Yahoo! Blog from Sunnyvale, Creative Commons Attribution 2.0
Generic license (caption added by us, with Ballmer’s words)

Summary: Bartz is out, but she was a temporary pawn all along

A couple of years ago Bartz [1, 2] and Ballmer posed for the cameras in the same way Elop and Ballmer did half a year ago and Hovsepian and Ballmer did in 2006. All those handshakes were the formal handover of car keys to Ballmer. Hovsepian was emitted from his chair a few months ago, Elop plans to leave next year (according to several sources), and Bartz has just been fired (after many former Microsoft executives had been installed inside Yahoo!). It is not as bad as it sounds. Their goal was accomplished as the companies they pretended to be CEOs of were put in the hands of Microsoft.

What does that teach us about deals with Microsoft? We have a special wiki page about it. Microsoft is very manipulative and this destroys good companies that once provided more choices to the market. Without choice, the monopoly or duopoly of Microsoft and Apple is under no pressure to actually innovate. They can also take away people’s technological rights, making antifeatures the ‘standard’. Techrights strives to expose this sheer anti-competitive abuse. █

Summary: Ron Hovsepian says there is a plan for BrainShare 2011, but judging by previous years, it could still be a dead duck (called off)

THE ANNUAL event that is all about GroupWise is not being advertised this year (at least not yet), despite the fact that GroupWise is mentioned in some new pages [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] (although as a very secondary item, as even in news about Novell mail the impression is given that GroupWise no longer has any impact). Even if the GWAVA event vanishes with Novell’s sale (it is currently planned to take place in Torrance), the man who ruined Novell wants to assure clients that BrainShare is not dead yet and there is also a press release about it (BrainShare 2011 was mentioned here recently). A couple of years ago BrainShare was called off after it had been announced and bookings were made; so there is no guarantees that BrainShare 2011 will ever materialise. Besides, why should anyone attend given that AttachMSFT is likely to trash some of Novell’s products? BrainShare 2010 is likely to have been the last ever, but we shall see… █

Update: Richard Bliss sent us the following information by mail:

I attempted to leave a comment on your latest blog concerning Novell and GWAVACon but the site didn’t accept comments.

You state that there isn’t any information about GWAVACon 2011 and suggest that it will be cancelled. GWAVACon 2011 was held January 22-26 in Torrance California with a near record attendance.

GWAVACon Europe is already receiving registration for the first week in October during Oktoberfest. You should join us.

GWAVACon 2012 has already been announced for January in Torrance again.

The one is doubt is Novell’s.

Summary: Novell continues to fail financially while the Hovsepian family is hoarding tens of millions of dollars for a job poorly done (selling out to Microsoft)

MR. HOVSEPIAN is a very well paid CEO. He is also quite good at finding excuses for poor performance. According to this new report from Boston, Hovsepian continues to receive a lot of money, despite the fact that the company he runs loses money and employees.

And Novell Inc. CEO Ronald W. Hovsepian earned a $1.3 million performance award. The software company has lost money for three straight years. Novell declined to comment.

To quote another new article:

Novell Inc. reported that chief executive Ronald W. Hovsepian’s $3.4 million stock and options package was 10 percent below what he got in 2008. But that was only because Novell’s stock price was so much lower. The company gave Hovsepian 170,192 more shares in 2009, and 241,681 more stock options than it did in 2008. Novell’s stock price has since increased by two-thirds, making it possible that the 2009 package could be worth more than his 2008 one.

What has Hovsepian done that’s so commendable?

It is hard to forget how Hovsepian lays off many people whose combined wages make up his bonus [1, 2]. He helps shows where today’s capitalism has gone slightly over the edge (widening the gap between rich and poor) and his employees are hopefully paying attention to it. In general, many of the skilled employees have already left and gone to work somewhere more ethical. It’s no wonder that Novell suffers a brain drain and in New Zealand, for example, even managers are missing right now:

Novell aims to fill two key local roles – a country lead/partner executive and a commercial and government sales representative, by the end of October.

Novell has suffered somewhat of an exodus this year and last year. Given that Novell is bound to be sold soon, not many people will pursue employment there. Perhaps those massive bonuses Hovsepian receives are — as we suggested before — intended to just keep him from leaving (which would leave the company in complete disarray). █

Summary: A look at the 10-year anniversary IBM and Novell are celebrating; Novell is trying to poach Solaris users

It is hard to tell what Novell is negotiating behind the scenes right now, but bids to acquire the company sure prove distracting and new analyses of Novell as a publicly-traded company must take into account that this is probably Novell’s final year. Existing and former Novell employees such as this guy, Justin Steinman who is quoted in this article, or even Dale Olds might not have a future in Novell. Where might they go next? We’ll have to wait and find out. Novell’s CTO, for example, ended up in the W3C (as CEO). Who is Novell’s existing CTO? Has it found a replacement for Jeff Jaffe yet? Will it bother at all at this stage?

Jeff Jaffe — just like Ron Hovsepian — came from IBM, which has a special relationship with Novell on the mainframe and now celebrates with Novell the tenth anniversary of “Market Leadership With SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM System z” [1, 2, 3]. Some articles mix/blur the role of SUSE and the role of Novell. Well, nothing is perfect. There is another emphasis on AMD and Novell.

As tribute to this major milestone, a Saturday outage is planned by OpenSUSE (joke) — an outage which was planned about a week ahead.

The outage planned for this Saturday (June 5th) has been rescheduled.

OpenSUSE has too many of those scheduled OpenSUSE outages. They happen once in several months.

The OpenSUSE Conference 2010 is coming soon [1, 2] and OpenSUSE will also attend LinuxTag 2010, which has been ‘infiltrated’ by Microsoft [1, 2]. The “OpenSUSE Boosters” will be brought in for reinforcement. Here is a glimpse at what SUSE had to show in BrainShare Amsterdam (video).There is also this SUSE (Ballnux) advert which was uploaded days ago.

“The “OpenSUSE Boosters” will be brought in for reinforcement.”Getting back to server news, see the press release about Novell’s latest poaching programme (also here). This received some press coverage [1, 2] and lots of it is in the Indian press for some reason [1, 2]. They sometimes make it sound like Novell is helping rather than preying, but here is a better headline with lengthy article that does more than repeat portions of the press release. █

Summary: Now that Novell is a dead company walking it’s time to say something about the tens of millions of dollars Ron Hovsepian made for his failure and betrayal of his suppliers

LAST week we wrote about Novell’s results (more here), emphasising that Novell is on its route to being acquired almost for sure. Here are some more new articles that agree with it:

• Novell’s Buyout Valuation Looks Promising – cbl

• No room for another ‘other’ OS choice

The news that Novell has thrown in the towel and is seeking as immediate a trade buy as it can suggests that ultimately there can only be one Linux game in town – and it wears a rouge cap, shall we say.

• Novell’s sales down as it prepares to sell up

The Wall Street Times newspaper reported earlier this month that Novell is in talks with as many as 20 potential acquirers, most of which are private equity firms. In March 2010, Novell rejected a bid from Elliott Associates, saying it undervalued the company.

• Novell struggles through Q2

Novell has reported a $12m drop in net income for the second quarter of 2010 from the same period last year. Novell reported net revenue of $204m for the quarter, compared with net revenue of $216m for the second fiscal quarter of 2009.

