Summary: The National Health Service (NHS) is cutting down its contract with Novell; there is more cluelessness among Novellers who have no clear strategy
Yang, a Novell computer server, crashed at 10:45 a.m. Sept. 21, causing setbacks in departments across campus, including The Tech Talk and athletics.
Novell has just suffered a major blow in the UK as the NHSdumps Novell (as a ‘blanket’ type agreement):
The Department for Health has confirmed the £6m Enterprise Wide Agreement with Novell, due to expire next month, will not be renewed. Local trusts will be responsible for ensuring compliance.
Coming only months after Microsoft’s £80m EWA was brought to an end by the Department for Health (DfH), the deal with Novell, which included ID management, discovery tools and maintenance looked unlikely to get the go-ahead, but some have still branded the government’s decision as short-sighted.
Novell might not be sure about what it wants to do with itself, but the company has been pretty clear what it wants you to do with its products. It wants to build virtual software appliances with all kinds of software stacks running inside of virtual machines and atop its SUSE Linux Enterprise distro.
Novell on September 23 announced a new version of Novell Access Governance Suite, a set of software products that simplifies how customers govern user access to corporate resources and manage regulatory compliance.
Helping companies to control user access to corporate resources and manage regulatory compliance, Novell has unveiled a new version of Novell (News – Alert) Access Governance Suite.
This is one of those products which Novell knows not what to do with. What company would conceivably be interested in this asset now that Novell wants to sell its entire portfolio? █
Summary: The Microsoft-stuffed VMware picks a Novell manager to be its channel director; Novell buys some virtualisation propaganda from IDG; other Novell staff on the move is being tracked
MOVEMENT of staff is sometimes indicative of things to come, which is why staff migration from Novell to VMB_ware should be seen as significant. According to this new report from IDG, Novell’s Donovan is “crowned VMware channel director”:
VMware has appointed John Donovan as its new director for partner organisations across A/NZ.
Donovan will take the reins as of November 1 and will continue his position at Novell as its Asia-Pacific vice-president of alliance and channel sales until then.
VMware, Microsoft and Citrix, the most widely used virtualization vendors, are all touting their ability to automate management of virtual resources and build cloud networks. But they have competition from Red Hat, Novell and others.
VMware’s customers say that the server virtualization vendor still lags third-party specialists in virtualization management. And though uncertainty about the rumored Novell merger continues to reign, some parts of Novell’s management portfolio could bolster VMware’s.
Initial reports on Novell’s ongoing liquidation sale held that the process would happen in two phases: one deal with a “strategic buyer”– reportedly VMware Inc. — for the SUSE Linux OS business, with the rest, including its NetWare and IT management software product lines, going to another buyer. Now, Reuters reports that talks have stalled and quotes a source describing Novell’s management tools as “a dying cow.” But at least in some corners, Novell’s virtualization management tools are the most intriguing part of the acquisition rumors.
It is still being said by the financial Web sites that VMB_ware is likely to buy at least part of Novell (the stock is affected accordingly). Well, Novell has just bought some PlateSpin whitepapers (propaganda) [1, 2] from IDG/IDC, which means that IDC shows what the client wants shown and then IDG pushes this into ‘news’ channels/circulation. Here in Novell’s PR blog IDC was even writing blog posts last week. How corruptible.
Guest Post by Brett Waldman, Analyst, IDC
It will be interesting to see if other Novell staff moves to the Microsoft-stuffed VMB_ware (or vice versa). In the mean time, all that we see this week are the following movements:
When I started there were no local area networks. There was a company you might remember called Novell that was called Novell Shared Data Systems back then and we were like the third or fourth reseller nationally. So we took the initiative.
Prior to OSA, Holahan was co-founder of LexiBridge Corporation (acquired by Level3 Communications), GemLogic, Inc. (acquired by SilverStream/Novell) and Active Endpoints, Inc. He also held leadership roles at Progress Software and Interactive Data.
- Eric Schmidt’s role as CEO at Novell is mentioned in some news sites, including IDG where Dave Kearns writes:
And to show that not much as changed in 10 years, I added “Even more indicative, though, were comments made by Novell executives including CEO Eric Schmidt that eDirectory was now the core of Novell’s business.
