel manager Asia-Pacific, Mathew Donoghue, said the virtualisation management vendor had also recently struck distribution agreements with Novell’s Australian distribution partners, Express Data and Open Channel Solutions (OCS).


Novell also promotes this virtualisation video tutorial from Novell's Alan Murray.

Mail and Collaboration



Novell's Kablink 2.0 has been released, so its employees make some noise about it.

Kablink, the Novell-sponsored open source platform that provides collaboration tools that can be integrated into every business, today announced the availability of Kablink 2.0 with teaming functionality. With Kablink, users can integrate the most popular collaboration tools (blogs, wikis, forums, microblogs) into their infrastructure and harness the power of their knowledge workers under one standardized platform. Check out this video with Kablink Community manager, Brent McConnell, which discusses the evolution of enterprise collaboration and offers a first look at Kablink 2.0.


There is also this new video from Novell.

GroupWise gets rejected publicly.

The IT department and key members across the user community started evaluating the technology options. The selection team considered two options—one to consider alternate solutions such as Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise, etc., independent of existing technology stack in the company. Second, evaluate technology options from the cost and other benefits that can arise at the stack level. After thorough deliberations, the team ruled out Novell GroupWise as an option because of substantial investments in user and IT skills.


Here is an article about Gwava.

Canadian-based Novell GroupWise collaboration software security software provider Gwava has selected French enterprise search engine company Exalead's CloudView OEM Edition to enrich the search functions of the Gwava e-mail archiving platform.


There is also this new video tutorial for GroupWise 8.



More progress on Novell and E-mail is to be found in this updated page about Pegasus Mail 4.51.

Pegasus Mail is an e-mail client that interacts directly with the user, allowing mail to be sent, read, filed, printed and otherwise manipulated through a graphical interface. Small and fast, it can be left running permanently on the workstation and includes powerful tools to notify the user when new mail arrives. It can run on single Windows computers, or local area networks - it has special support for Novell NetWare LANs that allow it to operate intuitively and with almost no maintenance.


People



Jacqueline de Rojas quit Novell some months ago and according to this report she lands in McAfee -- the company some people speculated would merge with Novell.

McAfee has announced the appointment of Jacqueline de Rojas as vice president of UK and Ireland.

Joining from Novell where she was managing director for the UK and Ireland, de Rojas will report directly to David Quantrell, president, EMEA at McAfee, who was appointed in January this year.


Here is more reminiscing of the embarrassment Novell's Jeffrey Merkey has become.

This is not the first time Wales is said to have intervened with the content on Wikipedia's pages. In March of 2008, former Novell chief scientist Jeffrey Merkey accused Wales of extortion in a statement to the Associated Press.


The news about Calix got mentioned last month, but here it is again:

Robert Checketts has gained extensive experience in the past 25 years with successful start-ups and companies in the technology, telecommunications, and networking industry. He joins Calix from Juniper Networks where as director of Americas marketing he supported the full range of Juniper products across all markets. In addition, Checketts has held executive marketing positions at Cisco Systems, Yosemite Technologies, Lucent, Sun Microsystems, and Novell.


More Novell staff on the move:

He spent 11 years at Novell in a variety of Asia-Pacific roles.

Martin began his career in South Australia in 1983 with Abraxas Computers and then joined Canon Australia.

He moved to one of Canon's largest resellers, Q-Dos Computers, and was recruited to as state manager for WordPerfect in South Australia, moving to Novell when it acquired WordPerfect.


Old bits of wisdom from Noorda:

The Internet has provided a major shift in the way we work. Less than 20 years ago, there was a comment by Ray Noorda, the CEO of Novell - "If you don't have an e-mail address on your business card, you will be considered a nobody" and most people did not believe it.


Some more sightings of past Novellers:

Before joining InterSystems, Matz was president and CEO of Route Link for eight years, a leading systems integration and groupware development company that he founded and managed. Prior to founding Route Link, he was vice president of Mashov Computers, the exclusive Novell distributor in Israel, where he was responsible for Novell's Israeli operations. His background includes more than twenty years of technical, marketing and sales management experience in the IT industry.


