Summary: The days of Windows as “legacy software” are approaching, just as the days of desktops and laptops as the main (or most sold) computer type are ending

Microsoft’s and Novell’s marriage is a marriage between a pair that shares common problems. Microsoft and Novell both have debt and both companies shrink over time (layoffs included). Novell’s likely layoffs after the AttachMSFT deal is done (there is this new article about debt featuring a project manager at Novell) is a subject we will address at a later stage/post, but for the time being, the main question is about patents and CPTN. That’s where a lot of damage can be done, which is why Microsoft boosters lobby for FTC approval.

Novell used to be a company that matters, at least back in its NetWare era. There is this new article which goes back in time and speaks about the subject. It says:

When talking about disappointment, Novell merits special consideration. Once thought to be a legitimate competitor to Microsoft in network operating systems with their Netware Enterprise products, they are now left wondering what could have been. Through their own ineptitude, they allowed rivals (some smaller and bigger) to eat away at their market share until they saw no other option but to leave the market entirely. It remains sad to analyze their progression into technology obscurity.

Microsoft has a similar problem these days. Those that take up market share are UNIX and Linux, especially in emerging form factors. Assuming that “PC” is synonymous with “desktop”, mind the new article titled “PC Market Weakness is Bad News for Microsoft” (From Nasdaq.com Community):

Microsoft’s ( MSFT ) business is highly dependent on PC sales as Windows OS and Microsoft Office for PCs respectively account for about 40% and 36% of our $31.64 price estimate for Microsoft stock .

This is a serious factor because the remainder of the cash cows (mostly one) depends on Windows as a common carrier. Windows sales already decline, for several consecutive quarters even.

“The attitude in Redmond seems to be one straight out of the ’90s, maybe even the ’80s…”
      –Lee PenderOne trend we’ve noticed is, a lot of journalists stop covering Microsoft, which matters not so much anymore. Lee Pender, a Microsoft fan from their Redmond ‘press’, is also sensing a moment of weakness and in his column “Microsoft Isn’t Worth Waiting for Anymore” he cites another Microsoft booster and says: “What’s stunning, though — and this is really Mary Jo’s point — is that Microsoft doesn’t seem to care. The attitude in Redmond seems to be one straight out of the ’90s, maybe even the ’80s: “Hey, we’ll get to these new markets when we get to them, and when we do we’ll clean everybody’s clock. This is Windows versus OS2 all over again.”

“Hey, Microsoft: Not anymore. You’re slow and bloated, and your competitors have no reason to fear you anymore. Heed Mary Jo’s word — she probably knows more about your company than you do, after all.”

Microsoft’s relevance these days has little to do with technology or even marketing; it is to do with litigation — a subject we’ll tackle as a matter of priority here in Techrights. It’s not about “cheap shots”, it’s about addressing a serious subject. █

Summary: No buyer is found for SCO’s software assets (at least not just yet) and Novell keeps exploring more acquisition options

THERE has not been much news regarding the Novell sale and the SCO asset sale [1, 2, 3, 4]. What we do know, however, is that a buyer has not been found by SCO yet (there are speculations) and SCO is not reorganising just yet.

Finally, SCO filed its MORs for July. Is anybody noticing they don’t seem to be reorganizing?

Scott Ruecker wrote this nice summary last week and it seems like a good fit:

It seems that the SCO trial has finally come to an end but even in the settling of the dust the lawyers can’t stop filing motions. The Oracle-Sun deal looks to be the next long term big story in FOSS I believe. The possible implications for FOSS with Oracle now owning one of the most extensive technology patent portfolios outside of IBM mean that there are more exciting times ahead, if that is what you want to call it.

All the while Microsoft still puts out tasty pieces of FUD every so often and I have come to find it reassuring in its consistency.

That’s the part which Novell helped initiate. It backfired and Novell is left in the street. It is now being claimed that Novell has trouble selling just SUSE because it would leave the rest somewhat orphaned. As one site put it, “The trouble is Netware and other legacy properties that made Novell a force to be reckoned with in the days before Microsoft taught Windows how to network. It appears that Novell doesn’t want to sell SUSE unless Netware and identity management divisions are included in the deal at a premium price. Or else, they don’t want to sell SUSE unless they sell Netware first, at a premium price. Either way, they evidently want a lot of bucks for Netware. More that anyone seems to be willing to pay.” This is also covered in [1, 2, 3] and as Pogson puts it:

From my point of view, Suse Linux will be sold with or without the other baggage (except the identity stuff which will be important for a while) but the dealing and the price eventually agreed will indicate the value some serious players give in their assessment of the future of GNU/Linux. There is no need to buy Suse unless you figure they have a foot in the door and you want to ride it when the door opens.

As people who depend on Novell wait and watch Novell’s next steps [1, 2, 3], most Novell news is financial news about Novell’s sharp movements in the stock market [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23].

At the end of last week it was reported that “Novell shares fall on report of auction delay” and “Novell Falls Nearly 7%”. As Novell sales fall, the longer it waits, the less valuable it will be. UNIX needs to receive a trustworthy new steward like IBM. █

Summary: The unfortunate effects of Windows replacing some of NetWare’s functionality

Novell is a company in decline and its old servers are being replaced, sometimes by Microsoft’s. Watch the new YouTube video whose description is “Novell Server AMSP03 was finally phased out, and ready for PowerDown.”

The sad thing is that if Microsoft inherits some of Novell’s space, then security will be made a lot worse over time. It is claimed that one in two Windows PCs are already zombie PCs and the size of botnets sure is astounding based on the latest news. [via]

US, Spanish and Slovenian law enforcement authorities on Wednesday announced the arrest of the suspected creator of the “Mariposa Botnet,” a vast network of virus-infected computers used by criminal hackers.

The suspect, a 23-year-old Slovenian citizen identified only as “Iserdo,” was arrested by Slovenian police last week, the FBI, the Slovenian Criminal Police and the Spanish Guardia Civil said in a joint statement.

[...]

The FBI said the arrests were the result of a two-year joint investigation into the Mariposa Botnet, which may have infected as many as eight million to 12 million computers around the world.

That would be “eight million to 12 million” Windows computers in just a single botnet. They ought to call out Windows. █

Summary: Google and Microsoft eat Novell’s lunch and nobody is offering to buy Novell despite its implicit invitation

HAVING taken a quick glimpse at this week’s news, there are many examples showing Novell’s demise, starting with this observation that Novell loses to Google, which is headed by Novell’s former CEO.

One compelling story is that of how the City of Los Angeles, is converting to Google Apps from its internally hosted Novell GroupWise platform.

There are also new examples of Novell being dumped for Microsoft, its so-called ‘partner’.

i. Fayetteville-Perry School District finalizes cuts

In other recent business, the board:

• approved conversion from Novell to Microsoft Network software to be completed during the summer at a cost of $7,045.78. Novell will no longer be supported and all other school districts have either switched over already, or are in the process of changing over. Of the total cost, $4,500 will be taken from the district Permanent Improvement Fund for a new file server to run the software. The remaining cost will be taken from the general fund.

ii. London borough builds IT around flexible working

Significant changes to existing software will see an operating system refresh from Windows XP to Vista, as well as a move away from Novell Network and GroupWise to Microsoft Outlook and Exchange.

A new article about ZTE uses Novell as a textbook example of losing an installed base very rapidly and without chance of reversal.

The fact that no hack even mentioned Symbian to ZTE was extremely telling. It is reminiscent of the days when Novell had a huge installed base of network servers while the developer community had quietly switched its allegiance to Microsoft.

[...]

At present, this seems a bridge that ZTE will cross later.But Nokia must act fast if it is to avoid becoming the Novell of the handset sector.

Most people who observe Novell expect no Renaissance. Novell is already up for sale and the first Novell takeover attempt is mentioned again here. Novell sponsors a CIO meeting in Sri Lanka, but it seems like a lost cause for both sides. As we showed in the previous post, Research and Markets says that “The future of Novell, and therefore of the SUSE Linux distribution, is uncertain.” Sadly for Novell, no company seems interested in buying it, just a hedge fund (vulture). █

Related posts:

• Novell May be Going Private, Hedge Fund Has Cash
• Analyst Expects Microsoft Bid to Buy Novell
• Ron Hovsepian Receives Another Large Lump of Cash as Novell Sale Looms
• GNU/Linux-Savvy Writers View Elliot Associates as Bad Neighbourhood
• Firm Behind Novell Bid Has Shady Past, Could be Tied to Microsoft (Paul E. Singer’s ‘Vulture Fund’)
• Simon Phipps: “Seems Even With Microsoft’s Support Novell Couldn’t Cut It”
• Vulture Fund Still the Only Bidder for Novell
• Paul Singer Still Goes After Novell
• With Novell up for Sale, Novell Products Become Too Risky to Buy

Summary: Novell’s proprietary software under the magnifying glass

Pulse

Novell’s Pulse has received a lot of attention upon its debut as a beta [1, 2, 3]. Pulse seems to be proprietary (there is no official word that we can find) and apart from some older coverage that we missed [1, 2], there is this introduction to new users.

IDG has tossed around its old article about Pulse in many of its sites and there are also newer articles from IDG that mention Pulse along the way.

Second, traditional software applications vendors such as Salesforce.com, Spiceworks, Novell, and others are “socializing” their applications and providing mechanisms to enable discussions, chat and so forth while performing the usual tasks of accounting, network management or whatnot.

SAP, long one of the most successful makers of business software, is moving into a new market competing against collaboration tools such as Google Wave, Novell Pulse, and Microsoft SharePoint.

ZENworks, NetWare, and Fog Computing

New “white papers” (professional adverts) and vulnerabilities aside [1, 2], Novell has some real news for Windows users.

Novell has announced availability of a new ZENworks Configuration Management virtual appliance. In addition, Novell announced ZENworks enhancements to help customers migrate to Windows7. Additionally, Novell announced a technology preview of ZENworks 11, which integrates endpoint security into a single console with systems management, said the statement.

A Microsoft-oriented Web site writes about Novell in Fog Computing (“Novell Moves Into Management Of Cloud, Virtual Computing Environments”) and it links to this CRN report which mentions ZENworks too.

Executing on its strategy to provide workload management tools for virtualization and cloud computing, Novell (NSDQ:NOVL) at its BrainShare conference this week unveiled an addition to its line of ZENworks configuration toolset and gave conference attendees a peek at an upcoming release of the vendor’s Identity Manager software.

More here.

Novell is offering Novell Cloud Security Service (NCSS), a Web-based identity and access management solution for cloud service providers in India. NCSS will allow SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS providers to offer their enterprise customers the ability to deploy their existing identity infrastructure in the cloud.

John Donovan from Novell speaks to the press in this IDG report about Fog Computing.

Novell quotes are also contained in this new article about virtual appliances:

These benefits mean virtual appliances are generating plenty of interest, and Novell’s Wiley says the company “is seeing incredible demand for its virtual appliance builder tools.”

Novell’s Tom Cecere will speak at SYS-CON’s Novell-sponsored event about ‘clouds’ (unless it’s another event that Novell no longer pays to participate in).

Novell continues to trade high because of expectation that it will be sold.

Mail

GroupWise can be seen in the following new video:

Here is the ‘Microsoft press’ writing about the loss of Novell and Microsoft to Google (Office and GroupWise dumped).

Identity Management

The following new press release (also here) reveals a new relationship between idOnDemand and Novell.

idOnDemand, a security organization dedicated to providing a highly secure single identity for access to enterprise resources anywhere, and Novell™ team up to deliver a solution combining PIV smartcards and single sign-on. This partnership enables customers to use a single PIV smartcard to protect their legacy username and password systems.

Here is a news article about it.

A new partnership between idOnDemand and Novell produces a PIV smart card and single sign-on solution for secure login systems. Customers utilizing the product will be able to access to all their security barriers with the use of a single PIV smart card.

The Higgins Project is also being mentioned with Novell’s role in it.

Formerly known as Parity Communications Inc., Wellesley, Mass.-based Azigo was founded in 2003 by Paul Trevithick, former co-founder of the Higgins Project, an open-source online identification framework used by IBM Corp., Google Inc. and Novell Inc.

People

Here is Ron Hovsepian coming under the magnifying glass of IDG:

Ron Hovsepian’s total compensation fell 17% in 2009, amid declining annual revenue and a wider net loss.

A Novell veteran has come to itControl where he is now SVP. From The VAR Guy:

David Toms recently joined itControl Solutions as senior VP of global sales and marketing. A veteran of Novell and other high-tech ventures, Toms first worked with itControl Solutions CEO Sheldon Waters more than 25 years ago.

Also from The VAR Guy:

The backstory: Back in the 1980’s I needed personnel to become certified in Novell, Microsoft and Citrix.

Novell has many former employees who spread to other companies. Here is another new article about Heystee, who recently left Novell.

Susan Heystee has been charged with expanding Telogis’ international presence as the company’s new executive vp of worldwide sales. She joins Telogis after serving on Novell’s vp & gm of global strategic alliances.

Here is something a little more humane. The following new video is described as “James, Rick, and I think Jace… are smoking near the ventilation system for the kitchen at Novell. Heather dislikes that smoke that goes through so we splash James with water!”

Is this Novell the software company? They seem to have a lot of water problems recently.

Partners

This new press release tells the story of Connectotel and Novell BorderManager:

Connectotel, a provider of leading filtering solutions for Novell BorderManager, today welcomed the announcement of the successor to the Novell BorderManager proxy product.

The SuperLumin proxy provides Novell customers with a SuSE Linux-based, high-performance proxy cache and can be purchased via Novell sales and account teams worldwide. BorderManager continues to be supported by Novell through to March 2012, giving customers time to move to the new platform.

John Dragoon, Novell’s CMO (chief marketing officer), can be seen in this article from CRN and other new sightings of Novell partners can be found in:

1. Uptime NetManagement Delivers Powerful Technology Solutions to K-12 Schools

Uptime NetManagement, a certified Novell Gold Solutions Partner and Novell Gold Training Partner, has extensive experience providing technology solutions, customized training, and consulting services for the K-12 technology environment.

2. Intel Xeon 7500 chips aim for flawless performance

Skaugen also stressed that these features will be supported by software vendors, including Microsoft, Red Hat, Novell, SAP and SUSE, as well as by 12 original equipment manufacturers.

3. First Platinum Novell Training Centre in Central and Eastern Europe

Krakow, Poland, April 02, 2010 –(PR.com)– Compendium Education Center has been awarded with the status of a “Novell Training Services Partner – Platinum level.”

There are a few other companies that openly state their relationship with Novell in their press releases [1, 2] and the recent Ingres collaboration [1, 2] received a special mention in this article about BrainShare and Ingres.

Tyler McGraw, technical account manager at Ingres, will speak next week at the Novell BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah and introduce the recently announced, SUSE Studio Appliance Template for Ingres Database.

To clarify, “Boycott Novell” is not being phased out, it’s just becoming a sort of sub-project as our scope has obviously expanded. That’s about all for now. Holidays abound! █

THIS week was mostly about BrainShare 2010 and Bob Sutor turns out to have given a talk at BrainShare.

On Tuesday morning, March 23, at 10:30 in Salt Lake City, Jean Staten Healy and I will be presenting a talk called “Linux as a Catalyst for a Smarter Planet” at Novell’s BrainShare conference. The talk is coded as SPR201 and will be in room 150 G.

Here are Microsoft boosters belittling Novell in their Windows fan sites which pretend to be news sites. It’s about AD’s birthday.

Pulse

Novell finally issued this press release about the beta version of Pulse.

Novell said it will make Pulse, its enterprise social networking tool, available for beta testing this week.

Apart from the word from Novell (PR message), several other Web sites have covered it [1, 2, 3, 4] and there is also a promotional video.

The following new video is in Russian and the Pulse segment starts almost 4 minutes from the start.

People who attended BrainShare got an account.

At the annual Novell Brainshare user’s conference this week, Novell announced it was providing attendees with a Novell Pulse account and five invitations, which they can use to bring colleagues on board. Pulse is a cloud-based collaboration platform, which we first covered last year in a One on one interview with Ken Muir of Novell.

How does that compare to Google’s Wave? CMSWire decided to ponder and question the viability of this entirely new paradigm that resembles others.

Perhaps Google Wave would’ve gotten more attention if the initial focus was on the enterprise rather than the consumer. Here to test that theory is Novell and their new Wave-like platform called Novell Pulse. It’s social, you can chat with it and collaborate on documents with colleagues, but its focus is on the business side of things.

SAP and Microsoft develop proprietary equivalents and the following post mentions Pulse along with Microsoft.

For on premises, Microsoft promotes Office Communications Server. The next release, slated for sometime in 2010, is filled with social media capabilities. The effort reminds me a bit of Novell Pulse, a corporate social media and collaboration platform that Novell will soon promote to hosting providers.

Here is an audio interview with Ken Muir from Novell, who speaks about the same subject at IDG.

Keith Shaw talks with Ken Muir from Novell about ways IT can help improve real-time collaboration efforts.

More audio from the same site can be found here and it’s about Novell’s fate (affecting the stock). This link from IDG UK lead to an article which was mentioned before.

SCO

The SCO case is long and complex. It would be easy to resolve (dismiss), but SCO gets money to carry on with the smears, which mostly repeat themselves over and over again. Groklaw is the main site that covers this case and some of the latest articles are:

• Week 2, Day 10 of SCO v. Novell – Chris Stone, O’Gara, Maciaszek, Nagle

• APA’s “Included Assets” Did Not List SVR4.2 – Research Project

• SCO vs. Linux: The jury has been informed

The second week in the Salt Lake City jury trial between the SCO Group and Novell about the copyright to Unix has uncovered further surprising details of this never-ending story. First, SCO’s former CEO Darl McBride, who was called as a witness, confirmed that SCO didn’t need the debated copyrights for the development of its family of operating systems, and that the copyrights were only required for the licensing business of the vendor’s SCOSource division. Then the previously unaware jury members were informed that a judge had already delivered a ruling in this matter, but that his decision had been overturned. The trial will go into its third week while, at the same time, Novell’s Brainshare conference will be held in Salt Lake City.

• SCO looks to make a comeback (also in here)

Dogged by ongoing legal costs and courtroom setbacks, the company was forced to declare bankruptcy in 2007. Throughout the bankruptcy process, SCO has said that it would continue to appeal the cases against IBM, Novell and others.