There’s some interesting personnel news today in the world of mobile software apps for companies. Boston-based Apperian, a mobile development and platform startup, says it has appointed a new CEO as of last week. He is David Patrick, a veteran of Lotus, Sun, Novell, and a number of cutting-edge tech startups on both coasts. He succeeds founder Chuck Goldman, a former Apple executive who is staying on as chief strategy officer and will continue to run the company’s services, sales, and business development.
Novell is a shrinking company, so migration of its top staff continues to matter. The same goes for Microsoft.█
GroupLink Corporation, the leader in help desk, service desk, incident management and CRM solutions for Novell environments, announces the only Novell ZENworks 10 integrated service desk, everything HelpDesk. The ZENworks 10 integration adds to the current integration points of GroupWise or Exchange, eDirectory or Active Directory (LDAP), and Linux (OES2/SLES10) or Windows.
GroupLink, a provider of help desk, service desk, incident management and CRM offerings for Novell environments, has unveiled Novell ZENworks 10 integrated service desk, an everything HelpDesk.
Gregory Rosenberg, the CEO of Red Hat value-added reseller RICIS Inc., says his smaller clients use Novell’s open source tool SUSE Studio, a kit for preconfiguring and packaging virtual machines.
Bahrain’s Ministry of Social Development (MOSD) has recently implemented the Novell Open Enterprise solution, which has resulted in a more stable, secure, flexible and cost-efficient IT infrastructure, while helping reduce up to 60 per cent of the Ministry’s IT support workload. Novell, the leader in Intelligent Workload Management (IWM), has likewise helped MOSD successfully streamline and automate user and desktop management within its offices, keeping skilled technicians free to focus on more important tasks.
Mr. Chapman will discuss the decisions that led up to the current situation and what elements can be considered as almost inevitable in the short term. He will present his views on what this will probably mean for Novell clients and partners, and the options they should be considering. Time will be provided for questions.
Don Chapman served as President of Novell Canada for 11 years and is currently Advisor to Institutional Investors that track Novell.
SAP
• Novell and SAP Collaborate to Optimize Customers’ SUSE Linux-Based SAP® Application Deployments – press release (also here)
Excerpt: “Novell and SAP have released a specialised version of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SLES for SAP Applications. Designed to ease deployment issues and reduce installation time and costs, SLES for SAP offers – an unattended installation framework to seamlessly load SAP applications onto the operating system, clustering support and a stack validated by SAP and Novell. SAP says it is committed to delivering support for its proprietary software on open source based platforms.”
Excerpt: “The PowerEdge C6100 is a high-density rack server with low energy requirements. It runs Intel Xeon 5600 processors running Novell or Red Hat Linux and can accommodate up to 96 GB of memory. Each node in the unit can be serviced separately from the others.
Excerpt: “Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server has not been certified on this Matrix for PeopleSoft setup because, as Crowsen puts it, no one has asked for it yet.”
Excerpt: “A self-described social-networking junkie has launched a new website designed to help Mormons and others with similar business interests meet online.
“David Bradford, chairman and former chief executive of Fusion-io and a former Novell executive, is creator of LDS.biz, which formally debuted Tuesday but has been quietly attracting followers for several weeks.”
The bottom line is that, while Hurd was able to achieve some short-term goals by cutting the R&D budget at HP, the company now has to make up the loss by essentially buying innovation and they are paying top dollar. Alternative innovation investment strategies are also an interesting commentary on make versus buy and how critical innovation is as a core competence of technology companies.
Being a marketeer, I brought this back to marketing. Many organizations think that they can save money by draconian cuts to the marketing budget and, frankly, in the short term they can save money in this way. But at what cost?
Excerpt: “Benjamin Grubin, director of solutions at Novell (www.novell.com), says containerization, virtualization, and cloud computing are three related technologies. Containerization, or the use of densely packed, highly standardized computing resources in modular containers, can potentially accelerate the shift to standardized pools of resources, Grubin says. These pools can be divided among various shifting computing duties.”
Among the listed creditors are Excom in Australia, Google, Microsoft in Singapore, Novell and VMware International. The liquidators report notes these creditors may not have filed a claim in the liquidation.