• Novell publishes second quarter figures

Novell’s CEO Ron Hovsepian has not an impressive scorecard. He should watch that someone who offered Ballmer "the egg treatment" for this type of failure [1, 2]. Hovsepian has earned a lot of money for himself (in excessive bonuses he did not deserve), but he is leaving Novell in the dust having sold GNU/Linux down the river. We are seeing Novell’s last months now and employees are probably brushing up their resumes.

Here is belated coverage of what was possibly Novell’s latest and very last public event where it pitched ‘clouds’ rather than “open source” or “Linux”.

Novell came back to Europe for the first time in five years to hold its BrainShare conference in Amsterdam last week. Besides the launch of the long-awaited version 4 of its Identity Manager (IM4) product line, Novell also clarified its approach to cloud computing.

Novell founder Drew Major moved on to other things (more here).

Move now lists its headquarters in Irvine, California, although it apparently still has operations in American Fork, Utah, where the firm has been based since its founding by Novell founder Drew Major.

What would he say about Novell today? Did Ron Hovsepian do his job well? the outcome suggests he didn’t. Hovsepian’s legacy is the destruction of Novell. █

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.”

–George Santayana

Summary: Video from last year shows a revealing remark about Ron Hovsepian and Microsoft

Watch the last 2 minutes of this fine talk (we failed to find an Ogg Theora version of it, but we found a full transcript).

It’s an important point, which is why our “Boycott Novell” action/campaign (one among several) lives on. We append the text of interest at the bottom. █

“Our partnership with Microsoft continues to expand.”

–Ron Hovsepian, Novell CEO

I’d like to thank you for coming – it’s an honor to be in the same room with you. I’m one of the hackers – of the technical nature, not the law nature – of the system administrator breed, and we don’t make code, we just make sure that the machines that run the free code keep running so that the coders can, you know, keep writing it. But, it’s funny to me; in the technical world, people really like to demonize Microsoft, but it’s a lot of you know, “Who cares, their software has nothing to do with what I do, so they’re not really a part…”, but I always wondered, what would Microsoft call their Linux distribution? If they decided, you know, “Okay, we can’t beat them, let’s join them.”, and they came out with “Microsoft Linux”, would that hurt?

[Eben Moglen:]

I haven’t seen my dear friend Ron Hovsepian for some weeks, so I’m going to get on his nerves by saying to you: They will call it “Novell”.

[Laughter]

Whatever they do, they will do a lot of work not to call it anything, because to be a distributor of GPL’d software – particularly of that GPL’d software – would have collateral legal consequences for Microsoft it doesn’t want. The real reason for all the patent threatening is in order to be able to use our features, in BSD licenced and other permissively licensed works, to gaudily decorate their own failing software for the next two product cycles, while at the same time getting paid for software they don’t make, through patent revenue requests, okay? The real goal is to get paid for software they don’t make, because software they do make is not selling at a very great advantage over the immensity of their costs.

I’m not going to spend a lot of time here, on camera, talking about Microsoft’s strategy and our strategy, this week of all weeks, but catch me somewhere out there and I’ll say something more about it.

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! █

Summary: Novell BrainShare has the company’s CEO, Ron Hovsepian, avoiding the subject of Elliott Associates, which still wants Novell acquired

IN the news we keep hearing about Novell spurning a buyout offer but not ruling out an acquisition in general [1, 2, 3, 4]. In fact, based on the reaction of the vulture fund, there is expectation that another buyout offer is on its way. “Novell Says ‘No’ but Elliot Hears ‘Maybe’,” says ECT.

An offer of $2 billion just wasn’t enough for Novell’s board of directors, which rebuffed a purchase offer from Elliot Associates. The board says it’s considering other options, but Elliot says it will keep in pursuit. Novell has hinted that it would consider selling for the right price, either to Elliot or another suitor. If that comes to pass, what happens to Suse Linux?

Groklaw, which wants the SCO trial to carry on and be concluded, chooses to believe that it’s over, despite the more complex reality. The VAR Guy has this short report from BrainShare:

After rejecting an unsolicited takeover bid on March 20, Novell had to communicate some quantifiable business progress during the Novell BrainShare conference this week in Salt Lake City, Utah. With that reality in mind, CEO Ron Hovsepian (pictured) and Chief Marketing Officer/Channel Chief John Dragoon offered The VAR Guy a financial and channel partner progress report on March 22. Here’s a recap.

Alas, this is longer than a simple recap.

[...]

During our discussion, CEO Hovsepian was careful not to say too much about the recent Elliott Associates bid for Novell. His standard statement: Novell will continue to fulfill its fiduciary responsibilities to shareholders.

If the negotiations with Elliott Associates were history, why would he avoid talking about them? Novell’s CEO only made one carefully-crafted statement over the weekend. It’s likely to suggest that he is keeping the door open; he does not want to speak badly about the vulture fund, maybe because he reckons that another bid will come with a different price, as expected right from the start (see the posts below). █

Background

• 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: The ‘vulture fund’ responds to Novell’s first rejection of a takeover, which still leaves room for more offers to be made

FOR background about what seems like Novell’s imminent sale, have a look at:

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”
7. Vulture Fund Still the Only Bidder for Novell

Not much has changed since then, but now they talk about the price. Here is the press release and some initial coverage [1, 2, 3]. It seems like an issue of price.

Novell Inc. said a $5.75-a-share acquisition offer from Elliott Associates LP is “inadequate” and undervalues the maker of Linux operating-system software.

Novell’s board is reviewing its alternatives, which include a stock repurchase, joint ventures, a cash dividend, a recapitalization and a sale of the company, the company said in a statement.

In the mainstream press, a lot of attention is paid to the word “inadequate”, which is included in many headlines [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. It does not indicate an idealogical issue but one that’s to do with Novell being undervalued. According to the VAR Guy, Novell “Welcomes Other Bidders”.

Translation: Novell is willing to listen to more takeover bids. But is that really news? Shouldn’t Novell’s board always be looking for alternatives to enhance stockholder value?

Also, Novell’s rejection of the Elliott Associates’ bid mentions “Novell’s growth prospects.” Hmmm… Is Novell really a growth company? Top-line financial results suggest no. But individual product groups — particularly SUSE Linux — suggest yes.

There is a push for Novell to offer itself, maybe to another company like Microsoft. “Elliott welcomes Novell’s call to sell company,” says Reuters. There is an official statement.

Investment fund Elliott Associates, which had previously bid for Novell Inc (NOVL.O), said it welcomed the business-software maker’s decision to sell itself.

“We welcome the Board’s decision to conduct a sale of the company, which we believe is the best way to maximize shareholder value,” Elliott said in a statement.

It sounds rather fishy. It’s almost as though they just want another company to pick Novell up. Additionally, since Singer’s shell has almost 10% of Novell (in terms of shares), the surge of the stock has already made him money and publicity.

More in the New York Times (blogs): “Elliott Welcomes Novell’s Move to Put Itself in Play”

Elliott Associates said Monday that it was encouraged that Novell would consider selling itself after the business software maker rejected Elliott’s unsolicited $2 billion takeover offer as “inadequate.”

“We welcome the board’s decision to conduct a sale of the company, which we believe is the best way to maximize shareholder value,” Elliott said in a statement. “Our goal is to acquire Novell, and our cash offer to acquire all of the company’s shares for $5.75 per share provides shareholders with a substantial premium.” It added, “We look forward to the process and to actively pursuing an acquisition of the company.”

