Summary: A relatively quiet couple of weeks summarised densely in a single post

THIS is an overview of Novell developments from the past two weeks, primarily those which involve proprietary software. Here is a new video about Novell's iFolder and also a press release about ZENworks [1, 2], which is proprietary software that Novell produces "case studies" about.

But, that’s not all, RBF has also implemented other Novell solutions from ZENworks to SUSE Linux Enterprise to help the company reduce costs and complexity in their IT environment.

Here is a little something about eDirectory support from another new press release.

This new functionality adds to DSS' already existing two-way password synchronization for Novell eDirectory. Now passwords can be changed on either platform, using any tool, and then be synchronized to other applications and platforms.

Where is Novell's Free software promotion? Mono and Moonlight?

Pulse

Pulse is still in beta and it strives to work properly with Wave

According to Novell, the Pulse enterprise social-networking as well as collaboration suite is ready for beta testing.

The Forrester blog mentioned the role of Novell's "imminent sale":

Similarly, Novell could seek to integrate OpenOffice with Pulse and Google Wave, but has other potential distractions with its imminent sale. Oracle isn’t offering much detail on its plans for OpenOffice.org, but I expect to hear news by midyear. Oracle has committed to making the first industry OpenOffice solution available on the web, desktop, and mobile though has offered no time lines. This would be a giant step forward if it delivers on this promise.

The code bases for Lotus, Novell, and Oracle/Sun are also slated to synch this year, which will help provide more unity between the OpenOffice versions, though there’s still division since IBM’s version is Eclipse-based.

So, if IBM, Novell, and Oracle can successfully integrate OpenOffice into their collaboration and content management solutions, OpenOffice could see sunny days ahead as it becomes blended with the Information Workplace experience of these vendors.

Finance

Looking at Novell's shares, nothing exciting has happened, but here is all the financial coverage that we found:

● Market Sentiment Stays Below 30 Day Moving Average

For individual stocks, our weekly winners included Vertex Pharmaceuticals (VRTX) and Sonic Corp (SONC), while the stocks dropping most in sentiment included Proctor & Gamble (PG) and Novell (NOVL).

● March's Best Mid Cap Stocks

Novell (Nasdaq:NOVL) was up 26% in March, and made the list of best-performing stocks the old fashioned way as the company received an unsolicited buyout offer from Elliott Associates LP. Elliott Associates LP offered $5.75 per share for Novell, a price the company rejected. The stock price has since been bid up higher to around $6.07, indicating the market thinks a higher offer might be coming.

● Tech Stocks up With Wider market (AAPL, PALM, NOK, MSFT, NOVL)

Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOVL) also gained 0.35% to $5.88 on low volume.

● Novell (NOVL) Trading Down Today Despite catching Broker Upgrade

● Phoenix Technologies is Among the Companies in the Systems Software Industry With the Lowest Return on Equity (PTEC, SYMC, N, NOVL, DMAN)

Phoenix Technologies (NASDAQ:PTEC) ranks first with the worst ROE of -136.9%; Symantec (NASDAQ:SYMC) ranks second with an ROE of -90.2%; and NetSuite (NYSE:N) ranks third with an ROE of -21.8%. Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) follows with an ROE of -21% and DemandTec (NASDAQ:DMAN) rounds out the bottom five with an ROE of -20.8%. SmarTrend is bullish on shares of NOVL and our subscribers were alerted to Buy on January 06, 2010 at $4.53. The stock has risen 30% since the alert was issued.

● Smallest Short Interest in the Systems Software Industry Detected in Shares of Novell (NOVL, CA, MSFT, MFE, ORCL)

Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) has a short interest ratio of 0.3 and average daily volume of 13 million shares, which implies that approximately 4.5 million shares are short. That equates to 1.3% of the 348.3 million shares outstanding.

The Novell-targeted SEC investigations are mentioned here. Novell is also mentioned in this video which has just appeared in/arrived at YouTube.

Netware

An analogy involving NetWare is brought up in relation to IBM and OS/2:

Grafting services atop Linux has precedent. Novell essentially did the same thing with NetWare, layering its services atop SUSE Linux in Open Enterprise Server a few years back.

NetWare is also mentioned in this new press release.

Mail

GWAVA has issued many press releases that mention Novell [1, 2, 3]. GWAVA complements Novell's GroupWise, which is apparently dying. GroupWise is mentioned in the following new press release:

Seventh Edition offers more efficient, robust indexing of a customers' entire company network, and expands email management capabilities beyond Microsoft Office Outlook to include Novell Groupwise, Google Gmail, Lotus Notes and Domino Server, and other email platforms employing IMAP-compatible servers. In addition, Seventh Edition incorporates numerous customer-requested enhancements that make the software easier to use and administer.

Memories of the Los Angeles defeat:

In an e-mail migration from Novell’s GroupWise to Google cloud file servers, the city of Los Angeles was able to sidestep the cost of GroupWise and Microsoft Office licenses.

More about Los Angeles:

Novell's messaging and collaboration platform, GroupWise, has been having a rough go of late. The technology has fallen behind the competition, and recent news indicates that Novell's biggest customer base, government, may be looking to other solutions -- like the city of Los Angeles, which abandoned GroupWise in favor of Google Apps (PDF). Poor mobile support, particularly for popular devices like the iPhone has no doubt been a contributing factor. Government in particular has lots of mobile employees -- case workers, inspectors, and the like -- making high-quality mobile support a necessity.