Summary: Some of the very latest developments in Novell’s sale saga and interpretation from various sources
NOVELL is at the stage where it must sell due to expectations from clients and investors (there is apparently an offer on the table). Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols says, based on reporting from Reuters, that “VMware’s Novell SUSE Linux buy out runs into a snag”. The thing about Novell is that the shares fell (Novell, Inc. (NOVL.O) was down $0.43/-6.61% yesterday with an additional -0.33% after hours) because a sale might not be so immediate.
“Novell’s board, which hired JPMorgan in March to look at strategic options for the whole company, is unwilling to part with its best performing unit SUSE Linux alone and be left with a shell of legacy assets, according to three sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record about the auction.”
“Novell is where companies and products came to die.”Novell is just too diverse for a simple sale to be made. Ron Hovsepian made things worse by further diversifying the company with the acquisition of other companies like Managed Objects (whose CEO quit Novell last year). It turns out she was not alone: “Prior to Playxpert, Manning was the vice president of product management at Managed Objects. Managed Objects was the industry leader in Business Service Management and was later acquired by Novell.”
Novell is where companies and products came to die. Hovsepian just had little clue what he was doing with the company and his technical chief/strategist quit the company earlier this year. Now the company is in a freefall, except of course if one considers the impact of the company’s sale on the stock. There are still many more articles about that sale (e.g. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12]). “Novell Could Sell for $2.8B,” says this one report and the effect on the stock got covered in [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18].
But analysts say VMware’s apparent attempt to purchase SUSE Linux makes perfect sense, and will help VMware compete against Microsoft (MSFT), its primary rival, and also Red Hat, which claims VMware can’t offer a full cloud computing stack because it lacks an operating system.
If Microsoft Windows retains its current dominance, VMware may not be able to compete against Microsoft in the long run, says Burton Group analyst Chris Wolf.
Sam from ITWirewonders, “[i]f VMware buys Novell, what happens to the Microsoft deal?”
Novell sponsors this project with people, hardware and services. But OpenSUSE has its own board and along with community contributors has put together what it calls a list of strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It makes for extremely interesting reading.
How will VMware, which was once suspected of using code from Linux in its ESX Server and not releasing the source, handle the crowd of developers at OpenSUSE who are quite clearly not a docile lot?
There are other interesting questions that present themselves. What happens to Mono and Moonlight, both projects run by Miguel de Icaza, a vice-president at Novell, which aim to make it easier for Microsoft products to play with Linux, in particular SUSE?
Novell has long used these projects as a means of claiming better interoperability with Microsoft. Once VMware has its own operating system – as it would if it bought Novell’s Linux business, why would it care for projects like Mono and Moonlight?
Both projects, it must be added, have not increased Novell’s popularity among the free software and open source software communities. VMware can do without negative karma in these communities – it already has plenty.
It is long a article that does not actually answer the question presented in the headline. It is not entirely clear how such an acquisition would affect the Novell-Microsoft deal. As far is SUSE is concerned, the same rules would probably apply (e.g. the Microsoft-stuffed VM_Bware paying Microsoft for GNU/Linux sales).
OStatic incorrectly characterises Novell as an open source company and asks, “If VMware Buys SUSE Linux, Could Red Hat Feel the Heat?”
Could VMware indeed be a part of an acquisition plan for Novell, and if so, could that spell bad news for Red Hat?
Red Hat, of course, has been a market darling for some time now, continuing to post quarter after quarter of good financial results based on its basic business model of supporting Linux. It has always competed with Novell in the Linux business, but Novell’s Linux business has had spotty results in recent years, due in part to its partnership with Microsoft and dependence on Microsoft to help turn up Linux deals. Now, according to some, Novell may have only a few weeks left as an independent company.
If the worst case scenario that is possible occurs, I’m expecting to hear cries for interoperability and cross platform migration that will be similar to the cries heard in the 1960s and 1970s. Are we doomed to repeat this cycle over and over again?