Novell is up on expectations of a sale [1, 2], which investors perceive as a positive thing. As we stressed before, Novell is just bargaining. The initial rejection does not mean that Novell opposes a takeover. It’s like an animal’s love dance. █

Summary: It’s rutting season for Novell’s Ron Hovsepian and Elliott Associates’ Singer as the company keeps diminishing but wants to be valued more generously

Based on this new post from Novell’s CMO (John Dragoon), Novell has just 3,600 employees. That’s about 300 employees less than last year and it exceeds the cuts which Novell announced last year, so the numbers surprise us somewhat. It wasn’t announced or disclosed based on what we could find (and we look very carefully at everything about Novell). Novell had laid off many developers of Linux. Luc continues to make good contributions to kernel space. It’s just a shame that Novell focuses more on Mono and Moonlight and less on Linux, so it let Luc go (despite his great value).

“Novell had laid off many developers of Linux.”Novell is a confused and schizophrenic company. If Novell keeps shrinking at this pace, its value in the eyes on the hedge fund is likely to decline, not increase. At the moment, Novell plays hard to get (as expected by Andy Updegrove for example) in order to change the bid/price. We cannot confirm if this is authentic (no verification yet), but the timing makes sense; it comes just ahead of BrainShare in order to instill confidence in the minds of attendees.

Someone called “FlyingGuy” writes “In an e-mail sent to partners and VARS ( of which I am one ), CEO Ron Hovsepian sent the the following:”

Dear Valued Partner,

As you may know, on March 2nd, Elliott Associates, L.P. announced an unsolicited, conditional proposal to acquire Novell. Today we issued a press release announcing that our Board of Directors has concluded, after careful consideration, including a review of the proposal with its independent financial and legal advisors, that Elliott’s proposal is inadequate and that it undervalues the Company’s franchise and growth prospects.

Additionally, we announced that our Board has authorized a thorough review of various alternatives to enhance stockholder value.

Our relationship with you is extremely important to all of us at Novell, and I want to assure you that you can remain confident that we are committed to serving you as we always have. I also want to reaffirm to you that it remains business as usual at Novell, and we do not intend for there to be any changes in our relationship with you. Please do not hesitate to contact me or other members of our team at any time; we always strive to be available to provide you the best solutions for your needs.

On behalf of the Board and management team, I thank you for your ongoing commitment to Novell.

Sincerely,

Ron Hovsepian
President and CEO

If true and authentic, then it’s not the end of the story, it’s just negotiation tactics. Novell’s knees could eventually buckle just like Yahoo’s. Singer’s vulture fund says that it won't sell Novell in pieces and Hovsepian’s issue is one of price. The wording indicates this. Up the ante? █

Summary: Novell’s proprietary business assets and what they have been up to in the past week

NOVELL news coverage has recently been overwhelmed by the big bid [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7]. Novell’s PR team has been very active despite all of this and it hardly even mentioned the bid, instead choosing to focus on fluff like SaaS and a survey that Novell was conducting itself in order to support its position, apparently.

Interestingly enough, Novell recently conducted a survey of its customers and discovered that 43% of them would be more inclined to consider and purchase an SaaS offering if it included just such a solution.

Pulse

Will Novell’s Pulse be more connected to Wave than anyone has anticipated? Maybe.

Do the Wave: Rasmussen Dishes on Google’s New Collaboration Tool

[...]

What kind of other companies do you envision becoming Wave providers?

Rasmussen: For example, Novell (News – Alert). They have product coming up [in 2010] called Pulse, which they describe as an enterprise social network-type product. And they announced, and we’re working pretty hard with them, that they will support Wave. So when you’re insidePulse ( News – Alert) you can start a Wave inside Pulse using Novell technology.

If I’m a Google user, you can add me to that Wave, and we can Wave together even though you’re using Novell’s product and I’m using Google’s product.

At the same time, Google challenges GroupWise and costing Novell a lot of money. Novell’s PR team is promoting the following new video (one of a series of two so far) about Pulse.

Misc.

The ballot which Microsoft uses to pretend [1, 2, 3, 4] that there is choice in the market (as long as Internet Explorer remains installed) gets Novell mentioned in IDG. Novell used to actually stand up for what’s right and not be so supine.

Well, it’s the direct result of a long-standing legal dilemma between Microsoft and the European Union. The whole issue began in 1993, brought on through a complaint by Novell that Microsoft’s licensing arrangements with computer manufacturers violated Europe’s competition rules.

Can Novell thrive by being a jack of all trades? That’s the question this person asks.

One IT vendor that faces such a problem is Novell. It once had a clear market-leading position – in the 1980s and early 1990s Novell’s NetWare network operating system was the network operating system of choice for sharing files among workgroups. The ascendancy of Windows, Linux, the IP protocol, among other things, led to a fall in demand for NetWare and left Novell seeking a new identity.

Hungary still considers buying from Novell, which makes the following predictions.

Software distributor Novell projects 5%-10% revenue growth in 2010 in Hungary even though it sees the Hungarian IT market expanding only modestly during the year.

Can Hungary press on with a company other than Microsoft and Novell now that standards are required?

Finance

Mentioned some weeks ago was Ron Hovsepian's ridiculous bonus, which takes up a lot of the revenue of this ~3,900-person company. IDG has this to say on the subject:

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

Hovsepian received compensation in fiscal 2009 valued at $5.7 million, compared to $6.9 million in 2008, according to documents filed late last week with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

People concentrate on the relative decline, but not on the absolute value. What did Hovsepian actually do which makes him deserving of this “compensation” (euphemism for bonus)?

In other financial news we have:

• Novell Zenwork Asset Management Renewal

• U.S. Stocks Rise as Jobs Report, Takeovers Lift Confidence

• ETF Preview: Mixed Early Action for Broad Funds; Novell Offer Could Lift Tech

• The S&P 500′s Biggest Movers

• Notable Biggest S&P Stock gainers (Sprint, YUM, SWN, NOVL, WYNN, NVDA, ODP)

• Interesting Options Volume for Novell Inc (NOVL)

Networks

An anonymous writer recalls “cleaning up after a networking vendor’s bad behavior”. Novell is mentioned right at the start.

Back in the late ’80s, I worked for a group specializing in Novell networks. Sharing network resources among PCs was a new and upcoming field, and the Novell operating system was quickly turning into the standard among small businesses. We had a prospective new client in an upscale community: a law firm that wanted to replace its current vendor and its network.

Virtualisation

This new article from David Strom quotes Novell on the subject of virtualisation.

“If you lose one of these servers entirely, you could have a problem, particularly since on average, eight or more VMs are typically running on a single box,” says Carl Drisko, a Novell executive who specializes in virtualization.

Novell has this new video promoting Intelligent Workload Management on YouTube and the state of XenApp for Windows 2008 is also worth mentioning.

Mail

Novell’s GroupWise is included in the list of products which CompanionLink supports and in YouTube there is a new video featuring bits from GroupWise.

People

Novell’s CTO becomes the W3C's CEO and this is covered in many more places [1, 2, 3] including the in-print media.

Filling a position left open since 2008, former Novell CTO Jeffrey Jaffe has taken on the role of chief executive officer for the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

Here is Jaffe’s first post at the W3C blogs. Can he be trusted?

Additionally, there’s this person being appointed:

Before that he spent five years running his own Australian-based consultancy specialising in IT security, VoIP services and training. Stevens is also a certified Cisco instructor, a certified Novell engineer, and a qualified Microsoft trainer.

