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Red Hat's Market Cap Tops $7 Billion Today, Novell Only at $2 Billion

Red Hat vs Novell



Summary: Novell is getting smaller and smaller while Red Hat expands, partly at Novell's expense

ONE difference between Novell and Red Hat is that Novell is up for sale, Red Hat is not. Red Hat is now worth more -- not almost -- 3.5 times the worth of Novell, despite the fact that Novell sells a lot of proprietary software, even in Fog Computing (unlike Red Hat). To state the figure we see at this moment, Red Hat's stock is at $37.19, which puts its market cap at just over $7 billion (compared to Novell's mere $2 billion). See recent financial coverage [1, 2] and belated coverage about the poor results from Novell.



“Novell's value will most likely continue to erode as it waits longer and sits tight while its proprietary legacy dies.”Novell's latest proprietary software promotion and Fog Computing nonsense (also proprietary in Novell's case) shows reluctance to change. The PR team is foolishly urging Novell customers to lose control of business data, not just program data. Are they bound to be so dangerously gullible?

Google announced the freeing of Wave last week [1, 2] and Novell promotes this only in the context of proprietary software, namely GroupWise.

The 'Microsoft press' and Gartner are advertising Microsoft Exchange/Outlook at IBM's and Novell's (GroupWise) expense. How nice. How utterly dishonest. GroupWise support gets promoted in some other contexts [1, 2].

Novell's value will most likely continue to erode as it waits longer and sits tight while its proprietary legacy dies. Novell may be sold shortly. According to this new press release, former staff of Novell came through an acquisition, but Novell has not made any acquisitions for a very long time. In fact, it looks at being acquired.

As vice president for EMEA, he actively contributed to a successful IPO and impressive revenue growth before its acquisition by Novell /quotes/comstock/15*!novl/quotes/nls/novl (NOVL 5.81, -0.03, -0.51%) in 2002.


Novell's days are numbered, its legacy will stay. It probably won't be long before Red Hat can just afford to buy Novell without it hurting the wallet (not that Red Hat should do this, instead it should diffuse its patents urgently).

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