• For the Lawyers, It Was a Working Weekend

• Week 3, Day 11 SCO v. Novell – SCO Rests after Tibbitts, Novell Begins with LaSala

• Novell Motion to Strike Damages Testimony After June 9, 2004 & Reply to Objections to Braham Testimony

• Week 3, Day 12 in SCO v. Novell – Tolonen, Amadia

• The Parties Tweak the Jury Instructions in SCO v. Novell

• Week 3, Day 13 in SCO v. Novell – Jones, Messman, DeFazio, Braham – Updated

Today at the SCO v. Novell trial, Novell called Gregory Jones, and then SCO called Jack Messman as a hostile witness. His deposition was played in part earlier, but this was Mr. Messman testifying live. Then the Michael DeFazio deposition video was played. And then Novell called Tor Braham. Only two more days, and then it goes to the jury.

• Novell Files Motion for Judgment and Motion to Strike – Denied – Updated as text

Novell has filed two motions today, one for a judgment on SCO’s slander of title claim — the promised Rule 50(a) motion — and one to strike testimony inconsistent with the unambiguous contract language.

Novell points out that the only evidence SCO presented regarding malice is testimony by Maureen O’Gara of a conversation with Chris Stone, and no one corroborates her story, first of all, and second, O’Gara admitted she can’t recall exactly what was said in the conversation with Chris Stone. She merely surmised things. And that’s not clear and convincing evidence. No reasonable jury could find personal malice in the picture, so Novell says as a matter of law, judgment should be granted as a matter of law on SCO’s claim for punitive damages.

• SCO, Novell suit goes to jury

The contract between Novell and Santa Cruz contained ambiguous language about the sale of copyrights that is at the center of the dispute being aired before the jury.

• Week 3, Day 14 SCO v. Novell Trial – Braham, Bradford, Musika, and Judge: ‘the End is Nigh’

• Novell Moves for Judgment on Slander; SCO Moves to Limit Closing Argument

NetWare

“Novell drops NetWare support,” says this report which is complemented by another that says: “Novell drops NetWare support: What do millions of users do?”

Novell has announced that general support for NetWare (on physical machines) will end this month. This includes Open Enterprise Server and Open Enterprise Server 2 on NetWare.

Novell has announced that general support for NetWare (on physical machines) will end this month. This includes Open Enterprise Server and Open Enterprise Server 2 on NetWare. Novell, however, is providing extended support for these users through March 2012. Customers continue to receive general support for NetWare 6.5 running as a virtualized operating system under Xen on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). In addition, customers that migrate their NetWare systems to Open Enterprise Server 2 on SLES continue to receive general support. NetWare services include iPrint, iFolder, directory services via eDirectory, and more.

Novell’s cash cows are dying. What’s next then? A sale of the company?

Virtualisation

Is Novell ditching Xen? It seems possible.

The news caused many pundits to proclaim that Novell was taking its first steps toward abandoning Xen altogether. This would be especially odd, since it was only in February that Novell and Citrix announced that they were partnering on virtualization, an extension of a year-od partnership between the two for Xen. The news in February was that Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server was certified as a “Perfect Guest” running on Citrix XenServer and both companies will provide joint technical support to customers.

There are some new potential contradictions and from the ‘Microsoft media’ at 1105 Media we learn about special/preferential treatment for Novell. Is Novell moving to KVM? Perhaps only partially at the expense of other options?

With the announcement of the upcoming summer release of Service Pack 1 (SP1), Novell will officially support the KVM virtualisation solution in version 11 of its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES). Support for the Kernel-based Virtual Machine was already included as a “technology preview” in SLES 11, however, with SP1, Novell will offer official support for guest systems including SLES 9 to 11, Windows Server 2003 and 2008, XP and Vista, as well as Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 and 5.

Novell’s own hype around intelligent workload management (IWM) carries on:

Novell is so confident of the market for intelligent workload management that it is restructuring its business around the technology. But what exactly does it do and why is it needed?

In December 2009, Novell announced a restructure of its business to facilitate its belief that intelligent workload management (IWM) will play a major role in its future.

IWM might be an unfamiliar term in the world of virtual enterprise management, but Novell believes it is a technology that will help to allay fears about the security of cloud
computing operations.

This is a new product without any success stories that Novell publishes.

Mail

Novell’s GroupWise is being promoted by Novell staff and supported by third parties such as ZyLAB:

Information access technology provider ZyLab (news, site) has just upgraded its email management software so that client companies will be able to archive directly from Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.

GroupWise support is not exclusive in this case.

Here is the press release from MessageSolution which still supports GroupWise (migration) and also a migration away from GroupWise.

Lincoln Property Company, a real estate management firm based in Dallas, Texas, has about 4,000 employees scattered throughout the U.S. CIO Jay Kinney just moved almost 1,000 of them to Google Apps, ditching Novell GroupWise in the process. Kinney said he ran the numbers and Google came out ahead. His users are already spread far and wide, so managing the system remotely was a natural fit.

There is more information about it here.

Here is a new video about mail and Novell.

Management

Based on the recent press release, the following item was issued.

Callidus Software, a provider of sales performance management solutions, has announced that Novell, a provider of infrastructure software solutions, has implemented Callidus Monaco’s objective management solution to develop and manage its management by objectives or MBO programs.

Novell’s PR people have published many guest posts about identity management [1, 2, 3] and later on we’ll show new video commercials.

Security

Apart from a couple of SUSE items [1, 2] there was nothing to see here really.

People & Partners

Masahiro Morimoto, with historical Novell ties, becomes a vice president at Webroot.

Webroot, a leading Internet security provider for the consumer, enterprise and SMB markets, today announced it has appointed Masahiro Morimoto to the new role of vice president, Asia-Japan.

[...]

Morimoto has also established and managed subsidiary operations of several major software companies, including Digital Research (acquired by Novell in 1991), Sony Microsystems (a division of Sony America) and Xerox. In addition, as vice president of Novell, Morimoto developed the company’s system technology for non-conventional Novell business environments including the retail, office-automation market and production-automation markets.

Here are some Novell partners that can be seen as worthy of a mention, at least based on Novell.

Mainline – Data Center specialized partner
Paragon Development Systems – End-User Computing specialized partner
Deloitte – Identity and Security specialized partner
Agilysys – Rising Star partner
Infosys – Rising Star partner

Infosys is an interesting one because of its very strong ties with Microsoft [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15].

Another new/advanced partner is Compendium Education Center.

Compendium Education Center has been awarded with the status of a „Novell Training Services Partner – Platinum level”.

Mainline also receives honours (to be found here too).

As a leading IBM Premier Business Partner, and the largest System z partner, Mainline has helped more than 150 System z customers install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell, creating customized virtualization and workload management solutions.

Novell gets mentioned in relation to Mercury Solutions a couple of times [1, 2]. Nothing fascinating or significant here.

Marketing

To coincide with BrainShare, Novell’s own staff has released many advertisements that we put here in no particular order.

Novell Identity Manager Man – Skydive

• Novell Identity Manager Man: Night Club

• Thats Intelligent: Geek vs Geek – Dance Club

• Thats Intelligent: Geek vs Geek – Robot Wars

Novell has also made available some more case studies for proprietary software and a bit of SUSE [1, 2, 3, 4]. That’s all for now. █

Summary: Updates from the news regarding what seems like Novell’s imminent sale

SINGER’S BID to buy Novell is a subject that we’ve covered in:

1. Novell May be Going Private, Hedge Fund Has Cash
2. Analyst Expects Microsoft Bid to Buy Novell
3. Ron Hovsepian Receives Another Large Lump of Cash as Novell Sale Looms
4. GNU/Linux-Savvy Writers View Elliot Associates as Bad Neighbourhood
5. Firm Behind Novell Bid Has Shady Past, Could be Tied to Microsoft (Paul E. Singer’s ‘Vulture Fund’)
6. Simon Phipps: “Seems Even With Microsoft’s Support Novell Couldn’t Cut It”

Nobody is through covering what will be a saga running for several months to come. Dana Blankenhorn writes about Microsoft’s stake in this:

In all the talk about New York financier Paul Singer’s plan to go all Gordon Gecko on Novell, one word has not been mentioned nearly enough.

Microsoft.

Microsoft needs a viable Novell, and Novell’s Linux business was on the verge of becoming viable when Singer’s Elliott Associates swooped in with an offer to break up the company, seize its cash, split off the old NetWare business, and auction off Suse Linux.

I doubt Microsoft wants to actually buy that business. Owning a Linux would be a real complication. Suddenly all those patent cross-licenses that claim Microsoft has patent rights to the software take on a different odor, and Microsoft is forced to go down the SCO road to prove its claims.

Microsoft has been doing well against Linux through bluff. What the Elliott move does is threaten to make Microsoft show its hand.

Even the due diligence process could threaten Microsoft. Singer is going to get a look inside that 2006 agreement.

Microsoft’s friend Rob Enderle [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], who shilled for SCO and cursed its opposition for profit, says that “Another SCO Moment [is] Coming” (because of Novell). Given his proximity to Ballmer, maybe this is how Microsoft views it too. Novell has UNIX and it has many software patents. The ‘Microsoft press’ covered it too and one Microsoft booster over there says that these are “Exciting times in Waltham.”

Redmond too? One might suggest that on the one hand, Microsoft would benefit from having less competition in networking (except the fact that Novell may sell this bunch of assets). On the other hand, argues Peter Judge:

Why Microsoft Can’t Afford To Let Novell Die

[...]

Make no mistake – The hedge fund offer for Novell could effectively mean the end of the company. And Microsoft could suffer the worst, says Peter Judge

[...]

But Microsoft has staked any open source credibility that it has, on Novell’s SUSE distribution. If Novell falls to bits, then Microsoft’s efforts to gain open source cred pretty much disappear with it. It’s something that would have been impossible to imagine a few years back, but if we’re looking for someone to prop Novell up, Microsoft would now be a prime candidate.

Of course, given the hostility within the open source community towards Microsoft, Novell and the deal between them, as well as to Codeplex and other open source moves by Microsoft, there would be big questions about how commercially viable Novell would be within Microsoft. But Redmond would be looking at this as an essential purchase for credibility, not a profit centre.

Whoever makes a “White Knight” bid for Novell is going to have to move fast, because talent there is going to leave if it looks like the company will be broken up. And even if the Elliot deal goes through, there is still the possibility of deals behind the scenes, points out Updegrove. For instance, Elliot might agree to instantly sell on parts of Novell to a differnet player – say an IBM, a Microsoft or an Oracle – as soon as it seals a purchase for the whole company.

The Elliot bid is on the table and there is no going back. Novell, as we know it is going to end – and at this stage, we simply don’t know what will replace it.

Novell has been Microsoft’s credibility for patent extortion too. This is why this Web site exists. Other issues include Mono and Moonlight.

Scott M. Fulton, a Windows-oriented writer, argues that the “$1 billion takeover bid may mean the end of Novell’s makeover addiction”.

Sam Dean wrote about this bid and later he added:

Elliott Associates is more likely to flip divisions of Novell to interested buyers than it is to oversee a long-term strategy for the company as it stands. Novell’s Linux business is most likely to be flipped first. At that point, companies ranging from Oracle, to VMware to IBM could be buyers, but smaller players could be too.

Finally he says that:

Elliott Associates will almost certainly carve Novell up, and it won’t be a surprise to see a big, household name in the software industry inherit Novell’s core assets.

Here are some thoughts about other companies that may bid for Novell.

Though Elliott insists that isn’t its strategy, another buyer could result in a nice payday for Elliott, which began buying up Novell stock only in early January.

A rival buyer would guarantee at least $75 million in profit for Elliott’s 8.5% stake — not bad for two month’s work.

So who are the most likely suspects? IBM tops the list. The company is probably the biggest proponent of open-source software out there, such as Novell’s Suse Linux, which holds about a third of the Linux server operating system market, the rest held by Red Hat Inc.

“IBM could use its own Linux distro and x64 hypervisor as well as the systems management and identity management tools that Novell has taken possession of over the years,” opined The Register, “and it knows how to ride down a legacy software business like NetWare.”

An IBM-Novell merger has been suggested before. “Red Hat’s dominance leaves IBM almost entirely dependent upon SuSe/Novell,” wrote Sun Microsystems Inc.’s then-COO Jonathan Schwartz in 2004. “Whoever owns Novell controls the OS on which IBM’s future depends.”

There are interesting comments in Linux Today and in LWN. Sam Varghese wrote about the role of the Microsoft deal.

Novell has had a hard time making profits ever since its NetWare product was knocked off the pedestal it occupied in the ’80s and early 1990s. In November 2006, the company signed a patent-licensing deal with Microsoft but has yet to show substantial gains from the deal.

Varghese later explained why these may be the last days of Novell as we know it.

As the former editor of Linux Today, the erudite Brian Profitt, points out, Elliott, like quite a good many other hedge funds, behaves like a vulture. It buys companies, dismembers them and sells them for a profit.

There will be no emotion where Elliott is concerned; the fund even purchased debt in a poor country like Costa Rica when it was possible to make a few million there, Profitt writes. In this respect, Elliott appears to follow in the grand tradition of asset management companies like the legendary Kohlberg, Kravis and Roberts.

Free software and open source types may agonise over a sale, since one of the better known GNU/Linux distributions, SUSE Linux, is one of the main assets that Novell still possesses.

But Elliott can probably only see dollar signs when it looks at Novell and if the commercial SUSE distribution suffers as a result, I doubt that there would be any tears shed.

“Unlikely to Go Through”

The bid in its current form is “unlikely to go through”, according to someone whom Forbes quotes.

Broadpoint AmTech analyst Bradley G. Whitt agreed that Elliot’s bid as it stands is unlikely to go through. He thinks the bid could trigger a sense of urgency among other large software companies that might have interest in some of Novell’s assets but cautioned that Novell’s broad product suite would make it hard to pinpoint any one software player that might be interested in an all-out acquisition. A more likely scenario would be Elliot, or whichever firm wins the acquisition, breaking up Novell and selling the pieces to various other players.

A bidding war is still expected by investors, but no company has stepped up yet.

There’s a storm brewing over Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL). The Linux specialist got an unsolicited buyout bid from a private equity firm — but investors seem to expect a bidding war.

“Long Overdue”

The takeover bid is “long overdue”, writes someone in the New York Times.

A Novell buyout is long overdue. The software maker’s shares have languished for 20 years, yet it generates healthy profit and has no debt. Moreover, a big chunk of the company’s $1 billion of cash is trapped overseas. Elliott Associates’ $2 billion bid could draw out other suitors that have dawdled.

Novell’s legacy enterprise networking business is a slowly shrinking cash cow. Clients are locked into paying highly profitable maintenance fees. The company should bring in about $300 million of revenue from this business this year, with roughly half of it flowing through as operating profit, according to analysts. Moreover, this business doesn’t require much capital expenditure.

[...]

Another attraction for some buyers is Novell’s overseas cash pile. The company can’t repatriate these funds without taking a tax hit. It could use the cash for international acquisitions. But with many of its rivals in the same position, attractive targets are hard to find.

To quote more from the New York Times (blogs):

Another attraction for some buyers is Novell’s overseas cash pile, according to Breakingviews. The company can’t repatriate these funds without taking a tax hit. It could use the cash for international acquisitions. But with many of its rivals in the same position, attractive targets are hard to find, it notes.

Here is an incorrect headline which suggests that more bidders have already emerged (another one repeats Reuters’ mistake of suggesting it’s final).

Under Investigation

The investigation we mentioned the other day has more than just the initial coverage right now [1, 2]. Here again is the press release [1, 2, 3].

Kendall Law Group announced that it has launched an investigation into Novell Inc. in connection with the proposed acquisition by Elliott Associates, L.P. The firm is concerned that the Board of Directors of the Company may breach their fiduciary duties by failing to seek other deals to better represent the value of the company if they agree to this proposal.

As we noted before, Singer has had it planned all along based on the dates.

Elliott began acquiring Novell stock on Jan. 4 and controls about 8.5 percent of the company.

The vulture fund probably waited for the results to come and made the bid just a few days afterwards. Here is new financial analysis of Novell [1, 2].

Institutional shareholders of Novell provided feedback on a range of issues, including capital structure, strategy, corporate governance and executive compensation. Participants responded to 20 specific questions, providing direct company assessments and detailed commentary.

A timely presentation too:

– “Are You in Control of Your Sales Expenses?” — executive workshop presentation by Jim Parker, director of global finance at Novell.

For completeness, here is some additional Novell news which is more about money than technical issues relating to the bid [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. “Novell Soars After Elliott Makes $2 Billion Offer,” says Bloomberg. They seem to have a deal with BusinessWeek (article sharing/aggregation) and HedgeFund.net says: “Novell, according to Elliott, has “meaningfully underperformed.” The company had manufactured its Netware operating system with considerable success until Microsoft, the software giant fueled by the ambition of its founder Bill Gates, began gobbling up marketshare with its Windows NT platform. Novell has also undergone a lot of management turnover. Current Google Chief Executive Officer Eric Schmidt used to head the company. But Novell is still considered valuable, in large part because of its Linux business.”

“The value, net of cash, is roughly $1 billion in enterprise value,” says another source (because Novell has cash too).

Other market news that mentions the effect on Novell’s stock can be found in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25]. Here is the coverage from Zacks (also here) and a video that covers the news.

More from the news:

And finally:

It could take weeks or months before Novell’s vocation is known. The uncertainties are unhelpful to business. █

Summary: As indicated in the title, this is a collection of many news items spanning many subjects

NOVELL’S biggest news this time around is its financial report, but we will cover that separately. Here are some news clippings about Novell’s proprietary (or otherwise non-SUSE) side of business.

Pulse

Novell keeps talking about Pulse, but there isn’t anything substantial to be seen yet. Brainshare 2010 is apparently just a month away and the Var Guy mentioned it along with Pulse:

When Novell Brainshare 2010 kicks off March 21 in Salt Lake City, the company will put several initiatives in the spotlight. Among the top two priorities. Promoting Novell Pulse (a real-time communication and social messaging platform for enterprises) and promoting SUSE Linux software partners.

Here is a whole new article about Pulse:

I had the opportunity to spend some time with the Novell Pulse team and take a deep look at their new social software solution. Announced during the e2.0 conference in San Francisco last Fall, Pulse is being positioned as a real-time enterprise collaboration platform. Novel, no stranger to the traditional collaboration space, just may have something unique and compelling in Pulse.

e-Directory

There is nothing exciting to see here, but Novell’s e-Directory was mentioned in the following new press releases and articles:

i. DeskAlerts releases new desktop alert software version

The new desktop alert software version now supports Novell directory service, eDirectory. With this new feature, DeskAlerts becomes a truly multinetwork desktop alert solution, able to send alerts to technologically and geographically diverse networks.

ii. Active Directory: 10 years old and thinking cloud

Directory technology had already been mastered by Novell and Banyan, along with others such as Sun. Still, Microsoft charged out of the gate with the intent of taking the industry by storm. And it succeeded. Today, Active Directory runs in more than 90% of the world’s 2,000 biggest companies, while the rest of the market picks up the leftovers.

iii. How to configure LDAP to boost application security

Microsoft Active Directory provides an LDAP interface to Windows-specific user data, and both Active Directory and its lighter cousin, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM), are used by applications as primary data stores for user information. Other options for user directory services include the OpenLDAP project, and enterprise software, such as IBM Lotus Domino and Novell e-Directory, are often extended through the use of LDAP.

iv. DeskAlerts releases new desktop alert software version

The new desktop alert software version now supports Novell directory service, eDirectory. With this new feature, DeskAlerts becomes a truly multinetwork desktop alert solution, able to send alerts to technologically and geographically diverse networks.