Commercial Relationships



Here is Novell discussed as a competitor:

During the segment, Boroditsky discusses Passlogix’s continued success despite direct competition from large companies like IBM, CA and Novell. He attributes Passlogix’s growth, with nearly doubled revenues in the past two years, to the role strong customer service plays in swaying customers away from large companies.


Novell is also listed as a friend.

Concentric Managed Backup offers a comprehensive platform support which includes Novell, NetWare, Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM, AIX, IBM i and VMware, as well as application support including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, Cluster Services, Oracle, and other applications.


Lastly, Novell's relations with other companies are mentioned briefly in a few more places, but none of this is notable.

Marketing



Novell's account in YouTube has spewed out a lot of promotional videos such as this one of Matt Richard that Novell also promoted here. Other new examples include success stories. Probably a little older is the following addition.



Utah



Novell is quite important to Utah's profile and it has just hosted an event that produced a lot of coverage. There is a special award granted to top "young companies".

The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of its 2009 “Top 25 Under Five” Awards spotlighting outstanding Utah entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Award recipients were recognized today at ceremonies held at the Provo Novell Campus. InnoVentures Captial Partners and The Daily Herald sponsored the event. UVEF recognized ZAGG, Inc. (www.zagg.com), a designer, manufacturer and distributor of protective clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices, as the number one performer among Top 25 nominees.


More here:

ZAGG was recognized as number one among the 25 finalists for 2009 at ceremonies held at the Novell Provo Campus. Other companies in the top five were Imagine Learning, OrangeSoda, Allegiance, and Aribex.


SEO.com claimed bragging rights too.

Crowds gathered into the Novell building in Provo, Utah to celebrate and honor entrepreneurs and some of the state's top companies under five years old. In a bright contrast to the current economic struggle, optimism reigned here where companies were boasting both recent and future success.


Here is a video from the event (also identical here).



This is the summary/description:

PROVO, Utah July 9, 2008 The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of its 2009 Top 25 Under Five Awards spotlighting outstanding Utah entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Award recipients were recognized today at ceremonies held at the Provo Novell Campus. InnoVentures Captial Partners and The Daily Herald sponsored the event. UVEF recognized ZAGG, Inc. (www.zagg.com), a designer, manufacturer and distributer of protective clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices, as the number one performer among Top 25 nominees.


More Utah publicity for Novell can be found in:

i. Utah Job Skills & Digital Literacy Training Program Reaches Milestone

Skilled2Succeed provides the final link in the chain from job retraining to meaningful advancement in the workplace. Certified program graduates have been placed in professional positions at companies like DirectPointe, Coldwell Banker and Novell, among others. “Everyone pushes down, but Skilled2Succeed lifts us up,” stated budding artist and Skilled2Succeed graduate Dorothy Boyle.


ii. Utah's Nu Skin doing something right ... for 25 years

"It's funny because even here in our community, if you go back 20, 25 years, the stars of the local business environment would have been WordPerfect, would have been Novell, would have been Geneva Steel," CEO Truman Hunt said in an interview from his office in the striking building that seems to want to define downtown Provo.


And that's about all for now.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Hardly Seeing Slopfarms Today, Even in Google News
Google's adventures with slop increased its debt significantly
 
