06.17.11
Mitch Lemons and Other Novellers Leave the Company
Attachmate squeezes the life out of Novell
Summary: Novell is suffering a second death as following its delisting from the S&P 500 index almost all the managers are leaving too
AT THE END of April the “Boycott Novell” community saw the end of Novell and then began tracking whoever was leaving (and where for). So far we have not found Novell staff (of a senior level at least) moving to Microsoft or to Apple for example. It sure seems like some of them have not found another company to work for yet. It seems like a lot of the PR staff got laid off and with the exception of ‘fluff’ about Vibe in some blogs, “Novelldemo” videos on Vibe are just about the only form of Novell marketing in YouTube. There are new exceptions, but they are few (just one in this case). Novell’s presence as a brand and as a company is very scarce. Here is another article about a Novell chief who left. He is being introduced by an old friend of sorts. The notable departure which we are seeing this month is of Mr. Lemons. To quote: “Formerly of Novell Corporation, Mr. Lemons has a strong reputation building, managing, and growing successful sales and business development teams that ultimately benefit customers and partners. “
More here. It does not add much, but it says that “Consonus has named Mitch Lemons, the founder of Piedmont Technology Group, to head its Sales division as vice president of Sales.”
“So far we have not found Novell staff (of a senior level at least) moving to Microsoft or to Apple for example.”Someone from Managed Objects (which Novell had acquired) also moved away and landed in Xirrus. We wrote about this before just as we wrote about other departures that continue to make the news (this one is about a Novell “Vice President of Engineering”).
Blueprint takes another executive from Novell and there is a connection to PlateSpin which Novell bought several years ago.
“Rich joins a seasoned management team with significant technical depth and breadth at Active Endpoints,” says this press release which also names “Chris Keller, Founder and Vice President, Product Development, has founded three technology companies, and held executive level development positions at Novell, GemLogic, Inc. (acquired Novell/SilverStream) and LexiBridge (acquired by Level3 Communications).”
Another new announcement reveals a CTO who “[p]rior to Del Monte [...] included time at IBM Global Services, Novell and as the interim CIO for the NHL”
Novell is like an historical company whose legacy in today’s news has something to do with people who once worked there. There is someone who seems to think that Novell (NOVL) is still listed [1, 2] but as mentioned in here, Novell is basically history as far as the stock market is concerned, not just the people who managed it. Techrights will continue to keep an eye on Novell for a while. Even the bankrupt SCO is still being tracked by Groklaw as the dodge from a heating continues. Will Attachmate confront SCO in court or be loyal to Microsoft?. █