Netware

According to this new press release (also found in here), Arkeia has some new offering with which to complement Novell.

New Novell OES 2 and NetWare Agents for Novell GroupWise, eDirectory, and iFolder

More coverage can be found here.

Data backup and recovery briefs: Arkeia Software introduces Arkeia Network Backup version 8.2

[...]

And with the Novell agents, the SMS interface can perform hot backups of Novell file systems and applications as well as forward and backward compatibility for data backup and recovery operations on Novell platforms.

There are few other news pages that allude to Netware, which is declining rapidly.

Zenworks

We’ve found quite a bit of coverage about it over the past two weeks:

• Novell’s Zenworks powers admin staff at Olympic HQ

The Vancouver convention centre, which is currently hosting thousands of Olympic reporters from around the world, is using Novell’s Zenworks Configuration Management on its administration network

• Rolling Out Windows 7

We also invited Novell for its ZenWorks product, but our publishing schedule didn’t allow enough time to get the software into our labs.

• NHS Bromley gets ‘Zen’ control

NHS Bromley has taken remote control of more than 800 PCs in its GP practices, using an IT solution from Novell.

• EHI’s industry round-up 25.02.10

Novell extends £6m NHS deal

Novell has announced it has extended its £6m NHS deal to provide IT security, infrastructure software and collaboration solutions in order to support the government’s cloud computing programme. The deal is for Novell’s Intelligent Workload Management solutions including ZENworks Configuration Management, Patch Management and SecureLogin and Teaming+Conferencing.

• Dell Buys Systems Management Specialist Kace

Kace products’ main system management rivals are Altiris, LANDesk, Novell ZENWorks and Microsoft SMS.

Legal

Groklaw has gathered a good collection of old articles about the SCO saga:

Of course, there was Groklaw, methodically answering SCO’s FUD on a daily basis, beginning in mid-May of 2003. But as you’ll see, the reaction to SCO was already formed, prior to Groklaw saying anything at all. Also, prior to Novell’s statement, which it made on May 28. It was immediate, it was negative, and it was international and across the board.

Then came a large number of posts about the latest from the SCO case:

It’s a plot, I tell you! The parties in SCO v. Novell are trying to cause me to lose my beauty sleep. Before I can finish doing the text of one filing, they file 25 more. Literally. They have filed between them 25 memoranda in opposition to the others’ motions in limine.

There is a lot more of that in:

1. More darts – SCO’s opposition to Daubert hearings and to Chatlos, Michels testimony
2. Judge Stewart Denies Novell Motion in Limine No. 7 – Updated 3Xs – More Orders Put SCO in a Real Pickle
3. SCO & Novell’s Motions in Limine and Daubert Motions – A Chart
4. Proposed Voir Dire Questions from Novell and SCO
5. Santa Cruz Listed Novell as Owning the Copyrights in 1999
6. Novell Moves Another Piece Forward: Files Request for Judicial Notice – Updated 2Xs
7. Reports from the Final PreTrial Hearing: SCO v. Novell – Updated- Minutes, Pretrial Order

Virtualisation

Early in the week we wrote about the Xen/KVM situation Novell is in after a deal with Citrix, a company about the same size as Novell.

Novell’s Ian Bruce wrote about the subject and also referred to the proprietary option, VMware.

For those who missed the news, here is a short summary:

Novell SUSE is Citrix XenServer “Perfect Guest”
Novell and Citrix announced this week that Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) has been certified as a “Perfect Guest” running on Citrix XenServer, with optimized performance and joint support for mutual customers. Citrix also signed on to Novell’s PlateSpin Recon for Assessment Program, so Citrix Solution Advisers (CSAs) can use the PlateSpin Recon workload planning tool to accelerate server consolidation and virtualization projects.

Also see [1, 2, 3] and this Reuters report which came out shortly after the press release (making it one of the first ones).

Xen’s Simon Crosby wrote about it and so did The Register, which chose an interesting headline (the author previously suggested a merger of the two companies):

Novell flirts with Citrix

[...]

As it turns out, Novell is going to embrace KVM inside of SUSE Linux side-by-side with Xen. KVM was rolled into SUSE Linux 11 on both desktops and servers last March as a technology preview, a status it has held since that time. But Applebaum confirmed to El Reg that with Service Pack 1 for SUSE Linux 11, KVM will get official and full support running embedded inside of that Linux distro.

Novell has not divulged the date when SUSE Linux 11 SP1 might ship, but the company tends to do updates every 12 to 15 months. That puts it at somewhere between March and June of this year, which is roughly the time we expect to see Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 6, which will put KVM in the forefront and which will not run on Itanium machines, as we previously reported.

And from another source:

Citrix Systems and Novell this week said they will collaborate on interoperability and assessment tools to reduce the costs and complexity of managing multiple virtual servers running on both Linux and Windows operating systems.

“Novell would be wise to support Xen and KVM,” says Paula Rooney. She has been writing about Xen for quite some time (although not so often).

Mail

There is nothing important to see here, except for Groupware support showing up in all sorts of articles, such as:

• CSC lays its cloud cards on the table

“The transition from an enterprise suite like Novell Groupware or Lotus Notes [to the cloud] is not trivial,” he said.

• RIM Touts New, “Free” BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) Express for SMBs

• RIM unveils free BlackBerry server

• RIM debuts free BlackBerry Enterprise Server for small businesses

• RIM to Roll out BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express

• Real-world Exchange Server 2007 migrations

Of those 550 respondents, 16.4% migrated from assorted non-Microsoft platforms including numerous versions of Lotus Notes, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise, Linux Postfix, Mirapoint products, Alt-N Technologies MDaemon and Ipswitch IMail Server. This minority of converts to Exchange Server 2007 also included several respondents that had previously used hosted email services.

• How Chatter May Win the Enterprise 2.0 Game (Maybe Even CRM)

The implications of this? Chatter becomes a core architectural component of organizations that adopt it, replacing (with simple and faster programming, and more powerful integration) Microsoft Sharepoint, IBM Notes, and (I feel nice today) even Novell Groupwise.

• RIM to Roll out BlackBerry Enterprise Server Express

• How to Set up an Email account on a BlackBerry Mobile Phone

• CompanionLink Announces Desktop Synchronization With Motorola DEVOUR

• Google Gains Momentum with Apps

Groupwise is generally losing clients, quite often to Microsoft and Google.

Security

New security issues have cropped up:

• Subject: [security-announce] SUSE Security Summary Report: SUSE-SR:2010:004

• ncpfs ‘ncpmount’ / ‘ncpumount’ Race Condition Security Issues

• Novell NetStorage Unspecified Code Execution Vulnerability

• Novell eDirectory eMBox SOAP Request Vulnerability

Here is something about Novell compatibility in an antivirus program. The following couple of press releases/articles also mention Novell in relation to security:

• CA Threat Manager For Linux Earns Virus Bulletin’s VB100 Award

CA, Inc. (Nasdaq: CA) today announced that its CA Threat Manager 8.1 for SUSE® Linux® has earned Virus Bulletin’s VB100 award. Virus Bulletin is one of the leading specialist publications in the field of viruses and related malware and is renowned for its independent comparative testing of anti-virus products and its VB100 testing.

• Small Software Security Firms Hack Into Market

Companies like Symantec(SYMC Quote), Check Point Software(CHKP Quote), McAfee(MFE Quote), Novell(NOVL Quote) and Sourcefire(FIRE Quote) stand to be beneficiaries of the growth in this market as consumers and businesses begin to see the desperate need to protect their systems against attack. Not all are attractive investments.

Carmi Levy at Processor.com is approaching Novell’s Richard Whitehead, as usual (for another quote).

“The common misunderstanding is that you ‘move’ to a virtualized environment,” says Richard Whitehead, Novell’s director of marketing for data center solutions (www.novell.com). “The reality is that virtualization is part of your IT infrastructure. You need to think intelligently about your data center across physical, virtual, and cloud. One of the largest oversights is in the management of virtualization, including security. Take time now to create a strategy, track the results, and ensure you are virtualizing for business reasons.”

People

Here is further coverage of Ron Hovsepian’s decision to change staff — a decision that we wrote about earlier this month.

Earlier this week IT Business Edge contributor Don Tennant wrote a post in which he suggested that IT industry groups such as TechAmerica should offer centralized training programs that would help folks gain the IT skills desired by employers. Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian once told Tennant he’d had to replace a quarter of Novell’s work force to obtain the skills he felt necessary to drive the company forward.

Why couldn’t Hovsepian retrain existing employees? He told Tennant:

… The cycle time is the biggest issue. The brutality of the pressure the company has to operate under in 90 days is what drives us.

The following personal profile contains the bit about Novell buying WordPerfect:

It was exactly 15 years ago that Alan Ashton made every other male on the face of the Earth look like a chump by comparison.

[...]

In 1994, they sold WordPerfect to Novell for $600 million.

The Advisory Board of Viewfinity is expanded, but watch who comes to the table:

Systems management icon Greg Butterfield, former CEO and Chairman of Altiris, is renowned for his business achievements that include the growth and mergers/acquisitions of WordPerfect to Novell…

There are other new examples of appointments that include former Novell staff (mostly executives). For example:

• Fidelis Security Systems Hires Gary Benedetti to Lead Worldwide Sales

Mr. Benedetti was most recently VP of Worldwide Sales for Epok, the industry leader in SharePoint security and SharePoint extranet solutions. Previously, he was VP of Sales for e-Security, prior to its acquisition by Novell where he was instrumental in the company’s growth and a key member of the management team throughout the sale of e-Security to Novell, remaining with Novell as the VP of Audit Solutions. Prior sales leadership experience includes serving as VP of Strategic Business Solutions for AOL, VP of Sales for the Eastern region at Netscape, and VP of Sales at Interactive Media, as well as senior sales positions with AimTech and Oracle.

• DPI appoints Butler to spearhead technical support service

Having started his career in technical sales support at Centerprise in 1990, Butler formulated firm knowledge of computer and network technologies, becoming a certified engineer on Novell, Microsoft, Cisco and Compaq systems.

• MEGA Appoints New Executive for International Expansion

Fort has worked with enterprise software companies for more than 25 years. He has held positions in sales, business development, and management at Oracle, Novell and Bull, and has consulted on business development, alliances, and marketing with leading software vendors.

• The new, green land rush

Post-retirement malaise first pushed Kraig Higginson, an early investor in computer networking company Novell, towards saving the planet

Then there is this reference to Ray Noorda in the Indian press (also here):

All too often, such situations arise in business. There’s nothing good or bad, right or wrong about these. It is just the way things happen. Start-ups are no exception. Many years ago, Ray Noorda, the legendary founder of Novell, had popularised the word ‘co-petition’ implying that in business, cooperation and competition could go hand in hand. Indeed, there are umpteen such examples in automobiles, consumer goods and technology.

The “co-opetition” term is repeated in the ‘Microsoft press’:

Certainly, for Microsoft partners, this also raises some questions since most also carry gear from Cisco, HP or both. What’s your take on the implications of Cisco and HP going separate ways? Will we indeed see others follow suit? Among other things, could this lead Microsoft to rethink its strategy of working closer with the likes of Novell, Red Hat and Zend? Could co-opetition as we know it be on the line here, or is this just a case of Cisco playing hardball?

Partners

There is not much to see here except the Citrix relationship which was mentioned earlier. However, Novell was mentioned in some press coverage of other companies and their press releases too. We found examples in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16]. Will Novell receive some CODiE honours this year?

Last year, Salesforce.com, Adobe and Novell were the recipients of multiple awards. This year, the cloud makes its appearance in a couple of new categories and there are many familiar — and some newer — names aiming for the biggest awards.

Novell also maintains good relationships with Utah and it offers room to this conference:

The conference includes presentations by and collaboration among BYU engineering students, international scientists and researchers. The event is sponsored by Novell, the Technology Center at Novell, and Sustainable Energy Solutions.

So, in summary, the main news is probably to do with Citrix. The rest is very minor. █

Summary: News touching on Novell’s non-Free/libre component of the business

THIS is the third part which covers Novell news from the first two weeks of February. This part covers Novell’s proprietary side, of which there is a lot (Novell is predominantly a closed-source company). What we happen to have found along the way this week is that Novell is not just a company that makes jewelry; there is yet another company called Novell Pharmaceutical Laboratories. Here is what we gather from the press release:

Company Report is a private Company Report that provides up to date insight into the structure and operations of privately-held pharmaceutical, biotechnology and biomedical companies.

Well, Novell is many other things. There are at least two more companies with the name Novell and it is also a surname (often mentioned in the case of murder, martial arts, and basketball).

Anyway, let’s move on to the news.

Novell’s CMO John Dragoon asks himself whether Twitter is the next CB Radio. With new products like Pulse, Novell is trying to ride tomorrow’s wave, so far without success. Here is a fairly new article which covers Wave and mentions Novell.

Since then the firm’s wonks have been working on extension ideas for the tool, and reminding anyone that might want to listen that the likes of Novell and Salesforce.com have also been happily toying with it.

Here is another news article that recalls Novell’s affair with Lotus. This contains religious elements for some reason:

Novell wanted to take over Lotus but the deal fell through in New York City when the Lotus atheists had a wee bit too much to drink and the Mormon Novell folk pulled the plug on the deal. Lotus was always going to be the kind of company IBM – originally a Quaker company – would buy.

“Mormon Novell folk,” eh? Well, anyway, here is some more news from Utah.

SCO

Groklaw seems to be the only site that looks at the SCO-Novell case. The latest sample of articles actually happens to show the relationship between SCO and Maureen O’Gara. Here is a key part:

SCO’s materials on its website are not really what I expect them to bring up at trial, by the way. Paul Murphy, for example, isn’t likely to be used any further than on that list, I would think. SCO calls him an analyst. And even the witness list isn’t for sure. For example, while Maureen O’Gara is listed still on SCO’s witness list, I can’t imagine what usefulness she has now that the court has just ruled that a decline in stock value isn’t special damages SCO can claim. But with SCO, who knows? It’s a very small group of willing helpers now.

Other coverage of the SCO case includes:

• Two More Bills From Pachulski Stang – Still no MORs – Updated: Ocean Park’s 3rd Bill

• Novell Asks For Extension to File with Supreme Court & Judge Stewart Issues Trial Order – Updated

Novell has filed a second request for an extension of time to file its appeal with the US Supreme Court. It would like until March 4th.

• Novell Motion in Limine No. 1 – Let’s All Live by the Mandate Rule, Shall We?

Novell has filed its first motion in limine [PDF], the full title of which is Motion in Limine No. 1 to Exclude Evidence and Argument Concerning Claims Not Included in SCO’s Appeal or the Tenth Circuit’s Limited Mandate. It’s making me chuckle.

• A Blizzard of Motions in Limine in SCO v. Novell – Updated – SCO’s as text (many texts here)

More texts in:

• Novell’s Motions in Limine, as text, #s 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 – Slander of Title Motions

• Novell’s Motions in Limine – to Exclude Testimony, #s 12-19

• Novell’s Motions in Limine #s 9, 10, 11, as text – RE: SVRX Licenses, Substantial Performance, Arbitration

• SCO’s Opposition to Novell’s Motion in Limine No. 1: Hey! No Fair, You Guys!

SCO has filed its response to Novell’s Motion in Limine No. 1. And Novell has added another lawyer to the team, Daniel P. Muino.

SCO’s opposition in essence says, “No fair, Novell! We appealed the copyright ownership issue, and the slander of title is sort of related, and so that should be enough.”

Here’s what I don’t see SCO saying: “We *did* appeal the slander of title decision.”

Finance

In less than two weeks from now, Novell will deliver its financial results. It comes on February 25^th:

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced it will issue a press release providing its first fiscal quarter 2010 financial results on Thursday, February 25, 2010, following the market close.

It was over $200,000,000 in losses the last time, under rather exceptional circumstances

Other financial coverage of Novell (fairly minor) includes:

• Unusual Options Activity Review – SCSS, NOVL, CY, CPB, OSG, FLO, ELX, PNRA, VIX, XLU

Bullish trading was also seen in Novell (NOVL), Cypress Semiconductor (CY), Campbell’s Soup (CPB).

• SmarTrend’s Candlestick Scanner Detects Bearish Inside Day Pattern for Novell (NOVL) (also here)

• Looking ahead to McAfee, Inc. earnings; MFE, NOVL, CHKP

MFE is in the Security Software & Services industry group where it competes for investor dollars with companies like Novell Inc. (NOVL), which is set to release its earnings on 02/25 and last reported a -1331.16% decline in quarter-over-quarter EPS.

Back to Back

One of Microsoft’s favourite liars, the Yankee Group, is cited right here in relation to Novell:

Zeus Kerravala, a distinguished research fellow at Yankee Group, said Cisco needs to be careful that its plan doesn’t backfire, recalling how Novell drove away many customers because of its frustrating 90-day reinstall cycle for trial software in the early 1990s.

It is not entirely clear if the following article refers to SUSE or to Netware.

Several other ATUS staff are testing Windows 7 in different applications, such as faculty and administrative environments, and Nichols said the only problem has been with using a mix of Novell and Microsoft servers.

Another related new article:

VTB24’s IT infrastructure is a distributed heterogeneous system that includes Microsoft Windows, as well as UNIX and Novell network operating systems.

Here is how Active Directory and Novell act as barriers to Mac adoption in businesses:

“Apple’s traditional structure was that they were rather closed off; for ten years or so they were rather an insular solution,” he said. “But a lot the integration we are doing these days is putting Macs into Active Directory environments, putting Macs into Novell environments. Vendors like Novell are also coming to the party… and there are a bunch of standards that traditional enterprise customers are familiar with. The other place we have being doing a lot of stuff with enterprise is in with multimedia and digital education content delivery. It is a vehicle we are talking more and more with customers at the moment.”