Partners

Novell makes some more links around India.

Novell today announced that the Novell India Partner Academy, a training programme exclusively developed for Novell’s partners to assist them in selling, distributing and supporting Novell’s suite of enterprise IT solutions and held for the first time in Colombo, was a major success. Novell partners graduating from the training will be able to provide pre-sales consulting and professional services in addition to post-sales support and training to their own customers.

There is also this:

The IDenium server integrates into Microsoft AD, Novell eDirectory and Citrix, providing great flexibility in deployment and user management.

Novell gets mentioned in a couple of press releases [1, 2] and an article about Utah.

Marketing

Novell is promoting Identity Management with “guest blogs” [1, 2] and security problems are found too (but hardly mentioned anywhere).

The following new videos were created/uploaded by Novell some days ago:

• SAP vs Unity: Reports
• SAP vs Unity: BopIt
• SAP vs Unity: Hold Please
• SAP vs Unity: Home Junction

It is believed that SAP might buy Novell or just parts of Novell. █

Summary: Coverage of what seems like the inevitable sale of Novell (NOVL) to other hands

LAST YEAR we criticised Ron Hovsepian (Novell CEO) for the fact that he accepted about $6 million in bonuses while firing many SUSE developers whose combined annual wage would also be roughly $6 million. Novell is run by greedy managers mostly for their own benefit it would seem, not really for the interests of the company, its shareholders, its staff, and its vision (GNU/Linux).

A few days ago we found in YouTube this very new video from a nice chap who was laid off by Novell. He learned .NET towards the end of his days at Novell.

So Novell is laying off people. Tough time, eh? Well, not for the Hovsepian family. Ron is receiving an extra $5.7 million for 2009 [1, 2] as though he actually made something special happen. Novell's financial results disappointed investors last week. But anyway, here is where Ron stands:

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

Hovsepian received compensation in fiscal 2009 valued at $5.7 million, compared to $6.9 million in 2008, according to documents filed late last week with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The poor guy. ‘Only’ $5.7 million. What it does not say is that his bonus from last year angered quite a lot of people. It was far too much for far too little in terms of achievements.

Did he perform well?

Well, not quite. In fact, his company is destined to accept a takeover [1, 2], based on most assessments that we found so far. We’ll go through them very quickly and as exhaustively as possible. We have looked at many articles and some general background. Here is what seems like a positive article:

Novell Soars on Takeover Offer

Add Novell (NASDAQ: NOVL) shareholders to the list of those who have figured out how to earn money from open source technologies.

But it has nothing to do with SUSE and the price is not high. Here are some other reports that came out first [1, 2, 3] (it’s a close call, so it’s hard to tell who broke the news) and some of the trailing ones that add:

Elliott is already one of Novell’s largest shareholders and owns 8.5% of the company’s stock.

The original headline from Reuters has the headline “Elliott Associates, L.P. To Acquire Novell, Inc.”

It didn’t quite turn out to be certain, so Reuters reported inaccurately. From the WSJ:

Hedge fund Elliott Associates LP, which holds an 8.5% stake in Novell Inc. (NOVL), offered to buy the rest of the software company for about $1.8 billion.

Hours later came a lot of coverage [1, 2] that characterised Elliott’s move as merely an offer (see the letter at the bottom of this post — a letter that Novell confirmed receiving).

From BusinessWeek we learn that:

Elliott Associates LP said it offered to acquire Novell Inc. for $5.75 a share in cash, 21 percent more than the stock’s closing price.

Microsoft's booster Eric Savitz wrote about it too and he obtained a copy of the letter to Novell.

As The VAR Guy points out, it’s not clear what this whole thing means to SUSE (he also refers to the recent results).

Just last week, Novell announced mixed financial results, but the company did mention that SUSE Linux business has reached the break-even point. The VAR Guy wonders: Was that break-even statement about SUSE Linux an open letter from Novell to other potential suitors? Hmmm… Either way, investors are betting Novell will soon get acquired: Novell shares surged about 26 percent after the buyout offer started making news.

[...]

Either way, two things are clear: Novell received an unsolicited takeover offer. And now that the takeover offer is public news, all eyes are on the future of SUSE Linux.

The Boston press heralds:

Waltham software maker Novell Inc. received an unsolicited takeover bid of about $2 billion from a major shareholder, hedge fund Elliott Associates. Novell said its board will review the offer.

The day after we learned about some more details [1, 2] and saw the effect on the stock. This one article is also of interest:

Elliott is ready to sign confidentiality agreements and begin its due diligence, and it says that the letter is not a legally binding obligation. As El Reg goes to press, Novell is working on a statement to respond to the offer from Elliott and would say no more on the matter.

Secrecy sometimes implies misconduct. Further details [1, 2, 3] add too little, so it remains difficult to know what’s going on deep inside the company and Matt Asay, a former Novell employee, only speculates. He mentions Elliott’s dodgy Congo affairs that we wrote about last night.

Would Elliott sell? Almost certainly. Elliott is an investment firm more known for its trades in Congo debt markets than technology securities and is likely already scouring the market for likely homes for Novell’s different divisions, with the Linux business the best of the bunch.

[...]

In sum, Novell’s legacy has weighed down its ability to push its Linux business into top gear, a problem that won’t afflict likely suitors for that business. These companies have largely relied on Red Hat to be a counterweight to Microsoft on the OS side. But with a healthy middleware and virtualization business, Red Hat starts to look like a credible threat to Oracle, VMware, and other erstwhile partners.

All of which positions Novell’s Linux business to play a critical role in the software industry. Let the bidding begin.

In Reuters Blogs, Elliott is described as “activist hedge fund” (yes, by Reuters), which is a familiar title because of raiders like Carl Icahn who fought Microsoft’s battles to take over Yahoo! (which they eventually did in a way, even cheaply).

Sean Michael Kerner believes that going private would be good for Novell.

In layman terms it basically means Novell is for sale and could be taken private by institutional stock holder/Hedge Fund Elliot Associates. In my personal opinion it’s likely a good deal for Novell and its shareholders.

What if Elliott decided to take over Novell in order to just sell it? That’s a possibility.

Anyway, Novell’s shareholders liked the offer [1, 2, 3, 4] and the market rallied.

The Utah press names other potential bids (as quoted before, as it involves Richard Williams).

Elliott’s bid could trigger more offers from companies such as Cisco Systems Inc., Hewlett-Packard Co. and Microsoft Corp., said Richard Williams, an analyst at Cross Research. Novell reported its sixth straight quarterly sales decline last week, and Chief Financial Officer Dana Russell predicted “muted” revenue in the current quarter.

Just as a reminder, Novell is a declining business. It is pointed out in IDG’s coverage of this latest bid:

Novell has struggled financially, recently reporting its sixth consecutive quarterly sales decline. Revenue fell 10% during its most recent fiscal year wrapped up in October and its net losses widened. CEO Ron Hovsepian’s total compensation fell 17% to $5.7 million.

IDG also has audio coverage of this major news.

AP puts it like this:

In the latest deal, private equity firm Elliott Associates offered to buy the 91.5 percent of software maker Novell Inc. that it doesn’t already own.