Novell is about to be sold; the question is to who and under what conditions. █
Summary: More people are afraid of VMware, Groklaw suspects that VMware only pretends to compete with Microsoft, and there are reasons to believe that VMware would abandon free elements such as OpenSUSE
IT APPEARS as though the Microsoft-occupied VMware (which we may call MSWare or WCware, as suggested by one of our readers) will become a subject of greater focus at Techrights. It seems like the future owner of Ballnux [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8], the Microsoft patent tax-encumbered distribution of GNU/Linux. VMware would most likely try to hurt Red Hat with it, using the hypervisor as a sales channel. VMware has been buying FOSS to bury it, based on our experience and many links we covered here before. We realise that a lot of people are unaware of this, just as they do not know that the top of VMware’s management is filled with former Microsoft executives after the old management was ousted with help from EMC, a close Microsoft partner.
Earlier today in IRC it came up that the news about VMware is definitely bad news for SUSE and for FOSS. “[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse,” Chips B. Malroy said to kick off this discussion (which may be more long-winded than this post). What would happen to OpenSUSE, whose weekly activity seems to be decreasing over time? VMware does not have a history of fostering much of a community at all. As pointed out in IRC, it is possible that VMware is just Microsoft’s way of getting better control over SUSE. ThistleWeb says: “isn’t the MS dictionary definition of “embedding” about getting their own employees embedded with other companies or committees to help further the MS agenda? yahoo, vmware, iso style”
“[I] don’t think Novell was a good fit for Suse” –Chips B. MalroyBrian Proffitt from IDG says that “A VMware/Novell acquisition makes sense, but care must be taken.”
Investors should buy bullish Novell Inc. options to profit from a potential breakup of the maker of Linux operating-system software, which is exploring a sale of its assets, MKM Partners LP said.
Etai Friedman, MKM’s head derivatives trader, recommended purchasing November $6 calls on Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell while selling the same number of November $7 calls, a strategy known as a call spread that cuts the price of the trade while capping potential profit. Novell rose 1.2 percent to $6.12 at 4 p.m. New York time and has gained 47 percent this year.
“Speculation of a Novell deal has whipsawed the stock for quite some time,” the Greenwich, Connecticut-based strategist wrote in a report today. “With specific buyers in the mix,” MKM “believes investors’ attention should move toward the valuation of Novell with prospects of a deal much higher than current prices.”
Paul Singer (Elliott Associates) too will be making a profit from his shares of Novell. Vultures tend to get their way in such a society with a “free” market. That’s another subject anyway.
A potential acquisition of Novell could pose an interesting situation for Microsoft, which partnered with the Linux vendor on virtualization technologies in 2006. But VMware, led by former Microsoft executive Paul Maritz, inked a key partnership with Novell earlier this year which sparked strong negative reactions from the Microsoft brass.
Over at Groklaw, Pamela Jones supports our suspicion that the ‘new’ VMware (with Microsoft veterans in charge) is still working for Microsoft in a way. “Let me hasten to say I have no knowledge if this is so or not,” Jones wrote, “He goes on to say that Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other, so that means there’s no love lost. Maybe. Or maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.”
“Maritz and Microsoft have been publicly trash talking each other [...] maybe it’s like professional wrestling, where it looks like a fight, but in reality it’s a choreographed dance so it looks like a fight.” –Pamela Jones, GroklawJones said this last year as well. It does seem like a possibility and we have publicly inquired for more information about the private relationship between Maritz and existing executives of Microsoft.
If it turns out that VMware serves Microsoft’s interests, then maybe it would be suitable to change how we refer to the ‘new’ VMware. “MSWare” would confuse people too much, but we can figure something out. Today’s VMware is clearly not the VMware people knew some years ago (we covered in great detail what Tucci had done to the management while he was getting closer to Ballmer).
“Red Hat let VMware have: Zimbra, SpringSource, RabbitMQ, Tungsten Graphics, GemStone,” wrote gnufreex. “They could intercept at least two of those… Zimbra and Spring source for example.”