GroupWise is mentioned in this related piece which is titled “Why Apple Won’t Let the Mac and iPhone Succeed in Business”

Macs in enterprise: The bigger you are, the harder it is One factor working against Apple’s prospects in business environments is that fact that businesses that have gone all-Mac have had to figure out themselves how to make it work. For smaller businesses, that’s not so hard to do. Microsoft Office for Mac has perhaps 90 percent of the capabilities of the Windows version, for example, and if you need Visual Basic support, you can use the older Office 2003 version rather than the VB-less Office 2008 version. For email, there are clients for Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Novell GroupWise available. The Mac OS, of course, supports POP and IMAP email servers as well.

Mail

Speaking of GroupWise, it gets mentioned in quite a few articles, but none is focused just on GroupWise. For example we have:

• New York Consolidating E-Mail Statewide

But another 24 agencies (totaling 93,000 users) currently work on one of at least five other e-mail systems, most which are Lotus or Novell. Those will be migrated. “We don’t know what we’ll encounter in terms of their own applications that might have been embedded in their own e-mail systems,” Mayberry-Stewart said.

• Global partnership brings better email archiving to Alfresco

OpsMailmanager enables enterprises to store and search for email messages and their attachments in an Alfresco repository. Leveraging open standards-based technologies, OpsMailmanager provides easy integration with all leading email clients including MS Outlook, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.

• Global partnership brings better email archiving to Alfresco

Leveraging open standards-based technologies, OpsMailmanager provides easy integration with all leading email clients including MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.

• Choice of Messaging Architects’ M+Archive in Migration Project Results in 30% Cost Savings for Deer Park School District (also here)

Messaging Architects, global experts in email risk management, announced today a complimentary online seminar, at which Deer Park Independent School District will share with attendees the strategies they employed for a successful and painless email migration from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange.

GroupWise was also mentioned in some other places, but it’s never important. Tomorrow we will show that GroupWise continues losing in the market.

Virtualisation

“Virtual Desktop with a Twist” is an IDG article that mentions Novell in the context of virtualisation.

This approach is ideal for server virtualization where multiple servers each are running different operating systems like Novell, NT or Linux on a single “real” server through virtual machines. We in turn virtualize individual users under a single operating system.

This new report about Xen — and one that mentions Novell in fact — has just been published, but it is merely being promoted as it is not simple to get hold of. Here is another new bit of analysis:

For example, Novell’s PlateSpin Recon can help create a list of applications in your data center and provide some of their characteristics and processing requirements.

PlateSpin never gained much popularity under Novell’s wing. Here is something from VMware which supports SUSE.

Some of the features included in this release support secure tunnelling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface.

Security

Novell suffered from some flaws in SUSE and in its proprietary software too [1, 2]. SUSE was also mentioned in the following batch of stories:

• ESET is First To Win 60 VB Awards

February’s Virus Bulletin report focused on the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 platform. Of the nine vendors participating, six passed and three failed. Neither Symantec nor McAfee were able to provide products supporting the Novell Suse Linux server platform.

• ESET: First Company to 60 VB100 Awards

• ESET breaks records with 60th VB100 award win (also in here)

ADAOX Middle East, the exclusive distribution partner and the regional business development centre of ESET NOD32 Antivirus, announced that ESET, the leader in proactive threat protection, has captured a record 60th VB100 award from Virus Bulletin, the widely-respected independent comparative testing group. February’s report focused on the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 platform. Of the nine vendors participating, six passed and three failed.

• ESET: First Company to 60 VB100 Awards

• Novell on Aurora Breach – new threats to watch

What are your thoughts on the Aurora breach? Post your comments and let’s start a discussion.

No comments posted. Novell fails to gain attention even when it asks for attention.

People

CBR has a new interview with Novell’s CEO Ron Hovsepian, but it is available in a Microsoft format only.

I caught up with the president and CEO of Novell, Ron Hovsepian recently, to find out more about the company’s recently announced Intelligent Workload Management strategy.

Of course, I also took the opportunity to ask whether he still believes that the firm’s controversial agreement with Microsoft on Windows-Linux interoperability and virtualisation was in the firm’s best interests, considering how the open source community reacted to the deal for the most part (angrily).

I’ve listened to the whole interview and it’s pretty decent. Both sides made a good case for themselves and Hovsepian was not given an easy time, either. Hovsepian was speaking at this event too:

Among the key speakers were C S Venkatraman, GM (Electrical and Electronics), ERC, Tata Motors, Ronald W Hovsepian, President and CEO, Novell and Francois Guibert, Corporate Vice President, STMicroelectronics. The Technovation Awards 2010 were also presented at the summit.

Some former Novell employees are entering other companies and John Donovan, who is not CEO as the following text suggests, embarks on a mountaineering trip with other businessmen:

Philip Cronin, the CEO of Intel Australia, is proud of his achievement as a mountaineer. Together with three other Australian businessmen – John Donovan, CEO of Novell, Peter Wright, owner of Priceline, and Enda Mahoney, vice-president of Blackrock – he reached the base camp of Mount Everest. By doing so, the group raised $A50,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.

According to this report and a press release, Kryterion’s new Chief Scientist has a 7-year history with Novell.

Kryterion, the world leader in online secure testing and a prominent firm in traditional test delivery, has announced that William Dorman has been appointed as chief executive officer.

[...]

Kryterion has also announced the appointment of Dr. Dave Foster as Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President.

Foster is currently a board director of Kryterion. He founded Galton Technologies in 1997 and Caveon in 2003. Earlier, he directed the test development efforts at Novell from 1990 to 1997, introducing many new innovations, including adaptive testing, testing in multiple languages, and simulations-based testing.

Experience with Novell spotted here:

Zerbib has 16 years of professional experience from employment at QUEST Software, Compuware, SoftCompany, NEURONS and EMS Concept, working with IT and networking products and services from such providers as Alcatel, Checkpoint, Cisco, Citrix, HP, IBM, Novell, and Nortel Networks.

The new Director of a Technical Engineering Team at Messaging Architects has a past with Novell:

Messaging Architects, global experts in email risk management, today announced that Richard Cabana has joined the company as Director of the new Technical Engineering Team.

[...]

“…As we start to deploy our next-generation of Identity-Driven and Policy-Based products, the expertise he acquired while at Novell and then at Red Hat will be of tremendous value to both our current and prospective clients.”

Utah Technology Council (UTC) has added someone with a past at Novell too:

* David Bradford (photo) – Bradford is currently the CEO of Fusion-io. Previously he was with Novell, Inc., where he served as Senior Vice-President and General Counsel. He was instrumental in taking the company from a small start-up to a multi-billion dollar corporation. He has also served as chairman of the Business Software Alliance, the world’s leading trade association for business software companies. Bradford was also approved as a member of UTC’s Executive Committee.

Here is SD Times advertising a job opening at Novell:

James Bottomley, distinguished engineer at Novell and maintainer of the Linux SCSI subsystems, has learned how to deal with such problems. As the Linux community is larger than the Rails community, there are more egos to butt up against, he said. He has three pieces of advice for smoothing over the inevitable social friction that can occur within an open-source project.

[...]

Joe Brockmeier worked with Bottomley at Novell until the end of January, when he left the company to pursue other interests. At Novell, he served as openSUSE community manager, and also oversaw the documentation development processes on the platform. Brockmeier said that “community manager” is a misleading title.

Partners

Here is a training milestone for Novell and TAR College.

These include incorporating professional certification curriculum such as Cisco Certified Network Associates (CCNA) and network security into networking-related courses, Novell Certified Linux Professional programmes into information systems programmes, SAP modules into business information systems courses as well as incorporating the latest programming concepts and tools governed under either Java development teams or Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) into the respective programme of studies.

Due to concerted efforts to promote students to go for the CCNA certification, TAR College was awarded “In Recognition of Great Collaborative Efforts for Student Certification” during the 4th Cisco Networking Academy Annual Conference 2009. The college was also awarded the “Best Novell Academic Training Partner 2009″ at the NATP Summit 2009. The NCL Solutions and TAR College collaboration has led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on SUSE Linux Innovation Club Evangelist (SLICE) programme to mark a higher level of synergy for more new and dynamic collaborative activities.

Novell is also mentioned in relation to SIEM:

With much of the interest in SIEM products driven by compliance initiatives, the market for SIEM products is jam-packed with vendors, many competing with similar products. Established names include Arcsight Inc., CA Inc., Intellitactics Inc., IBM, NetIQ Corp. and EMC’s RSA Security division. Other vendors include LogLogic Inc., NetForensics Inc., Novell Inc., Sensage Inc., Symantec Corp. and TriGeo Network Security Inc.

Other press releases and articles where Novell is mentioned are:

• Unitrends Appoints Philip Eliot Chairman of the Board
• Novosoft Partners with 1C Company to Bring the Leading Backup Solution to Eastern Europe
• Makara’s do-it-yourself platform cloud
• Computer Technology & Networking Program offered at CollegeAmerica’s Phoenix Campus for Students to enter Technology Industry
• VMware Partner Exchange 2010 Kicks Off With Record-Breaking 2,600+ Attendees, 55 Sponsors and 45 Countries Represented
• Infor Takes Ad Campaign Global to EMEA, Latin America and Asia
• Koenig Now offers training for CANAC – Implementing NAC Appliance
• ASAP Releases Winners of 2010 Alliance Excellence Awards
• Unitrends Free Shirt Promotion Draws “Amazing” Response
• Implied Volatility Falling on Novell Inc.; NOVL, ASIA, CHKP
• What is cloud computing and how do I use it?
• Computer Service & Networking @ Northland Community & Technical College

Marketing

A YouTube account called “IBMInnovation” has uploaded this video which sheds light on the current relationship between IBM and Novell.

John Dragoon, the marketing manager, writes about GNU/Linux in relation to Apple’s latest hypefest [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

I believe Linux is the ideal operating system for creating and delivering the “Platform Specific User Experience”. The market, however, is moving rapidly and we must focus on the magic formula for success if reality is to match the vision.

Novell is still offering some real estate for Utah events, based on this assorted report.

Networking » The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum presents local author Larry Myler, who will give the keynote address at the forum’s luncheon event, 12 p.m., Novell Building A, 1800 Novell Place, Provo. Free for UVEF members, $25 for nonmembers. RSVP at www.uvef.com.

There hasn’t been a word about BrainShare for quite a while. What’s up with that? Might it be canceled again due to lack of interest? █

ANOTHER IDLE fortnight passes by and Novell is said to be facing more threats from Google’s expansion.

To be fair, Wave is still at an unstable, preview stage, but Google has seemed satisfied thus far just hoping the platform will evolve naturally as a tool for enterprises once companies like Novell and Salesforce.com have a chance to game around with it.

Well, Novell is already creating Pulse, which it announced just over two months ago [1, 2]. It will apparently be proprietary, unlike Wave. Novell has almost nothing with which to stop Google from eating Groupwise share. Novell’s PR Director was caught spreading unnecessary fear about SaaS (anti-Google) last week and Novell uses some analysts to do so too (along with the CEO).

Aging products like ZENworks withstanding, some things just have their shelf life expire, a bit like Windows (Vista 7 is just more of the same). Some products beg Novell to just let go.

Netware

Moving on (or back in time) to Netware, here is an unusual new deployment:

Upstate New York School District Replaces Unreliable DLT Tape-Based Solution with Disk-to-Disk Backup Appliance for Novell NetWare, GroupWise and Microsoft Windows Environment

[...]

SCS investigated multiple options but was discouraged by the high pricing for some and the lack of protection for their Novell NetWare platform from others. Maintaining Novell security attributes was an important selection criterion for SCS’ data protection solution so when Holmes found Unitrends he was pleased to learn that it would backup NetWare including trustee assignments, access control lists and other advanced options. Unitrends’ BareMetal backup and recovery features was also a significant advantage for SCS, as was Unitrends’ advanced protection for Novell eDiscovery and GroupWise.

“Tech Dinosaurs of Years Past” is the headline of this article which mentions Novell’s Netware:

I cut my IT teeth in the ‘90s on Novell NetWare 3.12, the bindery, and IPX. While Novell may have moved more quickly to LDAP than some others with successive versions, it was Microsoft that quickly supplanted NetWare with Active Directory and built-in IP support.

Finance

Nothing too interesting has happened with Novell’s shares. Isolated coverage includes:

• SmarTrend Detects Continued Buying Pressure in Shares of Novell (NOVL

SmarTrend identified an Uptrend for Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) on January 06, 2010 at $4.53. In approximately 2 weeks, Novell has returned 5.3% as of today’s recent price of $4.77.

• Options Alert for Novell

• Smartrend Detects Continued Buying Pressure In Shares Of Novell (Novl

• Novell Inc. (NOVL) Corporate Event Announcement Notice

• Owners Research Group Announces Initiation of Investor Consensus Study for Novell, Inc. (NOVL)

Owners Research Group (ORG) today initiated research coverage of Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL). ORG has invited the shareholders of Novell to voice their opinions and priorities on strategic issues impacting the company.

• Options Alert for Novell (NYSE:NOVL)

Virtualisation

ZDNet has published the article “Novell: Virtualization not for all servers”

Here are some of the things Novell is saying:

Not all servers can–or should–be virtualized, says Novell cloud computing CTO, Moiz Kohari, who urges cloud service providers to focus on making their heterogenous setups work as one.

In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Kohari said virtualization has yet to overcome I/O (input/output) latency issues at the hypervisor level, as compared to provisioned servers. As a result, virtualization is not the choice in cases where service providers and businesses need to ensure as little latency as possible, for example, in a stock exchange environment, he explained.

Novell was also mentioned (but hardly) in this virtualisation survey (ZDNet).

Mail

An announcement that was already mentioned in the last Novell News Summary appears in some more Web sites right now. Among them:

• Transend Integrates With IBM to Launch Email Migration Solution

Transend Corp., a provider of email migration and conversion solutions, announced Transend Migrator for IBM Lotus Foundations, a special edition of Transend’s email conversion utility.

• Transend Delivers E-Mail Migration for Lotus Foundation

Transend Migrator for IBM Lotus Foundations allows users to move their e-mail messages, address books, calendars, tasks, and archives from any e-mail system to Lotus Foundation. Users can move the data mailbox-by-mailbox or migrate mailboxes in bulk from a command line batch processor. The software also includes a GUI, and batch templates for competing products, like Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise.

Someone has uploaded this video which shows how to ditch Groupwise for Microsoft (wrong route).

More Groupwise coverage can be found in a variety of news pages [1, 2, 3] and this press release from GWAVA, which boasts 1 million page views in the knowledgebase last year. Boycott Novell serves a similar number of pages but per month, nor year.

Identity Management

Novell is mentioned in this IDG report about authentication:

This newsletter was still the “Directory Services” newsletter, and the immanent release of Windows Server 2000, with Active Directory, took up much of the discussion, especially issues around migrating from Windows NT. But Novell’s directory also made some news with a new release of eDirectory (Version 5.1, called “NDS eDirectory”), which featured the new “NetWare Management Portal”, supposedly more secure for remote management of servers. January 2000 also saw the release of Novell Modular Authentication Services (NMAS), the first release of a major authentication product that allowed plug-in modules and featured multiple authentication methods (passwords, biometrics, tokens and so on).

The biggest news this week came after a press release covering a file management “suite” (marketing terms alert!). Ross from Novell wrote about it and the official announcement says:

Novell today announced the release of Novell® File Management Suite, an integrated file storage solution that provisions, moves, optimizes and reports on file storage based on user roles and customized business policies. For the first time, organizations, regardless of operating system or existing storage management solution, can intelligently manage file storage at its source, tying the file to the user for the entire data lifecycle. Providing organizations with a clearer picture of its data, Novell File Management Suite enables an organization to plan for and deploy an efficient and cost-effective storage infrastructure as well as execute on compliance and governance requirements.

This press release was rewritten by CBR, which adds nothing new (just parroting of the marketing/PR stuff).

Novell has rolled out a new File Management Suite that provisions, moves, optimises and reports on file storage based on user roles and customised business policies.

The company said that the new suite enables organisations to manage file storage at its source, tying the file to the user for the entire data lifecycle. It helps them to plan for and deploy a storage infrastructure and execute on compliance and governance requirements.

Security

Processor.com seeks a lot of comments from Novell staff and this new article is no exception:

The first step to preventing data leaks is to simplify and centralize the control and management of your data end points, says David Ferre, senior product manager of endpoint security at Novell (www.novell.com). Ferre suggests a policy-based approach to systematically prevent data leaks before they can take place, stressing three key areas: removable storage devices, wireless security, and data encryption.

Novell fixed some flaws in SUSE Linux and also on the proprietary side [1, 2]. The following new video shows how Novell may be affected by a serious hack.

There seems to be something in the stack which can take the blame for giving improper permissions. There are some more innocent videos that were uploaded last week.

People

Schmidt’s roots/past in Novell (as CEO) still make the competition between Google and Novell rather odd. But here is another angle:

- Its relationship with Microsoft is very bad, because Google actively opposed its acquisition of Yahoo and other deals. Mr Schmidt is behind that opposition, he spent many years fighting with Microsoft when he was head of Novell. That strategy didn’t work then and it isn’t working now.

Other cases of (former) Novell staff on the move:

• Polycom Revamps Partner Program To Challenge Cisco-Tandberg

Polycom has been busy building out its internal channel ranks, and Capuzzo — who held sales and channel roles at IPC, Avaya, Symbol,Ingram Micro (NYSE: IM), HP (NYSE:HPQ) and Novell (NSDQ:NOVL) in the past — is among several channel veterans to have joined Polycom in the past eight months.

• Virtual Bridges Solidifies Role as Major VDI Vendor

Tom is the former EVP at Novell and Vice
President Software Group Sales Europe at IBM; Srini Gurrapu, VP of Product Management, formerly of RingCube Technologies, Moka5, Juniper and Microsoft; Dr. James Clark, VP, Business Development, Asia Pacific; Dr. Clark was formerly chairman of DASCOM and President of ATT Unix Systems Labs, Asia Pacific, and Brad Fidler, VP of Sales, former Director of Sales at BuildForge.

• Express Digital Branding” for Small and Medium Sized Businesses

Jocelyne Attal, Founder of JAGENCY, has more than 20 years of marketing experience and a record of growing revenues at IBM, Novell, and Gateway.

• Republican announces bid for Johnson’s U.S. House seat

An Atlanta businesswoman is the latest to join the race to represent Georgia’s fourth congressional district.

Liz Carter is the only Republican running against U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson.

[...]

This is Carter’s first time running for office.

Carter, 40, has run her own consulting and recruiting company for the past four years. She previously worked for Novell and State Street Corp.

• SCTE Adds to Advanced Network Development Team

From 1995-98, Harris was a Novell network administrator with Rowan University.