Market movement news incorporating Novell (NOVL) ended up as follows:

• PetSmart, Foot Locker, Costco
• UPDATE 2-Deals of the day — mergers and acquisitions
• Ethan Allen, Helen of Troy, La Jolla Pharma, Nelnet, Novell
• Novell, Spark Networks: Early Volume Plays
• Benzinga’s Top Pre-Market Gainers (LSCC, AMCF, HOV, NOVL, SWWC)
• Ethan Allen, Helen of Troy, La Jolla Pharma, Nelnet, Novell
• Novell, Spark Networks: Early Volume Plays
• U.S. Stock-Index Futures Advance on Jobs Optimism, Takeovers
• Market News: Ford (NYSE:F), Novell (NYSE:NOVL), Staples (NYSE:STPL), Citigroup (NYSE:C), E-Trade (NYSE:ETFC)
• Tech Gains In Opening Session (NOVL, AKAM, YHOO, GOOG, NOK, QCOM)
• Wednesday Deals: SouthWest Water, Novell
• Top Software Stocks are NOVL, ATVI, INAP
• DJIA and S&P 500 are Coming up Roses; CAT, PFE, NOVL
• Stocks rise after improved services report
• Pfizer, Medivation, Novell, SouthWest Water and Hovnanian Stk Future Mixed Before the Bell
• US HOT STOCKS: Novell, Medivation, HSN, SouthWest Water
• Stocks in the News: Costco, Pfizer, Novell
• Novell, Joy Global Rise; Costco Falls
• PetSmart, Foot Locker, Costco
• Investors Gush Over SouthWest Water Buyout
• Dow turns positive for 2010
• US Stocks Climb As Greece, Jobs Outlook Improves
• U.S. Stocks Advance on Growing Optimism About Economy, M&A
• Ahead of the Bell: Activision Blizzard
• US Stocks Rise On ADP, Service-Sector Data; DJIA Up 43
• Market News: Ford (NYSE:F), Novell (NYSE:NOVL), Staples (NYSE:STPL), Citigroup (NYSE:C), E-Trade (NYSE:ETFC)
• Morning Watch, March 3
• Notable S&P Top Gainers (NOVL, FTI, TIE, JDSU, RSH, QCOM)
• BedfordReport.com: Complimentary Market Update on Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C), Petsmart Inc (Nasdaq: PETM), Novell Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL), QUALCOMM Inc. (Nasdaq: QCOM) and Many More
• U.S. Service Industry Expands; Dollar Weak
• Report From Europe: Greece Dons the Hairshirt
• Stocks Climb On Jobs Data
• At the open: Royal Bank misses, but TSX up

That pretty much sums up what we’ve found so far. It’s an interesting time because the SCO lawsuit, the WordPerfect lawsuit, and many other things are at stake. █

March 2, 2010
The Board of Directors
Novell, Inc.
404 Wyman Street, Suite 500
Waltham, MA 02451
Attention: Richard Crandall, Chairman
Attention: Ron Hovsepian, Chief Executive Officer

Dear Members of the Board of Directors:

I write to you on behalf of Elliott Associates, L.P. and Elliott International, L.P., which collectively own, or have an interest economically equivalent to, 8.5% of the common stock of Novell and are currently one of the Company’s largest stockholders. Elliott is a multi-strategy investment firm with over $16 billion in assets under management focused on employing detailed research to address complex investment situations.

Based on our detailed review of the Company’s publicly available information and our substantial knowledge of the software industry, we are pleased to submit this proposal to acquire all of the shares of common stock of Novell for a cash price of $5.75 per share. This price represents a premium of 49% over the Company’s current enterprise value and 77% over the Company’s 90-day volume-weighted average enterprise value.

As the Company’s cash balance of nearly $1.0 billion represents almost 60% of its current market capitalization, we believe that a premium to enterprise value represents the most meaningful measure of the value that our proposal offers stockholders, valuing the Company’s cash at 100 cents on the dollar despite the fact that a significant portion of that cash is overseas and may not be realized in a tax efficient manner.

Importantly, this price represents a premium of 115% over the Company’s enterprise value on January 4, 2010, the last trading day before we commenced actively acquiring Novell’s common stock. This price also represents a 37% premium to Novell’s closing stock price on January 4, 2010 and a 20% premium to Novell’s closing stock price yesterday. By any measure, we believe our proposal represents a compelling opportunity that your stockholders will find extremely attractive.

Novell is a long-established company that we have followed closely for a considerable period of time. Over the past several years, the Company has attempted to diversify away from its legacy division with a series of acquisitions and changes in strategic focus that have largely been unsuccessful. As a result, we believe the Company’s stock has meaningfully underperformed all relevant indices and peers. With over 33 years of experience in investing in public and private companies and an extensive track record of successfully structuring and executing acquisitions in the technology space, we believe that Elliott is uniquely situated to deliver maximum value to the Company’s stockholders on an expedited basis.

Our proposal is subject to a confirmatory due diligence review of the Company and negotiation of definitive documentation. We are available to sign an appropriate confidentiality agreement and commence our due diligence review immediately. Elliott is prepared to devote considerable resources to completing this transaction and we are confident that, with your cooperation, we will be in a position to execute a definitive transaction agreement on an expedited basis. While we intend to work with financing sources, obtaining financing is neither a condition of our proposal nor a condition to completing the transaction.

We are prepared to meet immediately with you and your advisors in order to answer any questions about our proposal and to work out the details for moving toward a definitive transaction agreement. We also look forward to discussing with management its role with us going forward.

Of course, nothing in this letter is intended to create a legally binding obligation and no such obligation will exist unless and until a definitive transaction agreement is executed. As a result of our substantial share ownership in Novell, SEC rules oblige us to make the existence and contents of this letter public. Please feel free to contact me at (212) 506-2999 to discuss or clarify any aspect of this proposal.

On behalf of Elliott, we are very much looking forward to working closely with the talented employees of Novell to bring the Company forward to its next phase of growth.

Very truly yours,

Jesse A. Cohn

Portfolio Manager

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
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• 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? █

Summary: Novell’s CTO Jeff Jaffe and Zonker (the symbol of OpenSUSE) say their last words before leaving Novell, replacements are imminent

A Web site called “Boycott Novell” may be biased, but Novell does seem like it's crumbling these days. It is being said by a lot of people outside this Web site. The departure of managers ought to be self explanatory. This post covers just a couple of the latest (there are more), namely those whose last day or week at Novell is right about now.

Jeff Jaffe, Meet Externality

Just a year after he had joined Novell (November 2005), Jaffe played a role in hooking the company up with Microsoft. He gave a talk at the press event announcing the deal, where he explained its technical nature. We wrote about this before [1, 2] and also touched on his professional history (similar to Ron Hovsepian’s because of IBM). In addition, we wrote about his departure before, so it is not exactly news. Novell hid it under the banner of “reorg”, so Ben Kevan, for instance, knew nothing about it until Jeff Jaffe wrote a “goodbye” blog post.

A few days after the news from Zonker, we get the news that Jeff Jaffe, Novells CTO, is also leaving the company for new ventures in life after 4 years.

What does this mean to the company? What really is going on at Novell?

Actually, the news about Jeff Jaffe goes almost a couple of months back. It is surprising how quiet Novell has managed to keep it (same with the departure of Levy).

As we noted here many times before, former Microsoft managers become Novell managers [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], so it will be interesting to see the professional history of Novell’s new CTO. Here is what Jaffe wrote in his last post:

Nostalgia. I’m writing as I complete my four years at Novell. A great deal achieved—but—as with any company still more to do. Here are my thoughts as I move to my next opportunity.