Our main concern is that VMware has some Microsoft loyalty (like EMC, its owner) and that together they will both try to hurt Red Hat, drain FOSS competition to Microsoft, and sell just ‘Microsoft Linux’ (SUSE) through hypervisors they wish to control at KVM’s expense, for example. Our “VMware” wiki page may be required reading for those who have not seen what happened to VMware over the past couple of years. It’s just not the same company anymore. Jason from The Sourcewrote about it before he knew that the likely buyer would be VMware and he wondered what this would mean to Mono and Moonlight:
Mono goes on, maybe under a spin-off company with Miguel de Icaza and troops. Team Apologista is large and insular enough to remain divorced from the overall FLOSS community and still soldier on as a Microsoft team. Mono has always been and will always be a niche product in a niche market, but you can make money off of niche products. Besides, the ideological and personal investment of many Team Apologista members mean they are not going to give up on Mono, no matter what.
I have a harder time imagining an existing company taking on Mono, though. The reason is – even if you think Mono is perfectly fine to use, it is still true that a large and vocal segment of your potential user base disagrees. A segment including the Free Software Foundation, by the way.
If you aren’t a desperate company flailing about for some lifeline – any lifeline – and you know what happens in terms of FLOSS community trust and respect when striking deals with Microsoft – not to mention what happens to companies in general that deal with Microsoft – why would you take on such a white elephant as Mono?
Speaking of Mono, the FSF is not a fan of it as projects like Banshee are clearly a patent liability, based on the MCP from Microsoft. We still saw arbitrary reviews/advocacy of Banshee a few days ago [1, 2]. People should not be encouraged to install this Novell software, which gives Microsoft a legal weapon against distributions other than SUSE. Mike Masnick is meanwhile reminding us of what empty copyright allegations have meant to GNU/Linux and to SCO:
Unix For Sale: Massively Damaged, Sold As Is & Absent Delusions Of Grandeur Over Linux Copyright Infringement
[...]
It’s unclear what anyone would really do with whatever magical assets the sale comes with, but I would suggest suing IBM for infringement is not one of the better ideas.
We covered this last week on a few occasions [1, 2]. We don’t need another SCO and Novell owns UNIX rights (now on sale). █
Summary: Murdoch’s press says more about VMware’s plan to buy SUSE
It’s hardly just a rumour or a mere speculation anymore. Rumours about Novell being split and sold [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6] are now developing into concrete evidence. One article jointly written by Microsoft’s booster Ben Worthen for Mudoch’s press says that “VMware is pursuing Novell’s SUSE Linux operating system business, these people said. Attachmate Corp., a private-equity backed software company, could end up buying some or all of the remaining assets, including NetWare, Novell’s network operating system. Attachmate, which is owned by buyout investors including Golden Gate Capital and Francisco Partners, sells software to companies running older IT applications.
“VMware is hardly a desktop-oriented company, so OpenSUSE should seriously start thinking about a fork.”“Novell is most likely to sell its Linux business to VMware, although the two sides still differ on valuation, the people familiar with the matter said. Analysts say the Linux business, which has tools for managing virtualized operating systems, will strengthen VMware’s presence in cloud computing, a catch-all term for software and services accessed over the Web The company may decide not to sell its remaining assets to Attachmate if it decides that the price being offered is too low, the people said.”
We have already explained why this is bad news. We have this page about VMware’s recent history (victim of Microsoft “Slog”, then entryism, just like Yahoo! in some ways). VMware is hardly a desktop-oriented company, so OpenSUSE should seriously start thinking about a fork. █
A quick disclaimer: Novell is my former employer. I left the company at the end of January, and as far as I know the $2 billion offer from Elliott Associates wasn’t even in discussions then. At any rate, I don’t have any inside knowledge (call me, Ian…) so what you’re reading here is pure (if educated) speculation. I don’t have any vested interest in the buyer, except a hope that my former colleagues will land with a company that will treat them well and respect the openSUSE Project.
[...]
This brings me to the final choice I’m tossing in the hat: VMware. VMware has been buying other open source solutions lately (Zimbra, SpringSource) so it doesn’t seem like a stretch to say that the company might want to add SUSE Linux to its collection. VMware might also want to have a Linux distribution to help its customers and partners build more appliances that will run on VMware’s virtualization products.
[...]
And a quick mention, since it’s sure to come up — what about Microsoft? This seems terribly unlikely. It’s hard to imagine how Microsoft would get past the antitrust issues, to begin with.
Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols (SJVN), a longtime proponent of SUSE, is making some guesses too, e.g.:
I don’t see either Dell or Oracle being in the mix. Dell’s strongest Linux partnerships are with Ubuntu and Red Hat. Oracle already has its own Unbreakable Linux, which is based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).
