Summary: Potential reason or consequence of Novell's management exodus and restructuring process

THE very recent departure of Nat Friedman has led Heise (or "The H") to thinking about last month's Novell turmoil, which left Novell resliced. Friedman was Novell's Chief Technology and Strategy Officer for Open Source and maybe he knows something secret about things to come (Levy and Jaffe are also leaving).

About 6 months ago, Novell pondered selling parts of the company, according to published reports. We mentioned these in:

• More on Novell's Willingness to Sell
• Former Noveller: Novell Should Sell in Parts
• Further Signs That Novell Will Sell in Parts, Stock Rebounds

Now that Novell gets restructured, it might as well be separated into parts that can be rationally sold without conflicts (like Sun and MySQL conflicting with Oracle's database business). This is just a guess, but assuming that Novell has not changed its mind and is still looking at similar options, Novell might no longer stay in one piece this year. Microsoft needn't buy all of Novell, for example.

CIO UK opined just earlier this month that Novell will be sold, with a prediction that this will happen in 6 months. ⬆