Former Novell employee Matt Asay mentions Novell in CNET:

Convenience still pays. It’s why people pay for a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) subscription when they can get the same bits from CentOS–or effectively the same bits from Canonical (Ubuntu) or Novell (Suse). It’s why I buy “Jane Eyre” on my Kindle instead of just downloading a free version.

Partners

Novell examinations can be seen in this article from the East:

Today’s employees must be able to work in different global environments which is why TAR College is giving its students an avenue to soak up the experiences of the world.

[...]

“For example, our information technology students will sit for Microsoft, Novell, Cisco and various other professional examinations during their course of study.”

More on certification where Novell is mentioned:

• Koenig Announces InstallShield Training

• Koenig now offers training on InstallShield

• Koenig now offers training on InstallShield

• Baron – CED Solutions student – January 2010

DemandGen has Novell as a client, it argues:

Some of DemandGen’s clients are Adobe, Conject, Microsoft, Messe Munich, FARO, NetApp, NXP Semiconductors and Novell.

A company called Xepa is also involved with Novell:

Xepa is an ICT Solutions Provider focusing on Infrastructure Solutions based on the Novell, Linux and Microsoft platforms. In addition to Novell and Microsoft partnerships, Xepa is a VMWare Enterprise Partner, GlobalSign Authorised Partner and GWAVA Authorised Partner. Xepa also has partnerships with other hardware and software vendors, including HP, EMC, Juniper, Cyberoam, TrendMicro and Symantec.

Novell was mentioned in many other press releases and a few articles, usually at the bottom [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12].

Other/Videos

Novell plans to have a BrainShare conference in Europe. Novell also sponsors the nasty SYS-CON, arousing some suspicion that it is sponsoring in order to attend and present in its private events.

Here is an old video that has just been filed under YouTube. It’s from Banyan, which the video claims “got killed by Novell and Microsoft.”

Another new addition to YouTube is this talk from Novell, but it’s not in English and it goes a few months back (only uploaded days ago, though).

In summary, nothing too special has happened, but there was one press release of significance (about File Management Suite). █

Summary: Novell news from the past two weeks (excepting SUSE/OpenSUSE)

THERE is a heap of stuff to be shared here this week, but none of it is groundbreaking.

Back in December, Ron Hovsepian was marketing his own products in Forbes, advocating Novell terminology such as “Intelligent workload management”. Here are some comments on the article. Forbes is letting Novell’s Dragoon do the same thing sometimes. This magazine is run by business, for business. Processor.com has quoted Novell’s Richard Whitehead again (it’s not unusual for them, either):

Richard Whitehead, director of product marketing for data center solutions at Novell (www.novell.com), says there are three key trends in virtualization shaping up for the coming year.

[...]

For all of virtualization’s promise of fundamental change, however, Novell’s Whitehead says IT’s priorities won’t change much despite the radically different data center landscape.

From “Marketing Manager for Novell’s developer and database product groups” comes another little placement.

Despite the layoffs and the fact that Novell is "going downhill", one company named it as a job destination, which fed Novell’s PR team.

Glassdoor.com, a career and workplace community that brings greater transparency to company cultures, compensation and the interview process, have just released the second annual Employees’ Choice Awards, listing the top 50 “Best Places to Work,” according to surveys collected from U.S.-based employees in 2009.

A former Novell employee who is writing for CNET has given lip service to Novell’s Pulse, which the rest of the press is just ignoring by now.

Novell is doing this with its Pulse service for Google Wave, a testament to just how innovative software can be when it isn’t locked behind a firewall by IT. Others should follow suit, and not create clones of the consumer Web as Tibco has with its Twitter clone, Tibbr.

SCO

Nobody except Groklaw seems to be covering SCO matters these days. Some of the latest articles (and snippets of interest) are:

1. Agenda for Wednesday’s Bankruptcy Hearing: SUSE & Petrofsky

The agenda for the hearing on Wednesday in the SCO bankruptcy is now available. It’s SUSE’s motion to lift the stay that will be argued and the Petrofsky motion to compel, and maybe some uncontested housekeeping issues. So this is one hearing not to miss, if any of you can attend. It begins at 10 AM. Same place. The usual suspects.

Relax. Just kidding.

2. Caldera GPLd Its Brains Out – Want to See?

Would you like to see some places where Caldera has copyright notices in Linux on code it contributed under the GPL, and you’re frustrated because some of us have Caldera CDs and you don’t? Just go to Google code search and search for

license:gpl “caldera.com”

You’ll be buried in GPL’d Caldera code, 5,000 hits.

3. An Offer of Arbitration Docs from Ryan Tibbitts & A Proposed Amended Schedule for Tomorrow

SCO General Counsel Ryan Tibbitts has filed a Declaration [PDF] with the bankruptcy court in support of Edward Cahn’s objection to SUSE’s motion for relief from the automatic stay. SUSE would like to finish the Swiss arbitration, as you know, and SCO would like to keep it from going forward. Tibbitts offers to submit to the judge sealed materials from the arbitration that he claims give evidence that SUSE is not likely to prevail in what he claims is the “highly contested” arbitration.

4. Minutes from the SCO Bankruptcy Hearing Posted

5. Eyewitness Reports from the SCO Bankruptcy Hearing on SUSE’s Motion to Lift Stay

As you can see, it tipped toward at least a partial lifting of the stay, although how a partial lifting helps is a mystery to me. But notice how the SCO position makes very little sense? At one point, Ms. Fatell argues that SUSE and Novell are one and the same, according to our reporter’s notes. Then SCO argues that they are not suing SUSE, but if they are one and the same, what difference would that make? SCO is suing Novell *over* SUSE’s Linux, which is what brought the arbitration into the picture. So it makes no sense. And is it possible that Ms. Fatell does not know that SCO’s litigation filings in the IBM case do ask for billions? And their intentions, SCO’s new management’s, are now fairly clear, I’d say. I’ll wait until I get to see a transcript or listen to the audio to form a definite conclusion, but it appears that newSCOmanagement is very much like oldSCOmanagement in not comprehending the GPL at all and hoping for some short-term gains no matter what happens in the last act.

Here is an excellent and long accumulation of old findings about SCO’s right to sue (or rather, lack of right to sue):

But consider what we know for sure SCO did do, distribute its code in UnitedLinux under the GPL. In the FOSS marketplace, they do that, and back then SCO was a Linux company. And what is simply true is that you can’t operate in the FOSS space unless you do share under the GPL or some other Open Source license that indeed can affect your rights, especially with respect to suing people for copyright infringement. And both Santa Cruz and Caldera, now SCO Group, understood that, and complied with the terms, grudgingly but they at least pretended that it was a great thing. For example, here’s a couple of screenshots for you from the goode olde dayes, when they each wanted to cooperate with the FOSS world.

And on it goes:

7. Hearing Set for Feb. 4 for Novell Motion to Set Aside Judgment – And a Mystery Solved – Update

There is a hearing coming up on February 4 at 3 PM before Judge Stewart in SCO v. Novell, and I surely hope some of you can attend, regarding Novell’s recently filed motion asking to set aside an earlier judgment by Judge Kimball, so Novell can go after monies SCO took in from Microsoft and companies that bought a SCOsource license.

But there’s something odd in the notice about the hearing. It says also on the schedule that day will be oral argument on docket number 277 [PDF], Novell’s Motion for Summary Judgment on SCO’s First Claim for Slander of Title Based on Failure to Establish Special Damages, which was decided in Novell’s favor long ago. Novell didn’t ask for that judgment to be opened up, that I can see, nor would it, since it won that motion, and neither has SCO filed any such motion that I can find. So how is this scheduled for this hearing? That is the mystery.

8 . SCO Opposes Novell Motion to Set Aside Judgment

SCO, “by and through the Chapter 11 Trustee in Bankruptcy, Edward N. Cahn”, has filed its opposition to Novell’s Motion to Set Aside Judgment.

9. Trial in SCO v. Novell Now Scheduled for 15 Days Beginning March 8 – Correction

So two months before it resumes.

Novell’s MoFo story is mentioned again in Legal Brief.

Finance

Bharat is still selling information about Novell while also advertising it. Movements of the shares are not particularly important, but they are mentioned in:

1. ICx, Intellicheck Rise; YRC Worldwide Falls

Novell, Inc (NOVL) climbed 2.1% or 8 cents to $4.22.

2. How has the market reacted to Novell Inc. post-earnings? NOVL, ASIA, MFE, CHKP

Novell Inc. (NOVL) released its earnings announcement on 12/03. The company reported a change in quarter-over-quarter sales of -11.89% and posted an EPS (trailing twelve months) of – .62.

3. Tech Stocks Soar in 2009

Thirteen companies had triple-digit gains and 25 had double-digit stock increases. Only one vendor, Novell, had a single digit stock price increase (9 percent). And only two vendors saw their stock prices decrease.

4. Top 5 Small-Cap Stocks In The Technology Sector With The Highest Cash (CLWR, SAY, CIEN, NOVL, SATS)

NOVL’s shares have risen by just 8.29% over the past 52 weeks, as compared to a 21.59% rise in S&P 500.

Netware

“Great and Disappointing Operating Systems of the Decade” include NetWare 6.5. Here is the relevant part of an article from IDG:

NetWare 6.5

The world was looking for the joiner of Novell’s time-honored and rock-solid NetWare network operating system to be joined fully to Linux. Novell had just purchased SuSE Linux and it looked as though the world might have a powerhouse to rival the initial foibles of Microsoft’s then-embryonic Active Directory. Would eDirectory become a rival and gain authentication market share. Today, that goal is an unfulfilled dream for most.

NetWare was also mentioned here and alluded to here:

•Novell networks. The problem with personal computers was that they were, well, personal. Everyone became an island. Local area networks came along, with Novell being the dominant player, and permitted us to be linked to one another for sharing files and devices.

Virtualisation

Except for hype from Novell’s marketing people, the company’s virtualisation products were only mentioned here as an aside.

Related to testing, virtualization technology has matured to the point that almost every organization can reap the benefits with server virtualization products such as Microsoft Corp.’s Virtual Machine Manager, Novell Inc.’s PlateSpin Virtualization and Workload Management suite and VMware Inc.’s vSphere.

Here is a new commercial disguised as “whitepaper”. It’s about ZENworks application virtualisation. Other quick mentions of Novell virtualisation can be found in:

1. Oracle Rumored to Snap up Citrix under IBM’s Nose; VMware, are you listening?

Oracle has already declared war on many fronts and by doing a Citrix acquisition it will definitely make a massive statement to the virtualization market leaving Oracle, Microsoft and VMware as the main contenders and also Red Hat and Novell slightly into the virtualization market.

2. VDI Rolling Review: Ericom’s WebConnect Goes Above And Beyond

WebConnect supports all the major virtualization platforms out there, and Ericom is the first broker we’ve tested that natively supports XenServer. The only other VDI vendor to do so is Citrix itself. Ericom also supports some community versions of Xen, like Red Hat and Novell Xen, and easily takes the prize for the largest number of supported virtualization engines WebConnect installed relatively easily in the lab, and can be deployed on a single physical server or on a virtual machine for smaller environments.

The ‘Microsoft press’ is pushing the agenda of its masters by writing about the Gartner|Burton talking points for Hyper-V [1, 2] (comparing VMware to Netware). Here is some more marketing waffle from John Dragoon, who tactlessly offers lip service to the pay-to-say Gartner Group. The Burton Group will be consumed by Gartner and what might as well explain Dragoon’s attitude are the roots in Novell:

The Burton Group was founded in 1990 by Lewis and Craig Burton, both of whom had been at Novell. Lewis bought Burton out and through acquisitions took on several other partners.

Very interesting! We’ll write some more about former Novell employees further down in the same post.

Another such analogy which resembles the Hyper-V “Slog” [PDF] comes from Tim O’Reilly, who writes:

(Henry Blodget makes this case in Hey, Apple, Wake Up — It’s Happening Again. On the other hand, Mark Sigal raises a different historical analogy, Novell vs. Microsoft, asking whether Google’s release of its own anointed phone might end up blunting adoption by other vendors, while Google takes the eye off its core business. A lot depends on whether Google holds back anything from the platform available to others. At today’s press conference, Google emphasized the open platform aspect of Android, so they are trying to address that fear. The model seems to be to work with individual partners to push the ball forward, but to return those innovations to the pool available to all partners.)

Mail

Novell actually advertises against Microsoft Exchange for a change. Both Microsoft and Novell are suffering from Google at the moment.

These workers will be using Gmail, Google Docs and other apps to work together, saving what the city’s CIO said would be millions of dollars. Google replaced the legacy Novell GroupWise system and beat out Microsoft and others for the pact. Sounds like a win-win for everyone, right?

Groupwise is also mentioned here:

ExchangeDefender is tailored to a small business’ e-mail system, and works with Microsoft (News – Alert) Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell Groupwise or any other SMTP mail server, the company said. Like Autotask, ExchangeDefender runs off of set policies to secure end clients’ e-mail servers from viruses, malware, adware and other threats.

A new Groupwise video was uploaded to YouTube very recently:

Identity Management

An article on identity mentioned Novell for its role in this market.

This was echoed by Novell’s Justin Steinman (vice president of solution and product marketing), who said: “2010 will be the year that we take identity into the clouds. Everyone in the industry is excited about using cloud computing.” However, he also voiced some major concerns about these moves, adding: “But what about the security concerns? How do you control who has access to what data in the cloud? How do you ensure that roles are enforced? How do you provision and, more importantly, de-provision identity in the cloud?”

Security

Justin Steinman was also mentions in this post:

# Cloud providers address security concerns. “Security is the number-one inhibitor to cloud adoption,” says Novell’s Justin Steinman. Users can expect to see technologies that allow cloud providers to meet different customer security requirements.

Novell is applying some minor changes when it comes to support.

Effective from the 1st of February, Novell is changing its support terms for access to patches and service packs.

Among new vulnerability reports we find this older one which affects eDirectory:

Novell has released a security update for its eDirectory server to remedy a heap overflow vulnerability. Attackers can remotely exploit the flaw to crash or penetrate a server.

People

Google was voted “company of the decade” and its CEO’s roots in Novell are mentioned here:

Larry Page and Sergey Brin are aided and abetted by Eric Schmidt, a director of the company since 2001. He was formerly at Novell, Sun and Apple.

More here:

Schmidt’s previous gigs at Novell and Sun Microsystems showed him what could happen when innovative companies were slowly subsumed by determined competitors with deep pockets (Novell versus Microsoft) and open software married to cheap hardware (Sun versus Linux). This time, he’s marrying both in an attempt to remake mobile computing in Google’s image by taking on Apple and the wireless carriers.

Schmidt has no obligations to Novell anymore; in fact, he’s taking some of Novell’s market share (as shown above).

In South Africa, the departure of Stafford Masie from Google is called one of the top 10 ICT stories of 2009. Masie previously quit Novell South Africa.

4. Head of Google South Africa’s resignation
Stafford Masie, Chief Executive of Google South Africa, resigned from his position at the company in March 2009, citing personal reasons. Masie joined Google in 2007, after working as the South African country manager of Novell.

Jim Tanner, who has some Novell background, is becoming Senior Vice President (SVP) at inContact. Here is some coverage about it:

1. Tanner led the product and market strategy at software and telecommunications companies such as Unisys, Novell and Realm Business Solutions.

Prior to inContact, Tanner led the product and market strategy at software and telecommunications companies such as Unisys, Novell and Realm Business Solutions.

2. Jim Tanner Joins inContact as Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy

3. Jim Tanner becomes Senior Vice President of Product and Strategy of inContact

4. inContact names Jim Tanner as senior VP of product and strategy

Tanner has experience in leading product and market strategy at software and telecommunications companies like Unisys, Novell and Realm Business Solutions prior to joining inContact.

Nancy Reynolds, who used to work for Novell, is becoming the channel chief of Kaspersky. This was covered in:

1. First take on Nancy Reynolds as Kaspersky channel chief

2. Kaspersky hires ex-Novell/Dell executive as its channel chief

3. Kaspersky Snags Dell Channel Star To Lead Sales Charge

4. Reynolds To Propel Kaspersky’s Enterprise Push

5. Channel Advocate Joins Kaspersky Lab Americas To Lead Corporate Sales Division

6. Nancy Reynolds Leaves Dell to Join Kaspersky Lab

“Nancy is one of the top channel executives in the industry. Her experience, work ethic and passion for winning make her an asset to any organization,” Gary Abad, vice president of channel sales at F5 Networks, wrote on Reynolds’ LinkedIn profile. Abad worked with Reynolds at Novell as vice present of channel sales.

7. Kaspersky Lab Planning Managed Security Services Strategy

Kaspersky Lab, the fast-growing anti-virus software provider, is planning a managed services partner strategy that will likely surface within 30 to 60 days, according to Senior VP of Corporate Sales Nancy Reynolds. Kaspersky’s move is part of a larger trend: Multiple anti-virus companies — McAfee, Panda Security, Sophos, Symantec and Trend Micro — are polishing their managed services strategies. Here’s a sampling of where we’re heading.

Here is the press release.

Stephanie Tilton, from whom came some Novell marketing material, is mentioned here.

Harnessing her unique blend of technical knowledge, marketing savvy, and writing skills, Stephanie has crafted nearly 100 case studies and white papers for leading brands such as Akamai Technologies, EMC, Macromedia, Novell, SAP, and Symantec. Her website is Ten Ton Marketing.

Partners

There is nothing major here this week, but Novell was just mentioned in a couple of press releases from Unitrends [1, 2], which can also be seen in this site and that site:

JSO Technology, a Wauawatosa based consulting firm is pleased to announce their partnership with Unitrends. Unitrends is a leading provider of innovative, integrated solutions that protect and restore critical data and systems.

[...]

Whether it is for a new Windows Server 2008 with Exchange Server 2010 or VMware vSphere 4 server, backup for a legacy Novell Netware or Windows NT 3.5 server, backup for a developer’s Linux workstation or a sales rep’s Windows 7 notebook, backup for a SAN, NAS, or simply a directly-attached disk drive or a simple PC, Unitrends can address most of our customer’s back up requirements.”

Novell certifications were mentioned here and an old partner, Wyse, includes Novell in its latest two press releases [1, 2]. Novell also got mentioned by Computhink. █

Summary: Dull week passes by, but we pick up and present some of the minor developments surrounding Novell

IT is a holiday, so this one will be short.

Finance

Novell was mentioned occasionally in light of Red Hat's good results.

Rival Novell, Inc. (NOVL | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating), which is the world’s second largest seller of Linux software, earlier this month reported a wider fourth quarter net loss, hurt by goodwill impairment and restructuring charges. However, the company’s quarterly earnings per share, excluding items, beat analysts’ estimate as did its quarterly revenues. The company also forecast first quarter revenue above analysts’ estimate.