[...]

The Microsoft partnership has been the most fascinating. An arch-competitor. Building bridges between proprietary and open source. Enormous financial benefit for Novell. Viewed as controversial by some. Two companies kept their focus on the ultimate end goal—meeting customers’ needs—and struck an agreement for everyone’s benefit. My participation in the cultivation and creation of this relationship is my most lasting contribution to our shareholders and personal growth.

He says that Microsoft and Novell “struck an agreement for everyone’s benefit.” Wow, isn’t that a sweeping statement? He must never have heard of the notion of externality, has he? Especially one that punishes his very own suppliers. The deal with Microsoft was an utter failure, as his departure too serves to indicate.

OpenSUSE Leadership

Zonker is leaving Novell and his departure was covered by The H, which is not “big” press, but still, it’s something. “Novell loses Linux community manager” was the headline.

Friday was Zonker’s last day and he wrote about it in his blog:

This week has flown by. Tomorrow will be my last “on duty” day with Novell. I’ve spent much of this week handing off tasks or information to co-workers and saying goodbyes.

Well, “goodbyes” is overselling it a bit — I hope. Since I telecommute, I’ll be just as close to everyone I’ve worked with on Monday as I have been the past two years, and hope to remain in touch with all of the friends I’ve made at Novell and in the openSUSE community long after I stop having an @novell.com address.

Now that Novell is looking for a Zonker replacement, Luc Verhaegen (whom Novell laid off) recommends Martin Lasarsch as community manager. Lasarsch has been around SUSE for ages. █

Summary: An accumulation of very little news that was significant to Novell; Brainshare Europe to take place in Amsterdam

NOVELL news is very different this week. There is almost nothing on the technical side and no announcements either.

SCO

As the SCO trial carries on (yes, it’s not totally over yet), Novell adds four more lawyers. Groklaw has more information:

The Supreme Court’s docket shows that Novell requested an extension of time to file its petition for a writ of certiorari in the SCO v. Novell case, and Judge Sonia Sotomayor has just granted that request. They now have until February 18th to file their petition. As you recall, the earlier deadline was this month. At this level, the case is titled “Novell, Inc., Applicant v. The SCO Group, Inc.”

Finance

Some more analyses of Novell (NOVL as a stock) continue to come [1, 2, 3] and here is another case of detailed reporting (technical, not financial):

*The report covers the following IT systems management vendors: BMC, CA, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Novell and Symantec.

Virtualisation

Memories of Netware come back not because of the new Novell Client but because the Burton-esque comparison rears its ugly head again. Comparisons between VMware and Netware [1, 2] were last mentioned and shown one week ago and here is another example:

VMware is not Novell
“What makes VMware different than, say, Novell, is that Novell kept competing in Microsoft’s space rather than innovating. It kept fighting in the same boundaries and markets, on Microsoft’s terms,” said Scott Lowe, a virtualization expert formerly at a large VMware partner. [Editor's note: As a matter of full disclosure: He recently took a position at VMware parent company EMC Corp.]

A little more about PlateSpin, which has gone nowhere since Novell acquired it:

VMware had a product in the space (and still does) and there was also some popular products provided by 3rd parties like Platespin (who had a nice exit to Novell for ~$200MM).

Security

SJVN mentioned SLES as a candidate for a weakness that wasn’t. java-1_5_0-ibm has just proven to be a bit of a pain (also here) and ZENWorks, a proprietary software product from Novell, suffers from an SQL injection vulnerability. In the coming month, eDirectory will be at the firing line because of Intevydis. See the following coverage:

• Frustrated bug hunters to expose a flaw a day for a month

Intevydis intends to publish advisories on zero-day vulnerabilities in products such as Zeus Web Server, MySQL, Lotus Domino and Informix and Novell eDirectory between 11 January and 1 February, security blogger Brian Krebs reports.

• Security Firm Plans Release of Many Bugs and Exploits

• Russian security firm rails against responsible disclosure

Security expert Brian Krebs revealed that Intevydis will post advisories on products from big name vendors such as IBM, Novell and Sun Microsystems, in protest at a ‘responsible disclosure’ policy which it regards as a waste of time.

• Russian IT security veteran plans to publish undisclosed security flaws live on a zero-day basis

• Software testing firm says no to responsible disclosure

From a new article in Processor.com:

Utilizing change and configuration management tools can boost the ability to back up data automatically, notes Grant Ho, senior solutions marketing manager for endpoint management at Novell (www.novell.com).

People

Novell’s former CEO Eric Schmidt was mentioned here and so was Ray Noorda:

This mystery speaker has had the honor to be consulted by such leaders as Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google; Robert Allen, NY Times best-selling author; Bob Frankerberg (in the past: Chairman at Kinzan, Chairman, CEO at Encanto Networks, Chairman/CEO at Novell, Vice President at Hewlett-Packard, Vice President at HP ); Ray Noorda (former CEO of Novell).

Greg Butterfield, formerly a Novell executive, is joining the board of ContentWatch. From the press release:

He has also held executive positions at Legato, Novell and WordPerfect Corporation. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in business administration, finance from Brigham Young University.

Lisbeth Carter, also from Novell, is “Honored for Accomplishments in Consulting & Executive Recruitment”:

Prior to entering the search industry, Ms. Carter occupied executive-level marketing and business management positions in such technology and finance companies as Novell, State Street Corporation, Sitara Networks and CheckFree Corporation.

More Novell connections to be noticed: (this one is minor but new)

Sydney-based integrator, Accucom, has snapped up several ex-Synergy employees to build out its managed services capabilities.

[...]

It also owns an ISP business and partners with HP, Cisco, Microsoft and Novell.

The movement of Jim Tanner was mentioned here last week, but here it is again at TMCNet (which mostly modifies press releases and posts them under a week later):

Jim Tanner Joins Hosted Call Center Solutions Provider inContact as SVP of Product and Strategy

According to a press release, Tanner has a wealth of IT and telecommunications experience in both domestic and international markets, having previously worked in product and market strategy forUnisys ( News – Alert), Novell, Realm Business Solutions, and others.

It’s not really news by now. Here is another site (PR-Canada and PR-USA) which always does something similar (a press release from weeks ago simply repeated):

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 Ken Muir gets to speak to this one Web site, but it’s not particularly fascinating. He talks about Pulse [1, 2], which is proprietary for all it seems so far.

Ken Muir is the Chief Technology and Strategy Officer of Novell’s WorkGroup Business Unit. He is responsibile for the overall technical vision and strategy for Novell’s collaboration products. We asked Muir about his group’s work with Novell Pulse and how it integrates with Google Wave.

Connections/Partners

Novell’s connections with other companies can be seen in the following very recent articles:

• Gideon’s children

These are Zelig-ian perspectives. I’ve sat down face to face with the heads of Microsoft, Apple, IBM, Novell – sometimes cordially, sometimes in negotiation. I’ve been in arms length contact with just about everyone who’s who in the tech industry.

• Trustmarque celebrates revenue spike

The York-based reseller set up a professional services division in September to drive the transformation, which Haddow said was necessary to satisfy the big software vendors such as Microsoft, Oracle and Novell.

[...]

Haddow said Trustmarque is also throwing more weight behind six “elite” vendor partners: Microsoft, Novell, Adobe, VMware, McAfee and Symantec.