SLAPP Censorship - Part 30 Out of 200: The Time We Reported Abuse to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) and It Was Escalated to Its Cybercrime Unit
he started trolling and harassing me for criticising his employers' monopolistic and users-hostile agenda
'Modern' Cars Not a Rosy Industry
The current "modern" cars already have a shelf life similar to that of many toothpastes
Wrongthink Detector and Filter in "Think About the Children" Clothing
It is not about "age verification", it's a Trojan horse for social control
IBM Facilities Now Deemed Legitimate (Military) Target, Along With GAFAM Bases
Does IBM have any defences in place to protect against "downtime by explosions"?
What Happens When Some Large News Sites Turn to Slop and Spew Out Nonsense
LLM slop makes such grotesque mistakes abundant
Links 01/04/2026: Quantum Hype (Turing and Google), "US Fuel Prices Surge Past $4 a Gallon"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 01/04/2026: "Sacred Week of Cycling" and Zenity for Scripts
Links for the day
Losing Debian: Sruthi Chandran election flop
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
French judgment: parasitisme by FSFE & Matthias Kirschner (CO23.002709)
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Microsoft Uses April Fools to 'Joke' About Inserting "Age Verification" (Surveillance) Into Linux
MinceR says the "lkml [message/page] one is April Fools or at least they're trying to pass it off as April Fools [however] the [GitHub] one was archived on the 8th and yesterday, so that probably isn't..."
IBM "Headcount Reductions" by Early Retirement and Death
The tragedy at IBM started 33 years ago on the first of April
Red Hat: Latin-1 character set under threat from Bishop Michael Martin, North Carolina
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 01/04/2026: Microsoft GitHub Now Pushing Ads Into People's Code/Commits, Earth Overshoot Day Draws Nearer
Links for the day
What IBM and EPO Workers Have in Common: European Media Not Covering Very Major News (Press Became Dysfunctional)
Are IBM operatives working to scuttle the process of investigative journalism?
Free Speech in the United Kingdom When "Chilling Effect" is Increasingly Prevalent
If politicians cannot even use a term like "parasitic behaviour", then where do we as a society end up?
Oracle Lays Off Because of Debt and Commercial Issues, Not Slop
Like Scam Altman, Larry Ellison hangs around Cheeto King because he could use some bailouts in the form of government contracts or phony money with an incredible name like "Stargate"
The Real Reason Many Sites and Forums Shun Microsoft Lunduke
When forums say that they banned Microsoft Lunduke or don't want him mentioned it's probably because they are familiar with the "stench" that follows him around
Gemini Links 01/04/2026: Hallucinations, Stitching, and Type Systems
Links for the day
Lots of Layoffs at IBM, "Media Blackout" About Mass Layoffs at IBM's HashiCorp and Confluent Last Month
IBM is a dying company circling down the drain while manipulating or paying the media to pretend everything is fine
Microsoft Under Investigation by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) for Abusive Tactics
What's noteworthy is that this is "set to begin in May"
Sounds Like Red Hat (IBM) Layoffs in Slop Clothing
This is an IBM policy. They try to justify staff cuts.
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 31, 2026
In Time for April Fools (and Easter), 30,000 Oracle 'Pink Slips' While People Are Asleep
Oracle probably has no choice but to fire a ton of people
SLAPP Censorship - Part 29 Out of 200: Violent Language Won't Go Away When You Use It in Your Site, Blog, and Social Control Media
abuse began in 2012 because I had politely and accurately criticised Red Hat
Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Five Years on Gemini (Rob's Gemini Capsule), OFFLIFIRSOCH 2026, and More
Links for the day
Slopfarms Persist, But Google Seems to Have Delisted Many
We are still checking
Links 31/03/2026: More Energy Shortages Noted, Taylor Swift Faces Trademark Infringement Suit
Links for the day
Chaff, Slop and Spam Help Distract From Parallel Crises at IBM
IBM seems very eager to undermine discussion about what goes on inside
Lacking Business Model, Bluesky Has Become Slop and Gravitates Towards Plagiarism, Bots
LLM slop/plagiarism under the guise of "Artificial Intelligence" (AI)