More on Novell’s “reogs”, which are a lot more than just that:

Novell announced that in response to changing market conditions it was reorganising its existing four divisions, or units, down to two.

There is a new and very detailed report about Novell, titled “turning the Linux market into a healthy duopoly”

Key Chapters of the report:

Linux: revenue and strategy driver

An increasing slice of Novell’s revenues

Linux in two different guises: SLES/D and OES

17% of profitable revenues from SLE

19% of profitable revenues from OES

Positive sales feedback loop driver

Via customers and (in)direct channels

Via SLE as well as OES

Increased reliance on Microsoft

Microsoft has proven critical to Novell’s Linux growth

Novell’s reliance on Microsoft is increasing and distorting

Opening up the OpenSUSE project

This report is selling for $1,350.

Netware

Novell’s networking products received a little mention in this article which was titled “The year of AJAX and REST services?”

That iffy emerging technology was Microsoft Windows, and the versions that made me really jump in after years of skeptical puttering were Windows 3 and Windows NT. Lest you think that was an easy call, at the time the industry press was all over Novell networking and IBM OS/2 as the serious up-and-coming technologies for business. I did hedge my bets; I kept OS/2 available as a boot option on my DOS/Windows machine, and I worked with a client whose product used Novell networks at hotels, but my main focus was Windows.

A small portion on CNEs, whose skills lose a lot in terms of value:

As the support costs for this model grew, companies began to realize that perhaps the distributed model was not the panacea it was purported to be, and networked computing came back in vogue (Remember when everyone wanted to become a Microsoft MSCE or Novell Certified Network Engineer?)

An old and familiar comparison appears again:

Microsoft was late to the market, but that didn’t stop the company from taking over other technology areas in the past. And that history led to some comparisons between VMware and Novell, the former software king that Microsoft dethroned in the 1990s.

Virtualisation

Matt Richards from Novell has published this post where he is promoting his company a little.

In fact, Novell research has found up to 50 percent of support issues result from problems introduced during product installation.

Another example:

5 Things Every CEO Should Know About Cloud Computing

[...]

Ron Hovsepian, President and CEO of Novell, highlights five important elements in an article on Forbes.com….

Novell as a Xen backer:

Although x64 hypervisors are heading for commoditisation, they are not there yet. Even when they reach that stage, there is no guarantee that customers will be able to switch from one to the other easily. That raises an important question about the future of the open source Xen hypervisor and the virtualisation platforms built on it by Xen’s three main backers, Citrix, Oracle and Novell.

Identity Management, Mail, and Insecurity

A journalist from Latvia has uploaded this new video covering Novell’s business activities around identity management.

There were also tiny portions about Groupwise support and SUSE flaws.

People and Partners

Novell and F5 Networks are seen as potentially connected by the appointment of Gary Abad.

Abad was most recently VP Channel Sales for Polycom, and has also served at Novell and Symbol Technologies.

More here:

Gary Abad will take the reins at the application delivery networking company, following his most recent position as vice president of Americas channel sales at Polycom.

[...]

Abad held sales management and business development at Novell and Symbol Technologies, which is now a part of Motorola.

Novell was mentioned in some press releases that shed light on existing partnerships.

With this authorization, Koenig adds another feather to its already impressive list of authorizations which includes: Microsoft, Cisco, Oracle, Red Hat, Novell, LPI, CIW, CWNP, EC-Council and SCP.

Marketing

Promotions for BrainShare 2010 are made more visible as Novell tries to make it a reality. Novell has just made another video in addition to 2 previous ones [1, 2]. “20TEN” is the motto.

Speaking of videos, it looks like an older one about SUSE has been pushed into YouTube again and Novell is also mentioned in the latest Linux News Log.

That’s about it for this week. █

Summary: A mixed bag of news regarding key Novell products that are proprietary

IT HAS BEEN a very bad week for Novell, but a company/firm called Skymark Research intends to look into the company’s financial situation.

Skymark Research, a leading provider of small- and micro-cap independent investment research, today initiated coverage on Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq:NOVL). Skymark Research is currently offering a complimentary trial subscription.

Novell’s true potential is overinflated by mis-comprehension. The company seems to lack direction and soon enough it will also lack technical leadership. Jaffe is leaving.

Server Watch looks back at history and includes Novell’s operating system in a list of top 10:

9. Novell NetWare — good while it lasted

During much of the eighties and nineties, NetWare was all that Novell could think about, and this lavish attention helped turn it on to the network operating system. But as NetWare started to show its age, Novell looked around for something younger, and it is now intimately involved with SuSE Linux. This was the decade in which NetWare all but disappeared from the headlines, and it surely won’t be long before most people have forgotten it even existed.

From Novell’s point of view, NetWare is history, but NetWare support keeps popping up in some places, such as this new press release about Exchange.

Virtualisation

An announcement about Novell’s IWM is a little old by now, but some sites are catching up and Microsoft’s close ally in Europe becomes a client.

Novell today announced advancements in the joint development agreement between Novell and SAP AG. As part of the ongoing initiative, SAP has integrated PlateSpin Orchestrate, part of the virtualization and workload management suite from Novell, with the SAP NetWeaver(R) Adaptive Computing Controller tool within the SAP NetWeaver technology platform. Additionally, SAP has chosen SUSE Linux Enterprise as the operating system for the latest version of the SAP(R) Discovery system, available for the first time as a virtual appliance. These advances enable customers to dramatically increase the manageability and portability of SAP applications and simplify the installation of SAP Discovery system, helping them reduce cost, complexity and risk.

No surprise here. SAP is obedient to software patents and to Microsoft, so it chooses Novell again.

Mail

Groupwise support is mentioned in some new articles about the BlackBerry (e.g. [1, 2]) and Groupwise also appears in this press release. Regarding news that was mentioned previously, there is this new release from GWAVA.

More importantly, Groupwise gets another round of public shaming because Google has gone more vocal about its win over Groupwise at Los Angeles. [also mirrored in the Washington Post]

According to Google’s blog post, the city – which is replacing its Novell GroupWise system – had evaluated 14 e-mail technology providers for a revamp of the city government’s communication and collaboration platform, and ended up picking Google Apps.

To say more about the same news, we have:

• Google Apps Launches for L.A.’s 34,000 Employees

Los Angeles officially went Google, six weeks after Google beat Microsoft and other suitors for the right to replace Novell’s GroupWise platform with Google Apps in a contract valued at $7.25 million.

• L.A. Picks Google Apps And Partner CSC For E-mail System

The City of Los Angeles is replacing its Novell (NSDQ:NOVL) GroupWise e-mail system with Google (NSDQ:GOOG)’s e-mail application and laying the foundation for implementing other Google Web-based applications in the future with the help of solution provider CSC.

• L.A.’s Google Contract Is Open to All California Cities

CSC says public agencies that jump aboard will enjoy initial and recurring savings, much like L.A.’s projections. The city estimates $5.5 million of savings during its five-year deal after the city migrates from its existing e-mail system, Novell GroupWise. L.A. officials say the Google implementation will reduce the number of servers needed for e-mail from 90 to a few dozen, and cut nine positions from the Los Angeles Information Technology Agency.

Groupwise loses in Seattle too: “Seattle City Hall completes switch to Microsoft”

But since 1997, the city had used Novell’s Groupwise software – and it steadily grew obsolete, KUOW’s Amy Radil reported.

More places in California are being defended by Novell using a press release that says:

Novell endpoint management, identity management, networking and virtualization tools control cost and ease strain on IT support staff

A couple of new studies, one of which about mail and collaboration, are to be published with Groupwise included.

The study provides a detailed analysis of leading players, including: CommuniGate Systems, Gecad Technologies, IBM, IceWarp, Ipswitch, Kerio Technologies, Mailsite Software, Microsoft, Novell, Open-Xchange, Sun Microsystems, Zimbra, and others.

Security

Apart from some routine security updates in SUSE there was this bit about eDirectory:

WatchGuard provides five options, including standard web browser authentication using PINs or passwords. SSL challenge-and-response authentication is aimed at the use of tokens for generating passwords. The Mobile Text method calls for an OTP (one time password) to be sent via SMS to a mobile after users have entered their credentials. LDAP, Active Directory (AD), Novell’s eDirectory and form-based authentication are among 11 other standard methods supported.

People

Schmidt’s roots at Novell are mentioned only in this one place, but here is a person with scarce Novell experience gaining a position of power.

The trio of Stuart Elkin, Andrew Webb and Martin Kamarauskas will be assigned to build sales in new and dormant True Colours accounts.

[...]

Kamarauskas has five years’ experience in selling IT training solutions from Microsoft, Cisco, Novell and Citrix.

Leftovers

Novell was mentioned in some more new items [1, 2, 3, 4], but the significance of these items is utterly low. Another press release speaks about the use of Novell’s facilities in Utah.

The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of the 2009 Annual UVEF Awards. The awards recognize Utah companies and leaders for innovation, business growth and contributions to the entrepreneurial community. Award recipients were honored at ceremonies held today at the Provo Novell Campus.

Novell’s Provo campus may have become less attractive after the recent incident (shown below). █

Direct link

Summary: Despite being a quiet week for Novell, there are items worth highlighting as follows

UK Press

AS noted yesterday, The Register has come up with a lot of Google-hostile articles recently. Here is one of them that mentions Novell:

Salesforce.com is a big Google partner and fellow cloud evangelist. On the more traditional business-user front, Novell has so-far stepped up with Pulse, its implementation of Wave with features added for the use by the enterprise.

Timothy from The Register turns out to be cross-posting now. Here is his latest article that mentions Novell as follows.

Now it is time for IBM to get serious and buy Red Hat before Oracle does. In a pinch, snapping up Citrix Systems and Novell would also do.

The Yorkshire Evening Post has this new article that mentions Novell also.

The company now boasts a turnover of £1.8m, employs around 15 Leeds staff and has a contract with Novell, one of the biggest software companies in the US.

SCO

Only Groklaw has been keeping track of things, ranging from the AutoZone case to the bankruptcy.

SCO’s Chapter 11 Trustee Edward Cahn has filed an objection to the Wayne Gray motion to lift the stay. Cahn says that to characterize the Wayne Gray motion as “highly irregular” would be “an understatement”.

Groklaw also published a good article which is titled: “Why the GPL Sinks SCO’s Copyright Infringement Claims, Even if it Owned the Copyrights”

I’ve started to wonder if Novell or IBM has explained to SCO’s Chapter 11 Trustee Edward Cahn how the GPL works. It cuts through all the other ways SCO is bound to lose, in my view. Then, I thought: why not just explain it myself? You never know. It might prove useful to put it all in one place. So, here goes, SCO and the GPL.

Finance

An analysis of Red Hat’s financials mentions Novell as follows:

However, pricing pressure from its major competitors such as Novell Inc. (NOVL), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Oracle (ORCL) in the virtualization business may hurt the company’s results in the near future.

This one is more specific to Novell:

Company Financials: Novell, Inc – Aarkstore Enterprise

[...]

The Company Financials offers insights into the financial performance of the company over last five years for about 1000 leading global companies. The datapack covers wealth of financial information relating to income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow statements.

Netware/Old

One historical reference to Netware can be seen here, but that’s about it.

Other older products that are mentioned can be found here (mentioned last week).

North Georgia College & State University in Dahlonega has selected Matrix42′s Empirum version 12 for software and patch management. The new deployment replaces a legacy collection of manual processes, scripts, and Novell applications.

ZENworks again:

LiveTime 6 also includes 12 pre-integrated connectors supporting Loginventory, LANDesk, Tivoli Discovery, Novell ZENworks Desktop, Asset and Configuration Management products,Spiceworks ( News – Alert), Express Software Manager, LANrev, Microsoft SMS and SCCM 2007, as well as Centennial.

Virtualisation

A Microsoft-associated ‘news’ site gave Novell Storage Manager a mention in this article about AutoVirt.

According to Toigo, “I would also encourage folks to look at Novell Storage Manager (NSM) and some of the products from Crossroads Systems. And, isn’t this a cautionary tale we should be considering as we examine some of Cisco’s woo in the hardware-centric data management space?”

More examples here and also here, despite it being nothing significant.

While Dell is the latest, it isn’t the only vendor selling virtual desktop, single sign-on offerings to healthcare organizations. Other vendors include Sychron and Novell.

Mail

Groupwise is mentioned in relation to the Blackberry (yes, again), Android/Droid, and also in relation to Los Angeles (it never ends).

It supports Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise etc.

In October, the Los Angeles City Council unanimously approved the ITA’s plan to switch from Novell GroupWise to Google Apps, via a $7.5 million implementation that will be managed by Computer Sciences Corp.

It seems safe to say that GroupWise is usually being phased out and rarely phased in. Here is another new loss for GroupWise.

Customer-Service Oriented Massachusetts Bank Optimizes its Microsoft Exchange Email Environment with Mimosa NearPoint Following Migration from Novell GroupWise.

More information about this migration can be found here (or here).

With rapid growth being derived from its entrepreneurial mission, Enterprise Bank decided to migrate from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange to better support its communications infrastructure. Email had become the backbone application for company communication and with its GroupWise environment, archiving and individual item recovery was not possible. As a result, the active community bank also sought a comprehensive archiving solution that would provide complete data protection, proactive eDiscovery, and end-user search functionality in a unified offering.

Groupwise was also mentioned in this article. Regarding Evolution, we have this:

I am also trying out the Novell Evolution PIM (Personal Information Manager), which is very Gnome-like in its simplicity/lack-of-customisationism. The integrated calendar is pretty swish though, next step is to integrate it more with Thinking Rock.

Identity/Management

Despite some cage-rattling from Novell’s PR, this part of Novell’s business seems rather dormant. Novell is a minor player in this area. From IDG:

One-quarter turn to Symantec’s products to manage client systems, and 11% use LANDesk (now part of Avocent). IBM, HP, CA, BMC and Novell each represented less than 10% of those polled by Forrester.

Security

There is nothing to see here except a couple of SUSE flaws.

People/Partners

A former Novell employee becomes Vice President elsewhere, which may impact future relationships.

Newman began his career as a software engineer for Novell, Inc., eventually becoming EVP of the $1B NetWare Systems group. In 1996 he founded KeyLabs, Inc. and sold that company to Exodus Communications for $42 million in 1999. Prior to selling KeyLabs, he founded Altiris, Inc., a company that used software delivery technology developed at KeyLabs to revolutionize the systems management industry. Altiris completed a public offering in 2002 and was purchased by Symantec Corp. in 2007 for more than $1B.

Novell has just partnered with Logica.

IT services provider Novell, Inc .and Logica Management Consulting, consulting arm of leading IT and business services company, today announced their partnership for bringing a combined governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) offering with SAP to the market.

Tech Data continues to grow closer to Novell (also covered here).

Open Tech builds upon Tech Data’s extensive experience supporting open source leaders like Novell and Red Hat. That experience includes helping these top open source vendors grow their businesses through the channel by recruiting new resellers to deploy their solutions to SMBs, large enterprises, government agencies, educational institutions and healthcare facilities.

Novell’s PR people wrote about it and so did IDG.

While Tech Data carries Red Hat and Novell – the two big guys in this space that are particularly strong in the data centre – the distie hasn’t traditionally carried ISV applications to round out a complete solution. To add to the mix, there are also tier-one players that offer open-source SKUs, such as Microsoft, Oracle and Symantec. And since there’s a growing demand for open source, the distie is attempting to step it up a notch.

Another bit of evidence of a relationship can be seen here (IBS), here, and here.

The company is a general representative of Hewlett Packard/Compaq, Alcatel, Canon, Cisco, Novell, Oracle and APC on the Albanian market.

The demand for such tools has attracted the attention of a variety of vendors, including BeyondTrust, which last month unveiled what it termed the first first privileged account management product for heterogeneous IT environments, along with CA, Quest Software and Novell.

DMTF always has Novell’s role mentioned, not just when Novell’s perspective is promoted. Novell was additionally mentioned in some other articles and press releases, one of which speaks of driver compatibility tests issued by Microsoft and Novell (separately).

All Edimax products are CE,FCC and C-Tick emission certified in addition to driver compatibility tests performed by Microsoft, Novell and NSTL.

So that’s where it ends. Nothing too significant this week. █

Summary: An example of disinformation about history being spread by those to whom open, royalty-free standards are a foe

ONE of our readers has alerted us about what seems like revisionism — a topic that we covered many times before, e.g. in:

• IDG/IDC Does Microsoft’s Revisionism to Deny Crimes
• More Microsoft Jack Revisionism
• How History Gets Warped — Not Forgotten — to Conceal Microsoft Violations
• The New York Times, Hosted by Microsoft Revisionists

Getting down to the latest claim of revisionism, our reader points to this article which says: ‘“In the dot-com bust it was Unix to Linux migration because Linux was cheaper than Solaris on SPARC,” says Barry Crist, CEO of Likewise, a maker of integration and identity management software for mixed environments. “Phase 2 [of corporate open source adoption] has been accelerated by the current economic conditions. IT is looking to do things in a cost-effective manner and there are a lot of viable open source solutions out there.”‘

Our reader says: “It looks like another Microsoft partner trying to establish revisionist history of the history of the WWW.

“You can spot the Microsoft partners by how they stick to Microsoft talking points and how they exist to rope businesses into Microsoft infrastructure and elimination of open standards.”
      –Anonymous“During the dot-com, Linux was being added in addition to SunOS on Sparc and Digital Unix on Alpha. Microsoft had not yet even begun to infect the server room at the time, despite the beginnings of FUD and even a smattering of false advertising.

“Linux was often used to get a web service up and running with the least amount of delay on old PCs while the real hardware request was making its way through administrative channels.

“Unluckily, Linux ended up giving managers the idea that Windows servers worked. Most of the claims of growth for Windows in the server room can be blamed on Microsoft eating Novell Netware’s market through false advertising (see court cases) and BSA strongarming. Once those were in place, users bitched up a storm at the loss of reliability. The fast response by the IT dept was to slap Samba on a machine and not tell anyone. The increased reliability of files services for Windows users was attributed then to Windows Server, rather than Samba on Linux. Often the Windows server that a zealot manager forced on the IT department sat in the corner humming away, consuming electricity, WITHOUT a network cable. Then came the day, that under the belief that the server room was using Windows, the managers replaced a departing tech with a Windows monkey who promptly zapped the Samba…”

We gave several examples of migrations without permission back in August. This issue is real.

