Summary: A news roundup of the Novell that crumbles rapidly, with evidence backing the claim

FROM the ashes of Novell came some talented people who are not obligated to serve Microsoft's vassal anymore.

One former Novell employee made the news for the following story that says:

Nufer, a laid-off employee at Novell, decided to add a competitive element to the puzzle with a game called Tangram Fury. Using two large triangles, one medium right triangle, two small right triangles, a square and a parallelogram, players race to recreate images from a deck of cards.

Twitter is now expanding in Europe and a first employee in Dublin has Novell background. To quote: "Twitter, which is locating its international operations in Dublin, has appointed Laurence O’Brien as financial controller for its EMEA operations, Siliconrepublic.com has learned. O’Brien previously worked for enterprise software player Novell and Dublin tech start-up Prime Carrier."

This was also covered here and here. The latter says:

Twitter, which is locating its international operations in Dublin, has appointed Laurence O’Brien as financial controller for its EMEA operations, Siliconrepublic.com has learned. O’Brien previously worked for enterprise software player Novell and Dublin tech start-up Prime Carrier.

Former executives from Novell also find themselves moving. One new example involves Michelle Duffy:

Ms Duffy has been successful in building strategic relationships with various channel partners prior to joining Acronis, working for companies such as Dimension Data, Citrix (through itX Group), M86 Security and Novell.

Another source says that "Disaster recovery and data protection provider Acronis has appointed experienced partner manager Michelle Duffy to the role of ANZ channels business development manager."

Another man who worked for Novell goes Savi (not savvy). "Before joining Novell, Juliano held senior executive positions with Symbol Technologies, IBM, and several global advertising agencies, including Ogilvy & Mather."

And the last one says about Nussbickel that: "He brings more than 10 years of finance leadership and C-level experience with him, having worked as (regional) CFO with various high-tech and software multinational enterprises, among them Oracle and SuSE Linux AG (today part of Novell)."

Novell is no more though. It is a historical entity. And finally: "Avaya's big bet on Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) technology will define its future, said Avaya President and CEO Kevin Kennedy, who on Tuesday argued that customer embrace of SIP in this decade is a story playing out much like how the growth of TCP/IP boxed out proprietary networking protocols like AppleTalk and Novell IPX in the 1990s. "

That is all the remains of Novell's glory.

Moving on to another example of moves away from Novell:

Bradford also has been senior vice president and general counsel of Novell Inc.

The general trend seems clear. Novell's executives were made redundant and even lower-level staff found other occupations. Novell's old products are generally being dropped in favour of products from Google, IBM, and Microsoft in the case of mail. Amid migrations we see this news about "Google is paying for the LAPD to keep using Novell Groupwise."

That won't last for long. Here is an example of more defections away from Groupwise or rejections of it. In the article "Students frustrated with new email" it says that "The committee entertained options from Gmail, Novell Canada, Lotus, and Landisk, but eventually decided to switch to Microsoft."

Novell is mentioned in Campus Technology in the following context:

The organization also added Novell's Compliance Management Platform, which includes a number of security products, including Novell Sentinel for security and event monitoring; and Identity Manager for user provisioning, password management, and access control. In April 2011 Novell was acquired by NetIQ, which now owns and operates the Compliance Management Platform as well as the Sentinel and Identity Manager product lines.

In another new article Novell gets mentioned for the following:

The first step was to replace its existing outdated e-mail system, Novell GroupWise, with Gmail. Handling the GroupWise licenses was a huge challenge; throughout much of the year, TIFF operates with a staff of about 250, but leading up to the festival it ramps up to 600 or 700 people. Also, many employees are mobile, so they required VPN access to check their e-mail.

It seems like proprietary lock-in keeps Groupwise alive for a while longer in some places. But how long will it last now that even this products leadership is in a shaky state?

The same goes for Novell's old network framework, which is being shaken much to Microsoft's delight:

8. Active Directory will continue to dominate, and the IAM framework market will see modest growth. Active Directory is the identity management platform of choice for enterprises, and Quest Software expects this dominance to increase slightly as some of the remaining users of Novell eDirectory shift to Active Directory. Given Active Directory’s market acceptance, Microsoft’s aggressive Enterprise Agreement sales and the TEC for Directory & Identity focus, it is not surprising that usage of Microsoft’s Forefront Identity Manager (FIM) easily exceeds the usage of competing IAM frameworks such as IBM Tivoli Identity Manager, Oracle Identity Manager, CA Identity Manager and Novell Identity Manager. Quest Software expects modest growth in both Microsoft and non-Microsoft framework categories over the next year.

Passiveness from Attachmate serves Microsoft well here and businesses develop around the urge to quit Novell (this one if a new press release). Here is the only exception that we found. It basically says that a Novell product gets increased support from a third party, but such news is rare. Many would be wise to assume that Novell is dead man walking. ⬆