IBM-Spawned Lexmark Sold, Then Came Mass Layoffs, Now the CEO Who Did This is Leaving
IBM is really not a magnet for talent at this point
Not April Fools But April First: Red Hat Staff Becoming "IBM"
claims of mass layoffs set to kick off at IBM some time soon
Gemini Links 31/03/2026: Antenna Packed Up, AuraGem and AuraSearch Maintenance
Links for the day
Links 31/03/2026: More Social Control Media Bans, BBC Now Run by GAFAM (US) Executive
Links for the day
'Broligarchs' Don't Want Science, They Want Entertainers to Entertain Them (and Make Them Richer)
Of course this will result in things getting worse in the sciences and everyone who relies on the sciences
When Republics Turn From Democratic Governments Into Imperialistic Dictatorships
What goes on in the US would require talking about politics
Companies That Have Nothing Except Buzzwords and Promises Will Perish
Dishonest media will perish along with the companies it is covering up for
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) to be Grilled in Two Weeks' Time by the British Government for "Recent Regulatory Failures"
we escalated to our politicians
GNU/Linux Will Thrive as Long as It's Modular, Not Monolithic
To IBM, it's all about money. Nothing else matters.
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part X - People Are Leaving
"I was happy to be at the EPO in the beginning, but since I realized it's all a big mafia"
IBM's 33 Years as a "Financial Engineering" (Accounting Tricks) Company
In relation to Red Hat, this "financial engineering" involves culling many workers and trying to replace them with slop
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, March 30, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, March 30, 2026
Links 31/03/2026: Rising Costs, Cyberattacks, Novo Patent Expiry
Links for the day
Gemini Links 31/03/2026: American Spring, Distributed Systems Simulator, and Calculus for Electronics
Links for the day
SUEPO Central Made a Strike (or Striking) Success
Europe has more than enough qualified patent officials
IBM Layoffs and Their Expected Scope in April 2026
Such layoffs impact not only IBM "proper"
SLAPP Censorship - Part 28 Out of 200: Facing Consequences for Impersonation and Worse
It's not "funny". It is moreover libellous.
Links 30/03/2026: South Korea Next to Curb Social Control Media Addiction and Manipulation, Notorious Patents in the US Challenged
Links for the day
Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Going Back to Wrist Watches and Why LLMs in Programming Suck
Links for the day
Did IBM Pay thestreet.com for Puff Pieces? (Like It Did With Forbes)
If so, there is no disclosure
Wikipedia - Funded by Slop-pushing Companies and 'Broligarchs' - Gave Benefit of the Doubt to Slop, Then Regretted It
Wikipedia sucks. Without slop it'll suck a little less.
Payoffs of Lifelong Commitments
"The Lifelong Activist"
Links 30/03/2026: "We Can’t Income-Tax Ultra-Elites"; "The Pirate Bay’s Oldest Torrent Turned 22"
Links for the day
Today, Europe's Second-Largest Institution (EPO) Goes on Strike That Can Last Until 2027. Nobody in the Media Covers This!
"We stand with the protesters"
When the Cost (or Time) of Maintenance Exceeds the Value
In recent years it seems like more people learn to remove things from their lives, not add more things
Passage of Wealth Upwards, Blaming the Victims
Tim Sweeney's net worth is 5.1 billion USD according to Forbes
More Media Needs to Tell the Public Slop is a Giant Bubble, It Should Stop Taking "Sponsorship" Money to Inflate This Bubble
If enough of (what's left of) the media changes its tune and quits being a parrot of GAFAM, then we can debate slop like grown-ups
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, March 29, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, March 29, 2026
Trying to Hide One's Abuses by Imposing Silence on Critics ("My Profile Was Private")
With enough daylight, sooner or later everyone knows you are a vampire
Fedora Badges System Shows the Demise of Fedora Under IBM
IBM isn't good at keeping what it buys
IBM is Sunsetting Red Hat, It Only Uses the Brand and the Shell
IBM buys or spins off companies as containers for "toxic assets" and debt
Cisco Systems is a Still Weak Spot With Bug Doors
nothing to offer except storytelling
EPO Strike Begins Today and It's the Longest One Yet (Can Last a Year)
Where's the media?
Gemini Links 30/03/2026: Approaching April and Arvelie Calendar
Links for the day