As for Likewise, it is the "Microsoft version" of Samba (adding software patents to the original software). Our reader shares this older article which starts with: “What’s it like to be an open source company that’s also a Microsoft partner dependent on the Windows world? Not bad, says Barry Crist, CEO of Likewise Software…

Our reader then adds: “You can spot the Microsoft partners by how they stick to Microsoft talking points and how they exist to rope businesses into Microsoft infrastructure and elimination of open standards. That company is peddling Microsoft alternative to Kerberos+LDAP+(puppet/radmind)

“Another apologist company is Cloudera, which seems to be one of Microsoft proxies to damage the Apache foundation and Hadoop in particular.”

Our reader points to a press release, but this latter assessment/speculation is highly questionable. Cloudera was formed by a man from Oracle, whose company had been bought before he left (one can see its genesis in the official Web sites), so any suggestion that its GNU/Linux-based Hadoop distribution is a negative thing would require considerable proof. Regardless, the part about Likewise was worth a quick discussion. There are reasons for distrust, many of which we covered before. █

“What we are trying to do is use our server control to do new protocols and lock out Sun and Oracle specifically”

–Bill Gates

“Thanks to Mr. Gates, we now know that an open Internet with protocols anyone can implement is communism; it was set up by that famous communist agent, the US Department of Defense.”

–Richard Stallman

Summary: A bundle of news about Novell Pulse, SCO-Novell news, and various other items

With OpenSUSE being the main item this week, not much else could be said about Novell. We wrote about Pulse last week and it is still the most unique item of Novell news.

Pulse

One of our readers, who spotted the noise from Novell’s marketing people, argues that Novell still has a pulse — for now.

Many people think that Novell is controlled directly from Redmond (or certainly sits and gives a paw on command of its Microsoft master). It matters not, the damage “the deal” did to the public perception of Novell IMO shows how insidious a Microsoft relationship can be.

Here is another newer article about Pulse.

Novell has announced the first real-time collaboration platform for the enterprise, Novell Pulse. In addition, Novell stated it is working with Google to enable Novell Pulse users and Google Wave users to seamlessly work together across both systems.

Pulse was also covered or mentioned indirectly under:

i. Thunderbird 3, Raindrop and the Future of Mozilla Messaging

After meeting Ascher in San Francisco and having recently covered both Wave and Novell Pulse-related stories, ReadWriteWeb’s first question was obvious: Would Mozilla be merging Thunderbird and Raindrop for a Google Wave-like experience?

ii. ThoughtWorks Studios ‘Mingles’ with Google Wave

ThoughtWorks Studios was one of three companies demoing software integrations with Google Wave at the conference: Novell showed off a real-time, enterprise collaboration platform called “Pulse,” which it plans to integrate with Google Wave; and SAP demoed an application called “Gravity,” through which users collaborate on creating and modeling business processes.

iii. Summit: Dealing with communications overload

When you look at some of the tools becoming available, Novell’s recent Pulse announcement and Google Wave are examples, you can combine the transient messages around something with something which is persistent through which you can refer to it and which many people can work on.

SCO

Jeff Hunsaker is out! Groklaw writes:

Here’s an interview with CEO Shawn Jenkins, to give you the flavor of what they do. It’s a software company. I understand it’s a company that uses Linux to some degree, actually. I’m sure the techies there are simply thrilled to have Young in their midst. Note his bio leaves the SCO job off the list, which is the same pattern we noticed when he joined SCO in 2004. It must be hard to be an ex-SCO person. Or maybe it’s just because he is stressing other skill sets now, like the ability to “handle rapid growth”, not something he needed at SCO.

And I notice that the company is hiring, even looking for a general counsel, who will report to Young. They need a Senior Software Engineer (EDI and Java or .NET) too.

So, where did Darl McBride land, I wonder? I haven’t heard anything yet. Maybe NASA could send him to the moon. I hear they found water there, so maybe he could bottle it and sell Moon Water from his Harley?

For what it’s worth, we have mentioned Jeff Hunsaker in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Here is another important development:

SUSE Moves to Lift Stay on Arbitration; Novell Asks to Consolidate with IBM Litigation or Have Both Cases Assigned to That Judge

Novell has made two moves. In bankruptcy court, SUSE asks that the stay be lifted so the arbitration can go forward. And in Utah, Novell has filed a Notice of Related Proceeding, asking that the SCO v. Novell and SCO v. IBM litigations either be consolidated with SCO v. IBM or at least be assigned to the same judge, Tena Campbell.

Past Software

Certified Novell engineers are mentioned in relation to the impact of an Oracle/Novell takeover.

Radical mergers such as the Oracle/Sun combo could revolutionise and shake up IT. Conversely, Oracle would do well to remember what happens to companies which either overstretch themselves and/or become entrenched in fighting yesterday’s wars and settling old scores. Novell became unstuck doing both – remember CNE?

Novell applications are being replaced in North Georgia College & State University, according to this press release

Matrix42 Empirum v12 Suite of Management Products Will Replace Outdated Combination of Manual Processes, Scripts and Novell Applications

Novell support (including Netware) is mentioned in another release and the effect of Novell on 3Com is mentioned following the acquisition announcement (by HP).

1990 – Facing stiff competition from Microsoft and Novell, 3Com gets out of the network operating system business.

GroupWise

GroupWise support in the BlackBerry gets Novell some attention and GroupWise love from Messaging Architects is noted in the following press release:

Messaging Architects and Omni Deliver Innovative Compliance Management for Exchange 2010 and GroupWise 8

Messaging Architects and Omni, recognized leaders in email management products and services, today announced that Omni’s eControl console will support natively Messaging Architects’ Email Risk Management and Compliance products. The enhancement will benefit M+Archive and M+Guardian customers with simplified administration management, provisioning and delegation of routine tasks.

There are other new examples of GroupWise support:

…Novell® GroupWise are supported.

Some BlackBerry support again:

Magticom is offering BlackBerry Enterprise Server for corporate clients, a solution that tightly integrates with IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise and works with existing enterprise systems to enable secure, push-based wireless access to email and other corporate data. BlackBerry services also allow consumers and business users to manage up to ten supported email accounts (including most popular ISP email accounts) from their BlackBerry smartphone.

The defeat of GroupWise is still being debated, even in the ‘Microsoft press’.

What technology was the city using for e-mail?
The primary e-mail system that the city was using was the Novell one, and I think they also had some instances of Microsoft Exchange as well.

More GroupWise in government:

The departments and agencies whose users will be migrated onto the centralised email platform are already using Exchange, but some installations of IBM’s Lotus Notes/Domino and Novell’s GroupWise platforms remain throughout the state government.

The National Kidney Foundation has found something to complement GroupWise:

The foundation turned to email archiving as a less labor-intensive means of cutting down on the size of its two GroupWise Post Offices than trying to get stricter about mailbox quotas. Given that GroupWise is not as widely used as Microsoft’s Exchange, finding an email archiving vendor that supports it was a tricky and expensive project.

Identity Management

Except for some minor items there was only this press release, but that too is nothing major.

Smart card management solution involving integration with Novell Identity Manager

Security/Recovery

Novell is still capitalising on threat (or perceived threat) and data recovery is said to be assisted by Novell Cluster Services.

Now, all these servers are virtualized and run from a cluster, using Novell Cluster Services . So when a physical machine goes down, the virtual server can be moved to another location with very little downtime. Moving to virtualization also saved in hardware costs. Since newly purchased servers would no longer require hard drives for storage, it could save $7,000 to $8,000 per server, according to the city.

People

Novell has undergone some shuffles at the top.

Mr Poole takes over for acting senior vice president of human resources Scott Semel. Mr Semel continues his role as senior vice president and general counsel at Novell.

To use Novell’s explanation:

Novell today announced that Russell Poole, former vice president and senior HR partner, has been named senior vice president, Human Resources, effective immediately. Poole will be based out of Novell’s headquarters in Waltham, Mass., and will report directly to President and CEO Ron Hovsepian. Poole takes over for acting Senior Vice President of Human Resources Scott Semel. Semel continues his role as senior vice president and general counsel at Novell.

There is more to be found here and maybe here.

Former Novell software engineer Verdon Walker has run the race three times with the corporate team “2 Slow 2 Win 2 Dumb 2 Quit.”

Partners

The following new press release identifies NDS8 as a Novell partner.

NDS8 (www.nds8.co.uk) is a Novell Platinum Partner and Astaro Preferred Partner, focused on maximising the functionality and reliability of Novell and SuSE applications.

Novell was mentioned in some other press releases, mostly in the footers.

A community college seems to be giving this technical advice about Novell in a new video that it has just uploaded. █

–Miguel de Icaza

Summary: Novell’s (and Mirosoft CodePlex’) Miguel de Icaza issues a call to make more software with Microsoft XAML

AT the beginning of 2008 we wrote this summary of how Microsoft had turned Corel from a GNU/Linux proponent into a .NET proponent. Microsoft neutered the competition using money. In other words, a small ‘bribe’ was once again used to dismantle competition. There is a lot to be learned here also from Apple [1, 2, 3].

In a new article from SJVN, the history of GNU/Linux on the desktop is outlined with the following portion about Corel: “Alas, after Corel experienced some brief success, its efforts came to little. Facing strong opposition from Microsoft and financially ravished by an ill-timed move into the then-hot application service provider (ASP) market and inadequate profits from its application lines, Corel quickly found itself in hot water. By the end of 2000, Corel had changed management and partnered up with Microsoft.”

“On several occasions, Novell had changed management (Schmidt, Messman, etc.) and eventually partnered up with Microsoft.”This sounds just like Novell, doesn’t it? To rephrase the above, Novell experienced some success with Netware, but its efforts came to little in recent years. Facing strong opposition from Microsoft and financially ravished by an ill-timed move into the then-hot *NIX/groupware market and inadequate profits from its application lines, Novell quickly found itself in hot water. On several occasions, Novell had changed management (Schmidt, Messman, etc.) and eventually partnered up with Microsoft.

Then, in both cases, came .NET promotion. Novell’s de Icaza, who is currently a board member at Microsoft's CodePlex Foundation, is now rallying his troops at Novell/Ximian/outside to create applications with Moonlight rather than with tools which are not controlled by Microsoft. There are many posts about it in his blog on November 12^th (3 in one day, which is unusual). For example he says:

I know that various members of the Moonlight team are passionate about Moonlight because it is this next generation API for building GUI applications.

Which applications do you think are needed nad could be built with Moonlight?

I say video editing, and I have some ideas of how it should work.

The Mono-Nono Web site calls it “Moonlight Marching Orders” and explains this as follows:

Look for ever more of this sort of thing as Team Mono attempts to expand Mono and Moonlight. Team Mono is already getting marching orders to start pushing Moonlight harder, the first plan being a video editor.

A video editor is a beautiful infection vector for Moonlight, because:

1. Moonlight itself only safe to use for direct Novell customers,
2. All those nice proprietary video codecs that Novell has licensed from Microsoft are only safe for direct Novell customers as well.

So, Novell sees a great opportunity to spread Moonlight and the fruits of its Microsoft collaboration, while pretending to develop a “Linux” application.

So long as your “Linux” comes directly via Microsoft-approved Novell-only channels, of course – other Linux flavors need not apply – or redistribute.

Moonlight is a mess, based on the following message which was posted this afternoon:

Subject: Silverlight crap: the saga continues
From: Richard Rasker <spamtrap@linetec.nl>  (Linetec)
Date: Friday 13 Nov 2009 12:37:13
Groups: comp.os.linux.advocacy

Well, it’s been two weeks already since the last Moonlight update — you know, the one that broke Silverlight playback. How time flies. And sure enough, because this Microsoft crap requires on average one update per week, I got yet another notification: http://www.linetec.nl/linux/mooncrap1.png
OK, so I click “Install”. Oh, drat. Once again, it requires the installation of a codec pack: http://www.linetec.nl/linux/mooncrap2.png . Sheesh, this must be the fourth or fifth time that I installed it. Can’t these incompetent idiots even manage to create a codec pack that remains usable for two whole weeks? And yup, as expected, there’s the license again http://www.linetec.nl/linux/mooncrap3.png — in typical Microsoft fashion: unreadable lingo in a non-resizable window, no doubt meant to discourage more perseverent users. Copy/pasted it to a decent text editor, and read it.
OK, no truly onerous terms, apart perhaps from the patent provisions: http://www.linetec.nl/linux/mooncrap.txt
Then I noticed something: the installed update was Moonlight version 1.99.8, whereas the codec pack distinctly mentions that it’s “ONLY FOR USE WITH NOVELL’S MOONLIGHT 2.0 ALPHA VERSION.” Ah well, 1.99.8 is close enough to 2.0, so I guess it should work.

Except that it doesn’t. Not only that — the situation has even gotten worse: on some Web pages, Firefox now crashes immediately when clicking Silverlight content, and on other pages, nothing happens. So I tried running Firefox from a terminal window, to catch any messages:

  $ firefox
  Attempting to load libmoonloaderxpi
  Moonlight: Forcing client-side rendering because we detected binary drivers which are known to suffer performance problems.

Huh? The official nVidia drivers “suffer performance problems”? And how come this crapware is the *only* software complaining about it? From what I see, accelerated video rendering works absolutely great with my GeForce 8500 GT graphics card.

  Moonlight: Installing signal handlers for crash reporting.
  Moonlight: Enabling MONO_DEBUG=keep-delegates.
  Moonlight: Plugin AppDomain Creation: OK
  Moonlight: Plugin AppDomain Creation: OK
  URL /includes/wmvplayer.xaml downloaded successfully.
  URL /includes/wmvplayer.xaml downloaded successfully.

  (firefox:12436): Moonlight-CRITICAL **: void MediaElement::Pause(): assertion `playlist != NULL’ failed

  (firefox:12436): Moonlight-CRITICAL **: void MediaElement::Pause(): assertion `playlist != NULL’ failed
  Download of URL http://www.rtvoost.nl/nieuws/images/preview/itemsMedia/156318.jpg?nid=103704 failed: 1 (network error)
  Download of URL http://www.rtvoost.nl/nieuws/images/preview/audio.png?nid=103704 failed: 1 (network error)

Hm, OK, so those latter lines suggest that something’s wrong at the server side. But no, that can’t be, because it works under Windows. So two of the  biggest software companies in the world combined can’t even pull off a decent media player that works under Linux. Just compare this sorry mess with MPlayer: just a handful of guys (and perhaps gals) created a media player, complete with browser plugin, that has worked great from day one, on each and every Linux, Windows and Mac version.

So I give up on this closed source rubbish. I uninstalled everything having to do with Moonlight and Silverlight (regaining some 50MB of HD space in the process — probably all those useless codec packs), and I’ll tell my users that they’re out of luck when they stumble upon Silverlight content.

Richard Rasker

http://www.linetec.nl

Rather than present a rational rebuttal, Miguel de Icaza libels me in Twitter (personal attacks with outright lies). He still has some remaining defenders, who nonetheless acknowledge that “Mono is also seen by many as a potential legal landmine, due to Microsoft patents.”

The “Mono Tools” are based on Mono, a from-scratch open source implementation of .NET. Developed by the Novell-sponsored Mono project, which has also developed the Moonlight open source clone of Microsoft’s Silverlight, Mono has proven to be controversial in the open source community, as are most Novell-sponsored efforts that appear to sidle up to Microsoft. While an impressive piece of software, and imminently useful in a .NET dominated enterprise software world, Mono is also seen by many as a potential legal landmine, due to Microsoft patents.

There are issues greater than patents. It’s about control. No wonder Microsoft helps Mono so much, as the following new post puts it:

Microsoft has said that it backs Mono Tools, but then Microsoft would put their stamp of approval on products that integrate with its Visual Studio IDE (integrated development environment) as they “enrich the Visual Studio ecosystem” no less.

Of course Microsoft approves it. It’s beneficial to Microsoft, so it’s not competition. Mono is complementary to Microsoft, just like Novell is to Microsoft. Here is simple visualisation of where Mono fits.

What Microsoft wants

Microsoft finds some other new complements for Visual Studio/.NET while pretending to have embraced “open source”. Only yesterday we wrote about Orchard, which is now being cast as independent even though it’s not. Microsoft knows that in order for people to swallow .NET it needs to pretend that it comes from other companies, preferably those who are perceived as “trusted”. █

Summary: Plenty of news dominated by Novell’s announcement of Pulse

THERE are many items today, but the only one of real significance is Pulse, so we shall begin with that.

Pulse

The following new product can seen as a sign that Novell is running out of ideas. Here is some initial coverage:

• Novell Pulse: Security and Backup to Google Wave
• Novell announces first major integration with Google Wave
• Novell Unveils Enterprise Collaboration Suite
• Novell unveils real-time collaboration platform for the enterprise and demonstrates Google Wave interoperability
• Update: Novell unveils enterprise social networking suite
• Novell Pulse rides Google Wave
• Novell Pulse Launches with Google Wave Support for Real-Time Collaboration

Here is the corresponding press release from Novell (something similar here) and announcement from Ian Bruce at Novell’s PR blog.

To quote some more coverage:

When Google Wave was first released, it impressed a lot of people from a technical standpoint. The trouble was, no one could figure out a practical use for it. Now, Novell has decided to take a shot, announcing a service known as Pulse.

From IDG:

Novell has unveiled an enterprise social networking suite that is integrated with Google’s new Wave application and lets co-workers collaborate on documents.

GWAVA adds some weight to it while GWAVACon is forming up.

GWAVA, a Novell Collaboration Partner, today revealed intended support for Novell Pulse, the recently announced real-time collaboration initiative that supports Google Wave protocols. GWAVA’s focus on collaboration data security and its long history of expertise with Novell technology means that communication security and data management will be available when Novell Pulse ships in 2010.

It is all rather interesting because Novell collaborates here on Wave, right after publicly insulting Google’s products [1, 2, 3, 4].

Mail

GroupWise support is offered by a variety of new applications and devices that appear in the past week’s news, e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4]. That last one is Android (Droid to be precise), which perhaps makes the Google-Novell relationship a little more reciprocal (see Wave/Pulse above).

There are other examples of Novell support, such as this new video from YouTube which is summarised as follows: “Demo of PortaMailLive Windows Mobile to Novell GroupWise wireless synchronization.”

So anyway, Google/Android phones are supporting GroupWise while replacing it too at another level. From the news at ECT:

A pilot project will begin in June, and a five-year deal with Computer Services Corporation will reportedly save LA $5.5 million dollars over the city’s existing vendor, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL). CSC will serve as the systems integrator.

More information can be found here and in another ECT article:

Google And Cloud Computing Scores Win In Los Angeles

[...]

The main loser there was the city’s previous vendor, Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL), but it may have also been a big eye-opener for Microsoft: Large operations are taking Google seriously, and its prices are more attractive.

From The Examiner:

Google in Los Angeles? No the Mountain View, California, Googleplex is not relocating to sunny LA – the company already has an office in nearby Irvine. Rather, the City of Los Angeles is welcoming the company’s products into its system, replacing the Novell GroupWise e-mail servers and other programs the city currently uses.