• Linoma Software Releases GoAnywhere Director Version 3.0 (Managed File Transfers)

GoAnywhere Director installs on a variety of platforms, including IBM System i, IBM System p (AIX), IBM System z (Mainframe), Windows, Novell SUSE, Linux, UNIX, HP-UX, Mac OS and Solaris platforms. Pricing starts at $3,995.

• Express Data on a hiring spree

Express Data is looking to recruit seven staff across its business development and account manager teams.

The jobs on offer include three business development manager positions for its Novell, Cisco SMB and Cisco practices, along with a Symantec partner enablement specialist and two account manager roles. It is also on the hunt for an account co-ordinator.

• Latest Release of Messaging Architects’ M+Archive Helps Organizations Rein in Electronic Discovery Costs and Simplify Email Audi (eDiscovery)

Messaging Architects, the global experts in email risk management, today announced the release of M+Archive 2009.2, its policy-based enterprise-class email retention and eDiscovery solution. This major release extends M+Archive’s search capabilities with a robust new web-based tool for eDiscovery designed for maximum efficiency, flexibility, and cost-effectiveness and minimum risk during an electronic discovery process. Additionally, the new version of M+Archive simplifies email management operations with improved reporting and offers an enhanced migration toolkit to facilitate migration between email platforms.

Novell’s relationships with other companies were also mentioned in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9].

Marketing

Jo De Baer writes about BrainShare going through Amsterdam. According to more formal coverage:

Novell Brainshare is set to return to Europe. The event, which last ran five years ago, is taking place in Amsterdam from 18-21 May 2010.

[...]

Javier Colado, president EMEA, Novell, said: “The return of Novell BrainShare EMEA in 2010 is a reflection of our focus on helping customers, prospects and partners. As we embark on our strategy of intelligent workload management, it was important we provided a forum for customers, partners and prospects to come together to listen, see and discuss how it could be applied to their organisations.”

Groupwise gets promoted in the following new video that someone has put in YouTube.

Here is another new video which is probably not related to this company.

Another new one:

Here is some Novell-sponsored waffle (video ad) from ‘analysts’ at IDC. Novell’s payments to IDC are still serving them well. From a new press release about Red Hat:

According to a survey sponsored by Novell, IDC states that more than half of their respondents are planning to increase adoption of Linux on the server.

This video titled “Cloud Computing: Beyond the Hype” was uploaded by Novell some days ago and it spreads Novell’s marketing messages, right from the mouths of the company’s management (including Ron Hovsepian). Novell is still unable to make a business case, so customers walk away. █

LAST WEEK we argued that some time in 2010 Novell is likely to be acquired or merged. Several days later, CIO UK published this list of predictions, which include the following:

June: The silly season begins in earnest. Google and Microsoft buy some companies you’ve never heard of. Novell is acquired.

As we wrote last week, it is possible for Microsoft to acquire Novell, but this might not be the best strategy.

Another UK-based publication has just published this first interview with Ron Hovsepian in a very long time. Here is an important question that he answered at the end:

How does the interoperability agreement with Microsoft relate to the IWM launches? [The Microsoft/Novell Partnership announced in 2006 gives interoperability and virtualisation solutions for firms using both Windows and Linux]

The agreement means that Microsoft can run their virtualised applications on our environment and we can run ours on theirs.

I think it works really well. Our core assumption is that customers are Microsoft customers and have multiple Java technology stacks. So in a virtualized environment, this relationship allows us to support and optimise those workloads.

This puts us in a stronger position than competitors such as Red Hat for example.

So our strategy is built on that assumption of heterogeneity. Where firms have multiple technology stacks, we can optimise and build security and governance into them.

Microsoft could do that too. A couple of years ago it was argued that Microsoft could buy the WordPerfect lawsuit along with Novell. █

Summary: Ballmer and Hovsepian are failing once again to obstruct the leader in GNU/Linux servers

RED HAT is up approximately 5% after market close. It delivered its financial results a few hours ago. The stock has reached a very high value, despite Ron Hovsepian and Steve Ballmer (seen above) signing what several Web sites described as an “anti-Red Hat deal” or anti-Red Hat pact.

Novell recently lost more than $200,000,000, Microsoft is shrinking rapidly. and Red Hat is reportedly growing, which means that expenses do too.

Given the recent developments, Novell will carry on going "downhill", whereas its main rival, Red Hat, has good news for investors as its value soars.

To give a sample of news overage, in chronological order:

1. Ahead Of Red Hat Q3 Earnings

Open source solutions provider Red Hat Inc. (RHT: News ) is set to announce its third-quarter results after the market close Tuesday. On average, 21 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect a profit of $0.16 per share for the quarter on sales of $188.29 million. Analysts’ forecast typically excludes one-time items.

2. A Look at the Week Ahead – (BMY, JBL, OSIP, RHT, SQNM, V)

Red Hat Inc. (RHT) reports earnings on Tuesday and is trading right at fresh highs. Thomson Reuters has estimates pegged at $0.16 EPS and $188.49 million in revenues, and while this used to be a takeover target the valuations are now very high and this one almost certainly has to really beat estimates and raise guidance to keep everyone happy.

3. Micron Technology, Tibco Software, Red Hat

Red Hat /quotes/comstock/13*!rht/quotes/nls/rht (RHT 31.35, +1.48, +4.96%) is estimated to report a profit of 16 cents a share in the third quarter, according to analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters.

4. Micron Technology, Red Hat shares gain after hours

5. Red Hat profit, revenue beat Street view

Red Hat Inc (RHT.N) reported higher than-expected profit as the business software maker posted strong growth in the sales of its version of the Linux operating system, sending its stock up 3.5 percent.

The bully from Microsoft never got his way. █

Summary: Novell is losing its UK distributors and there is little hope for rebound based on the financial situation and general trend

Hitherto, Novell has been pretending that Microsoft’s patent deal will spell the renaissance of Novell. Not even as a Microsoft subsidiary can Novell be incarnated given that it’s losing business to Microsoft. To give just one example from this week’s news:

Domino’s was using Novell’s GroupWise for about 1,000 users and realized that encryption was necessary to protect the communications involving the employment information that’s transmitted between its stores and its outside benefit providers. The restaurant chain began deploying Proofpoint and Voltage’s encryption products while still on GroupWise because it planned to work with both GroupWise and Microsoft Exchange/Outlook when the company upgraded later, Anderson explains.

That’s what friends like Microsoft are for.

We actually found it interesting that Novell is ‘pulling a Microsoft’ [1, 2, 3, 4] with a new “study” that’s intended to help Novell lobby and elevate sales.

The goal of Novell’s study was to find out what sort of solutions are used by the Hungarian CIOs (focusing on the large enterprises, governmental and educational institutions), if they are content with their current systems, what are the major challenges they face and in what direction do they plan to advance.

Regardless of Novell’s efforts to successfully woo CIOs, its channel in the UK keeps breaking apart.

In the UK Novell has reduced its distribution by 35 percent – including the addition of Avnet in August. Veitkus says he expects its number of ‘non-performing’ resellers to shrink by roughly the same figure.

We wrote about this before. Novell’s broken channel and abandonments do not help and now comes another major UK setback:

Software licensing VAR Trustmarque has cut the number of distributors it works with for 14 of its main vendor lines worth a combined £30m annually.

Some 14 distributors bid for the business but only 10 were selected following a three-month tender process that finished last week.