And yet more:

In Brooking Institution's just-released "Saving Money Through Cloud Computing" report, author Darrell West pulls information from a variety of sources that reveal major cost savings in a handful of examples: 24% when the city of Los Angeles moved from Novell's GroupWise applications to Google's cloud apps; 40% when Carlsbad, Calif., chose Microsoft Exchange Online over GroupWise; and 75% when Miami, Fl., tapped Microsoft's Azure cloud for the city's 311 service.

It's related to this one too.

Google maintains that Apps, built from the ground up with a cloud computing architecture, is a better, less expensive alternative to traditional communication and collaboration platforms from vendors like Microsoft, IBM and Novell designed to be installed on customers' premises and servers.

However, Microsoft, IBM, Novell and other collaboration vendors are busy retooling their software to take advantage of the cloud computing model.

Microsoft is not necessarily gaining in the "E-mails wars"; Google is a promising new contender.

Identity Management

In a new guest post, Novell's PR team makes its case as follows:

In recent years, organizations have begun turning to identity management systems to help them address this compliance complexity. As a result upwards of 85% of new identity and access management deployments are, according to Sally Hudson of IDC, driven by compliance.

As usual, they appeal to authority by citing corruptible "analysts" who will say whatever they are paid to say (once they find/manufacture a way to support/justify a predefined hypothesis).

Security

The "SUSE Security Summary Report" was posted online and Novell uses (capitalises on) Dalai Lama intrusions to market its own products. Typical Novell marketing.

Terry’s primary focus at Novell is analyzing systems and network vulnerabilities. He then helps our customers deploy Novell security solutions that uniquely integrate real-time security event monitoring and log management capabilities with identity and access management technologies. With strong identity and security policies and solutions in place, organizations can leverage user activity monitoring to catch nefarious behavior and cyber attacks before it’s too late.

People

A Novell veteran finds himself in HP marketing.

HP today announced it has appointed David J. Shirk as senior vice president of Worldwide Marketing, HP Enterprise Business.

[...]

He also held several leadership positions at Vignette, Novell and Oracle.

Here is an article about it:

Shirk most recently worked as executive vice president of global marketing and communications at Siemens. He previously held positions at UGS, Vignette, Novell and Oracle.

Stephen Pollack, the founder of PlateSpin whom we last mentioned here (one year after he had quit Novell), is going to work alongside someone from a Microsoft-filled firm called Ignition Partners, based on this new press release.

Additionally, industry veteran Stephen Pollack has joined VM6 Software's board of directors, along with Richard Fade from Ignition Partners and Jean-David Begin from RBC Venture Partners.

[...]

Pollack is a seasoned entrepreneur and industry expert with more than 25 years of experience in the high-technology market. His most recent success started in 2003 with the founding of PlateSpin Ltd., a recognized industry leader in the virtualization market, which was purchased by Novell.

Paul Kangro from Novell participated in this public debate where he was a "No" team member:

NO Team members: Paul Kangro, CTO Asia Pacific, Novell; Murugappan Ramanathan, head, IT department organizational development, MDeC; Ahmad Tifli bin Dato Mohd Talha, senior general manager, group strategy and ICT, Scomi Group; Bobby Varanasi, COP, Chairman and CEO of Matryzel Consulting.

Partners

Novell is still paying Sys-Con to become a 'Bronze Sponsor'. They must be paying them to earn a seat and thus affect the content.

I'm happy to announce that I will helping kick off the new CloudChasers Radio Show sponsored by Novell this Thursday April 8 @ 1:30pm (Eastern).

Novell will also give a keynote speech at Interop Las Vegas 2010.

Here is a little factoid about Novell's relationship with PAN Communications:

The firm's internal client growth is due in part to the growing demand for social media services, such as digital branding platforms (the latest example being the creation of Novell's portal); in addition, client Schakra grew its program by adding the corporate entity to PAN's work for its consumer product (GoGoStat.com). The firm has also experienced program budget increases, and has welcomed back "boomerang" clients after experiencing a trying economic period.

Novell is named as a hardware partner in the Intel-AMD "core war" (x86) and the Xen partnership can be inferred from quotes of Novell-employed folk, included in this new press release. More information can be found in this article and other press outlets from the UK [1, 2]:

VMware, Salesforce.com to team up on cloud computing: News in brief

[...]

A new version of the Xen open source hypervisor that underlies virtualization offerings from Oracle Corp., Novell Inc., and Citrix Systems Inc., is now available for download.

On the expanded partnership Novell will have with VMware (through inheritance):

Rabbit Technologies, which claims to offer a more reliable messaging system than competitors, with good throughput and latency, already had partnerships with VMware, Microsoft, Novell and several other vendors.

Novell is listed as a partner of MeeGo and is mentioned in some other press releases [1, 2, 3] merely at the bottom.

Marketing

“Get a Mac” ads are said to be over and Novell receives an honorary mention for the spoofs it made.

Novell “Get a Mac” Spoof #2

Ah, the joys of open source software! This parody ad, one of three created by Novell, touts the benefits of Linux distros: They’re free, and you can change them up any time you like.

Novell explains hashing in Twitter because of the need to increase its presence there. Novell's CMO, who also has channel responsibilities, published a couple of posts [1, 2] which he titled "Top 10 Rules for a Channel Playbook".

Here is Novell promoting Intel and promoting IBM (or vice versa) in some new videos that show Novell's shifting focus.

Utah

Is Novell's Provo campus being vacated? Because... well, based on this report, another company is settling down there.

Wavetronix LLC has moved its headquarters from Lindon to the Novell campus in Provo.

Here are some new videos from BrainShare 2010 [1, 2, 3, 4]. It was very probably the last one ever. ⬆