Google forces Microsoft and Novell to lower prices and make special offers (Novell did mention something along these lines, not just Microsoft). Microsoft is clearly afraid of Google Apps. From the news:

Microsoft questions Google Apps’ momentum, touts 1M online business suite customers

[...]

Chris Capossela, senior vice-president of the information worker product management group at Microsoft, told Computerworld on Monday that 70% of those users “are coming from IBM Lotus Notes or Novell GroupWise.”

How does Microsoft know? Did IDG check to see evidence?

More coverage here:

The widely cited switch that the city of Los Angeles will be making, from Novell GroupWise, will place Gmail alongside Microsoft desktop apps, a situation that Burton Group analyst Guy Creese tells PCWorld is increasingly common among larger companies.

People

Still on the subject of Google, here is a Wall Street Journal article that reminds people of the Novell-Google intersection:

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt has snapped up Bay Area talent for years, first as an executive at Sun Microsystems Inc., then as CEO of computer maker Novell Inc. and now as the 54-year-old boss at Google.

More at CNET (also published in CNN):

Schmidt knows a thing or two about traditional enterprise customer service: he ran corporate software maker Novell before joining Google. And before Novell, he was an executive at Sun Microsystems.

Other than Schmidt, we were able to find Novell’s Mike Robinson quoted in Processor.com:

Start with the release notes to get a handle on known compatibility issues. You may find that you need to do some work before you start migration. “You may have to upgrade or patch the OS or other applications first in order to ensure a smooth upgrade,” says Mike Robinson, senior product marketing manager for Novell (www.novell.com). Those refinements may resolve some of the driver or other problems that you would have faced otherwise.

He is also quoted in the following new article from Processor.com:

Making a cost-of-downtime calculation specific to your own particular enterprise is beneficial for several reasons, says Richard Whitehead, director of solution marketing at software maker Novell (www.novell.com). By fixing downtime costs, IT managers can isolate problems within the data center that need improvement, determine the reason for the downtime, and fix the problems.

SCO

The SCO-Novell court case is not over. It may actually go on for a while longer. Groklaw writes about the Status Conference and also covers the Trustee’s moves. He is very influential at this stage, having been appointed to restore some sanity while McBride is out in the streets (not literally).

The deal that we announced at the end of last year with Novell I consider to be very important. It demonstrated clearly the value of intellectual property even in the Open Source world. I would not anticipate that we make a huge additional revenue stream from our Novell deal, but I do think it clearly establishes that Open Source is not free and Open Source will have to respect intellectual property rights of others just as any other competitor will.

Here is an old transcript that Groklaw got a hold of and also some details about the lawsuit against McBride (see [1, 2, 3] for context/background).

Pelican has filed its Memorandum in Opposition to Darl McBride’s Motion to Dismiss its complaint against him. It’s a scorcher. First, it says it was McBride who personally led and oversaw the smear campaign against Mark Robbins on the website SkylineCowboy.com. However, we have yet to hear from McBride on that point, as this filing points out. He hasn’t denied it, but then he hasn’t spoken about it substantively yet, relying instead on jurisdictional arguments. Most of the filing is in response to McBride’s assertion that the court lacks jurisdiction over him.

Older Products

Novell’s proprietary legacy keeps popping up in the news. Here is Netware mentioned in an article about “25 Years of PC Week” (the former magazine).

IBM and Microsoft were working together on OS/2 and Novell’s Netware was the most popular networking operating system because it could run on 80286s and use all of the entire memory of the machine.

IT Jungle on Novell servers:

The situation baffled us. Why didn’t TCP/IP remain active over our comm lines? Other network servers, including Microsoft Exchange, Windows file servers, and some Novell servers, started communicating again when the router was restarted.

Novell’s eDirectory is mentioned in IDG as follows:

Users marked as trusted can normally install or run any program they like, within the bounds of their security privileges. All the reviewed products linked to Active Directory, and at least one can link to Novell’s eDirectory services.

More on eDirectory:

PINpoint also provides additional, BES-specific information not normally found in the BlackBerry address book, as well as information collected from the corporate directory (e.g. Microsoft Active Directory or Novell eDirectory), such as department, city, job title, etc.

Novell’s old complaints against Microsoft keep showing up every now and then:

Novell and Sun Microsytems complained a few years back that Microsoft controlled the market through anti-competitive practices. European courts deemed Microsoft‘s Internet Explorer (IE), Windows Media Player (WMP), as added on software that failed to create fair competition.

Virtualisation

Novell is mentioned just very briefly in this analysis of virtualisation strategy at Citrix.

Citrix hopes to bolster the uncertain prospects of the Xen hypervisor by making its free XenServer product entirely open source. That is even though the company expects much more of its future server virtualisation business to be based on Microsoft’s rival Hyper-V hypervisor than XenServer. But by bolstering Xen today, Citrix is boosting Hyper-V for tomorrow. XenServer consists of the open-source Xen hypervisor, wrapped in proprietary Citrix code. A public comment from a senior Citrix executive has revealed that soon this outer wrapping will also be open source.

[...]

Due to Oracle’s acquisition of Virtual Iron last year, and its imminent purchase of Sun, there are now only three major backers for Xen: Citrix, Oracle and Novell. Citrix has said it believes most of its future server virtualisation business will be based on Hyper-V; Oracle faces a tough battle to increase its currently tiny share of the x64 bare-metal server virtualisation market; and, as a Linux supplier, Novell may well follow Red Hat’s example and support KVM.

Security

As we’ve shown twice in recent weeks, Novell is spreading fear in order to sell its products and this article from the British press reveals more of the same.

Novell has issued a warning to today local authorities that they risk failing to meet the assessment criteria for the GCSX Code of Connection (CoCo) because many have implemented systems that do not continuously secure, monitor and audit systems.

Ben Goodman is quoted in an article about internal threats:

“The joke is that if a person works for an organization long enough, they will eventually gain access to everything,” says Ben Goodman, director of technology, Novell.

One of our readers argues that “Symantec posts about fake Mac malware.” He links to Microsoft Jack and offers a translation for Symantec’s message: “please buy our defective AV products.”

Partners

Novell is said to have launched PartnerNet (it sure sounds like old news, which was reposted). Official support for Novell NetWare 5 and 6 comes from this product and Novell is also listed as a supplier in this case.

Other suppliers in the program besides HP and Lakeside include AEP Networks, Blue Coat, DataCore Software, Fortinet, Gemalto, Novell, SonicWall, ThinPrint and WYSE. Various other service and support offerings are included in the program as well.

Additionally, Novell was mentioned in many new press releases from Wyse, a longtime partner.

Utah

Novell’s facilities in Utah appear to have been used a lot recently. Examples:

• Utah Valley group to induct Steven Covey into Hall of Fame

Covey, 77, will be honored at a ceremony during the forum’s hall of fame dinner and fall social beginning at 6:30 p.m. in Provo, at Building A on the Novell Inc. campus, 1860 S. 180 East.

• A revolution in transmission technology?

At a news conference Wednesday at the Novell Technology Center, VMT announced the company had completed work on a computer-aided design prototype for a transmission that it said would improve vehicle gas mileage by at least 30 percent and allow for the production of better-performing sport-utility vehicles and large trucks.

There is also this sponsorship from Novell Technology Center:

The Utah Student 25 is sponsored by: Omniture, Silicon Slopes, Utah CEO, CEO-BYU, BTJD, Grant Thornton, Cornerstone Media, Compass Outdoor, KeyBank, Utah Fund of Funds, FundingUniverse, Provo Business Development Corporation, Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum, Novell Technology Center, Provo Tech Xelerator, Picture This!, PilmerPR, Bateman IP Law Group, Stephen W. Gibson, Doba, and SignCity.

That’s about it for this week. █

Summary: Open University is open to corporations; Microsoft is in too poor a state for long-term reliance

THE Microsoft-oriented [1, 2] Open University is one among many universities that make the appalling decision to outsource their staff’s (and students’) mail. It’s a certain laziness that leads to it because Free software makes cost not an issue at all. Microsoft views this as an opportunity to turn students into clients whose personal messages are shared with Microsoft for mining/profiling, advertising, and long-term lock-in.

For the Open University, will it be Google or Microsoft now that Microsoft's Martin Bean is in the house?

Niall Sclater, the OU’s director of learning innovation, told GC News that the university will shortly be taking a decision about whether to deploy Google Apps or Microsoft Live@edu.

Neither is a good choice. If the Open University is truly open, then it will avoid both proprietary offerings and make use of Free/open source software like many sane universities do.

“If the Open University has “too big to fail” in mind, then it should avoid Microsoft.”What the IT staff is trying to do here is shift liability and move costs downwards and outwards. Downwards because users will pay the price of being prisoners of vendors; outwards because companies like Google/Microsoft cover the short-term costs in exchange for revenue that they then accumulate at the expense of users.

If the Open University has “too big to fail” in mind, then it should avoid Microsoft. Microsoft has just announced another round of layoffs (among others) and judging by its financial results in the past year or two, the company is in a downward spiral. The Open University may wish to take a look at Microsoft’s portfolio of dead products from the past year.

We were actually given some credit for reporting Microsoft layoffs well ahead of time; no other publication did so.

Before we go into the article it is worth mentioning that Boycott Novell reported the 800 job cuts way before the news hit the mainstream media. Detractors to the BN website may like to consider that fact.

Some great companies have vanished faster than anyone could imagine; some became minuscule and some like Novell died slowly as their legacy business eroded (mostly Netware). █

“There is such an overvaluation of technology stocks that it is absurd. I would include our stock in that category. It is bad for the long-term worth of the economy.”

–Steve Ballmer

Summary: This post presents a rundown through some low-impact news from Novell, excepting SUSE

THERE is little to be seen here this week, but here is a bunch of bits we could gather nonetheless.

Finance

Novell’s stock is not important enough to be mentioned frequently, but here is the exception:

Drilling down a little deeper into the Security Software & Services industry, you can see how analysts believe CHKP will stack up against some of the other stocks in the industry, like Novell Inc. (NOVL) [Chart - News - Analysis] and McAfee, Inc. (MFE) [Chart - News - Analysis], in the future. Analysts believe NOVL’s earnings are going to grow at a rate of 10.00% while MFE’s earnings are going to grow at a rate of 14.00%.

Virtualisation

Microsoft support seems to be quite a priority for ZENworks, as shown in the following new post from Novell:

With ZENworks Application Virtualization there are some new functions added that we have already heard are in demand, including support for Windows 7, improvements in the support of IE6 and coexistence with local installs of IE7 or IE8 and the ability to make the virtualized application “expire”. Other new functions are improvements to leveraging .Net 3.5 and the addition of the ability to support SQL Server 2005 Express. We’ve also made the process to publish the virtualized application to a USB drive even simpler.

Here is some old news repeated and also a report that loosely connects VMware to Platespin.

“It’s a necessary addition to their suite of management tools as third parties have been providing capacity planning tools for the VMware environment for some time,” he said, singling out VKernel as a leader in the space, with HP Co., Novell Inc.’s Platespin and DynamicOps also providing capacity planning tools.

Mail

The Los Angeles story never ends. Microsoft’s Sidekick fiasco [1, 2, 3] is ironically being used to advocate staying with Microsoft (and Novell) rather than move to Google:

The plan by the City of Los Angeles is to replace its Novell GroupWise e-mail and Microsoft Office applications with Google Apps. Under the $7.25 million plan, the city will transition about 30,000 users to Google’s e-mail and office productivity products by the end of December 2009. Microsoft had hoped to convince the city that they had an alternative solution.

More on the same subject from the Los Angeles Times:

The budget committee, chaired by Councilman Bernard C. Parks, adjourned after nearly two hours of testimony in which the merits of upgrading the current system were hotly debated by an array of city officials, as well as Google, Microsoft Corp, Novell Inc. and consumer advocates.

There was eventually a success in delaying this Los Angeles decision. Amazing.

LA City Council delays Google Apps decision

[...]

Security concerns had been prominent during earlier discussions of the proposal, which would see the city move off a Novell system and use Google’s hosting service for e-mail and office applications. But the council was more pragmatic, noting that implementing the system would cost $1.5 million more than continuing on with the current system and asking for further details before voting. “The urgency case hasn’t been made,” said Councilman Bernard Parks, chairman of the Budget and Finance committee, according to the Times.

Groupwise was also mentioned here, in relation to the BlackBerry, as usual.

Identity Management/Security

The marketing team speaks about identity and most coverage of this still concerns the SAP deal.

Novell and SAP have announced a partnership to integrate, certify and support their respective security and identity technology and governance, risk and compliance software.

More here.

SAP, Novell drive GRC

SAP and Novell have expanded their partnership to cover governance, risk and compliance (GRC) solutions, states eWeek.

According to SAP, the collaboration involves a joint go-to-market strategy related to GRC solutions.

An evaluation of policies managers turns out to have included Novell’s offerings.

SC Magazine’s Policy Management Group Test looked at seven products used to enforce configuration policies in an enterprise. This includes network, security, software, hardware, encryption and network configurations. Kaseya, AlgoSec, BigFix, Novell, Secure Passage, ManageEngine and Trusted Computer Solutions were featured in the test. SC Magazine evaluated each product on its documentation, ease of use, features and functionality, reporting, alerting and support.

People

Eric Schmidt is probably the richest person to have recently come out of Novell. His Novell roots are still being explicitly mentioned in new articles about Google.

We recently mentioned Stone’s move, which is also mentioned in this short new article. For background:

Stone has served as an EVP/Vice Chairman at Novell, ran Novell’s Venture Fund, and also served at Data General (now EMC).

Another former Noveller speaks out from within ‘Android universe’ (Google):

I write this today at the very real risk of further exposing my age. I’ve already divulged in articles past that I worked with Novell in the 90’s and have a lego-loving nine year old but this may serve to better pinpoint the number of rings around my mid section.

A former Noveller can also be seen in ADT, shifting around inside the company.

Prior to joining Avery, he held a number of regional sales and marketing positions in the IT industry, including Channel Sales Director and North Asia Territory Manager with Novell Inc.

More in this report:

Prior to joining Avery, he held a number of regional sales and marketing positions in the IT industry, including Channel Sales Director and North Asia Territory Manager with Novell Inc. Mr Lam reports directly to Robert Zhu, President of ADT Security, Asia Pacific.

TMCNet, which we often criticise for publishing press releases as though they are article, turns out to have a writer with Novell background, certifications-wise. Maybe it’s temporary (i.e. a guest post).

Richard received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University. He has been a Certified Information Security Systems Professional since 1999, and also holds Novell Certified Network Engineer (CNE) and Microsoft ( News – Alert) Certified Systems Engineer (MCSE) certifications.

John Dragoon, Novell’s Chief Marketing Officer, has pushed this piece into Forbes Magazine, where he is an occasional contributor. He argues about operating systems:

No doubt analysis of this heated debate among OS providers will vary depending on who you’re talking to, but all will agree that an important factor has been the proliferation of hardware and mobile devices among business users and consumers. Just think, 10 years ago it’s likely you used one of two devices for your primary computing–a PC or a laptop–maybe both. And if you did have both, they were loaded with similar or complimentary applications and were closely connected via a single operating system. In contrast, take a look at what is in your pocket or briefcase now. Chances are that shiny new smart phone is not running off the same operating system as your PC or laptop. And if you’re thinking about purchasing a netbook, you have Chrome or Linux-based operating systems like Moblin, to consider as well.

Partners

Looking at Novell’s affairs with other companies, there is this British relationship:

Radical Support’s Birmingham support staff are certified in Citrix, Cisco, Novell, and Microsoft, as well as other critical technologies.

Also from the UK:

QA continues to demonstrate exceptional quality with 4th EMEA award for Novell training

[...]

Commenting on the decision, Jonathan Finch, EMEA Training Principal at Novell UK, said: “QA continues to lead the market for Novell training, providing both the highest volumes of Novell courses, and more importantly, recording superb scores in delegates’ course critiques. The quality and depth of knowledge of QA’s instructors is second to none.

About Salford (UK):

Bridgend is already talking with Salford about future integration projects, including other applications such as SharePoint. A Microsoft, Novell, Oracle and Sun VAR, Salford offers services around those brands topped up with pieces of its own intellectual property.

Novell is also mentioned in Autonomy press releases, which is normal. From a separate press release:

Toffa is a proud partner of Novell(R)…

Another relationship is formed (Simeio):

The company gained over a dozen new clients in financial services, healthcare and entertainment, adding to an installed base that already includes Fortune 50 companies. Simeio also expanded its partner network via new agreements with industry leaders Novell ( News – Alert), IBM and Oracle.

There are other noteworthy press releases, including one from Wyse, which has been working with Novell for years. More details here.

Marketing

In order to improve and extend its reach, Novell PR has begun accumulating more posts from separate employees (not just marketing people):

We’ve also made it much easier for more people inside Novell to contribute. In addition to PR posts, the Novell News blog will repost from the blogs of our CTO Jeff Jaffe and our CMO John Dragoon, as well as other company blogs. We’re very fortunate to have many world-renowned industry experts and thought-leaders on staff. Expect to hear many more voices on this blog.

John Dragoon sort of reposted the BrainShare rave (due to the above aggregation), so the local press treats BrainShare 2010 announcements as news (maybe — just maybe — due to these posts reappearing). From The Salt Lake Tribune, with a copy here:

Novell’s BrainShare conference is returning to Salt Lake City after a one-year hiatus, signaling an improving economy and renewed interest from its customers, a company official said Tuesday.

BrainShare 2010 might be significantly downsized or canceled this time as well. We have already explained why [1, 2].

Other

Novell is not ranked so well among CIOs, but it still does OK compared to some of the rest.

It is telling that old-school vendors like IBM (ranked 20th overall), Microsoft (25th), Novell (29th), and Oracle (35th) are so far down the CIOs’ list.

From CIO.co.uk (IDG) we have picked the following mentioning of Novell:

Highly likeable, clearly cerebral and possessing plenty of boyish enthusiasm and energy, Jack is something of an unusual occupant of the role as much of his career has been spent on the supply side with a roster of companies that reads like a directory of the client/server computing age, from dBase developer Ashton-Tate, through pioneering Windows database firm Superbase, to SPC of Harvard Graphics slideshow fame, once-mighty LAN software giant Novell and king of server-based computing, Citrix.

Guess who Novell loses more customers to?

What has been your biggest tech challenge?

Ripping and replacing the entire server and storage infrastructure as well as migrating 1,500 users from Novell to Active Directory for the Liverpool Women’s Hospital in less than six months.

It is amazing that Novell works so closely with the company that takes away its market share. Novell ought to escape this relationship. █