Vendors covered by the tender include Citrix, Novell VMWare, McAfee, Adobe and Websense. Magirus picked up the VMware piece, Interactive Ideas bagged Novell, Arc Technology the McAfee business and e92plus the Websense segment. Other distributors to make the cut include Bell and Computer 2000.

So the future is not so bright, either. Novell’s terrible financial results that we wrote about last week [1, 2] are discussed in the same publication as above. It says:

Novell has swung to a $206m (£124m) loss for its fiscal 2009 after taking a whopping $279m impairment hit in its final quarter.

More here:

Novell Inc. NOVL said its fiscal fourth-quarter loss widened to $255.7 million, or 74 cents a share, from $16.3 million, or 5 cents a share, in the year-ago period. Excluding one-time items, the IT management software company said it would have reported earnings of 11 cents a share. Revenue fell to $215.6 million from $244.7 million last year.

And here:

Software company Novell Inc.’s (NOVL) fiscal fourth-quarter loss widened on a $279 million impairment charge and lower revenue, although revenue from its Linux-platform products increased 14%. Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOVL, $4.04, +$0.13, 3.32%) dropped 1.73 percent to $3.97 on Friday morning pre-market trading session, while on Thursday, shares of Novell were up 3.32 percent and closed on $4.04.

To quote a comment on the subject:

Ron is asleep at the wheel ? No more after a few big customers ?

Submitted by atang1 on Sat, 12/05/2009 – 04:33.

When the chips are down, the CEO has to bring the big customers in? Ron Did British Telecom(security management) and Peugeot(Linux desktop) and Micropsoft paid for Linux services(bugs fixing) for their customers, then silence for years.

One has to examine one’s own destiny? Miguel does not have any technology that can be turned into money?

Netbooks are changing in architecture(simple multicored cpu for realtime vs. virtualization and USB 3.0 bus), data centers are changing to triple play. Where Novel is going, nobody knows. A $billion dollar company has to size and target customers, all the time?

We are stockholders of Novl. Opinions here maybe biased.

A former employee of Novell says that “Novell’s quarter crumbles” and here is just how bad it is:

In third quarter earnings news, computer networking and services company Novell (NASDAQ:NOVL) reported a loss of 74 cents per share. Analysts had expected a 7 cent per share profit.

That is a lot of money to lose in one year, especially considering the reduced expenses (layoffs and other cancellations).

Novell has reported a net loss of $256m for the fourth quarter of 2009, compared to a net loss of $16m in the same quarter last year. Revenue declined 12% to $216m.

Novell cannot go on like this forever. Is it time for Ron Hovsepian to beg again? █

Summary: OpenSUSE and SUSE news from the past week, ranging from events to technical observations

SLE* was virtually out of sight this week, but OpenSUSE had some stories to tell. We shall go through them very quickly.

OpenSUSE 11.2

The final release candidate of OpenSUSE 11.2 was made available a few days ago, with an announcement coming from Joe Brockmeier in his personal Web site and also in the OpenSUSE Web site.

This is it folks! We’re almost there for openSUSE 11.2. Time to grab the final 11.2 release candidate and shake out any remaining bugs to get the lizard ready for release. This release includes an updated kernel, Samba, Firefox, and more.

Andreas Jaeger wrote about Factory and some issues have begun appearing, e.g.:

Yesterday i noticed that openal-soft on 11.2 is broken, it just locks up with current pulseaudio.

Amongst other posts about OpenSUSE 11.2 we apparently also have decreased development involvement. Wolfgang Rosenauer wrote about OpenSUSE 11.2 Web browsing.

Events and Board

Apart from some local events, there are the escapades of Joe Brockmeier, who represented OpenSUSE at the Ontario Linux Fest. Pascal from the OpenSUSE Board organises (or helps in organising) FOSDEM 2010, as usual. This time it’s a “Miniconf” he’ll be involved in. The OpenSUSE Board is also looking for new people and Rupert Horstkötter is among the early applicants.

Stephen Shaw (decriptor) and Bryen Yunashko (suseROCKS) have completed their tenure on the Board, and their seats are up for election. There is also a new seat available to be occupied by a non-Novell member.

Technical

All sorts of instructional blog posts have been published and Francis Giannaros published a tour of OpenSUSE 11.2, which looks good.

The KDE 4 experience in openSUSE has been enhanced daily, and while the desktop environment itself has matured significantly since the last release, there has been a constant focus to provide an outstanding delivery of it in openSUSE 11.2.

The highlights include: the openSUSE DVD preselected to KDE 4.3; new Firefox KDE integration; OpenOffice.org KDE 4 integration; consistent KDE artwork; all other standard applications fully ported to KDE 4, including KNetworkManager, Amarok, DigiKam, K3b, Konversation and more.

One blogger calls OpenSUSE 11.2 “the Perfect KDE Distribution.”

OpenSUSE 11.2 comes with a lot of programs that support social networks (i.e. Twitter, Facebook, …etc). Firefox is the king in the area. But if you do not like the default webbased interfaces, you can use other applications like:

* Choqok: New KDE twitter and identi.ca client.
* Kopete: The KDE client now has additional support for Facebook IM protocol.
* Social plasmoids: KDE 4.3 comes with plasmoids for Twitter/identi.ca and openDesktop.

Many major releases of GNU/Linux are coming shortly and this new roundup includes OpenSUSE.

Novell’s Duncan Mac-Vicar writes about third-party repositories, Sascha Manns writes about Skrooge packages, and one less familiar blogger writes about wallpapers for the distribution.

openSUSE was not having rpms for this package. So I went ahead and created a build-service project for this. Go GRAB The RPM (1-click install)

Katarina Machalkova finds OpenSUSE very easy.

More OpenSUSE

OpenSUSE Weekly News may contain a lot more information and there is now an accompanying audio. Sascha Manns is trying to grow the team and he also needs help with other projects, such as OpenSUSE-Medical. It seems somewhat new and rather similar to/reminiscent of the Linux for Education project, whose site says:

Welcome to the GNU/Linux Educational Server. Here you will find collections of useful courses to help you better use the applications found on the Linux distributions. There are also forums, chatrooms, courses, and help materials at your disposal.

At the front page it states: “This site is generously sponsored by openSUSE-Education project.”

That’s actually a positive contribution from Novell.

SUSE (SLES/SLED)

Here is a somewhat scripted and cocky new video from Ron Hovsepian, Novell’s CEO. We’ve seen more of this type of videos recently — ones where Novell seniors publicly suck up to Intel.

Last week we wrote about Novell and Teradata. This relationship still carries on in the following article:

The use of the Teradata software on EC2 is free and good for working with up to one terabyte of data. Teradata runs under Novell Suse Linux Enterprise Server 10.

There is also some chatter about SP3 of SLE*, despite being old news by now.

Samsung

Samsung, which signed a Microsoft patent deal similar to Novell’s, is still receiving some press for its Microsoft-taxed Linux phones. Some reporters love comparing everything to Apple, which is the wrong thing to do because the target markets are very different.

The 360 service replaces the current Vodafone Live! service and also allows users to back up the entire contents of their phone online, configure the phone’s home screen and manage contacts – in a similar way to Windows Phone’s My Phone service or MobileMe on the iPhone. It will be available across the Vodafone range, and to users on other networks too. Vodafone also confirmed that an iPhone app is in the pipeline.

Apple/iPhone is currently being sued by a company that makes Linux-powered smartphones. █