So, what do you think? VMware? HP? Dell? Oracle? None of the above?
Summary: Several former Microsoft chiefs (now running VMware) may soon own the second-largest server distribution/product built with GNU/Linux, which is also a source of revenue to Microsoft
NOVELL’S market position has been weakening for years and its market cap falling to dangerous levels. News sources say that Novell is about to be acquired and it’s primarily one source that all the reports rely on. “Why would Novell announce sale in 6 weeks,” gnufreex asked. “You announce deal when it is done… And when it is definitive… They are just trying to pump stock… They have nothing.” Agent Smith” wrote: “Novell being sold in parts. What will become of OpenSuse ???” (more details in the IRC logs we’ll publish later).
“They are just trying to pump stock… They have nothing.” –gnufreexgnufreex said that “maybe Novell is pumping it [the stock] to buy time. Their Market Cap was 1.9b yesterday. If it slides more, they can’t get same offer as they got from Elliot… Shareholder would sue for refusing Elliot offer… If market cap goes under 1.9B…
“What I meant is that Novell is getting panicky because their market cap is sliding below the level it was when Eliot made them an offer. If it falls bellow that level, then buyers are going to offer less than Elliot offered. And shareholders might sue because they got the worse deal because Hovsepian turned down Elliot offer without letting shareholders vote (there was no vote about Elliot)”
“Agent Smith” wrote: “Received tweets hinting VMware’s the mystery buyer of Novell Novell Sold to VMware”
We’ll come to this in just a moment.
First of all, here are some more reports about Novell closing its sale (following a split). The following is everything we’ve found on the Web so far, without exception:
Commercial operating system maker Novell is close to selling itself off after breaking it into two bits, according to the is New York Post.
Citing unnamed sources, the Post says a “strategic buyer” will shell out cash to acquire the SUSE Linux business that Novell paid $210m for in November 2003. That Linux business has just finally made it to break-even, according to Novell, and will by our estimates generate maybe $145m in revenues in fiscal 2010. (Novell brought in $108.2m in Linux platform sales in the first nine months of fiscal 2010 ended in July).
The New York Post, citing unnamed sources, said the struggling business software maker plans to sell the company to a “strategic buyer” and a private equity firm.
To say more about the stock: “Shares of Novell Inc. (NASDAQ: NOVL) rallied more than 6% in pre-market tradng after the New York Post reported that the business software maker has reached a deal in principle to sell itself in two parts, and is three to four weeks away from signing a deal.”
Also: “Novell Inc (NASDAQ: NOVL) soared 5.03% to $5.85 in the pre-market trading. NOVL’s trailing-twelve-month gross margin is 78.54%.”
One financial report summarised it as follows: “Novell Inc. (NOVL US): The maker of Linux operating-system software has reached an agreement in principle to sell itself in two parts, the New York Post reported, citing people close to the process.”
Financial news from prior days indicated problems for Novell [1, 2, 3], but not everything was pessimistic [1, 2].
Red Hat’s Jan Wildeboer wrote: “Big things are coming up. Nuff said. And no, it is not Red Hat being bought.”
People still send us messages asking something along the lines of, “what about OpenSUSE?” The project should take a lesson from OpenSolaris and take action before Novell (or its acquiror) does. We urged OpenSUSE people to fork and escape the relationship with Novell, which may no longer exist very soon.
What happens to Mono and Moonlight? Maybe Microsoft can have them (no, it’s not a joke).
The LWN discussion had just one comment at the time of writing and it said: “The WallStreet Journal has the rumour that the buyer of the GNU/Linux part might be VMware Inc.
“I don’t know much about VMWare Inc., but at first glance they seem ok. Not too likely to pull an Oracle.
“Anyone got more info?”
Here is the article which suggested that VMware is afoot (Maritz and fellow executives from Microsoft). Rather than Microsoft buying SUSE as some people speculated very long ago it may be Microsoft executives who take control of SUSE and harm it or sell it at Red Hat’s expense (with Microsoft tax). Only a couple of weeks ago we found articles like this one:
Some people might be surprised to hear that that vCD is based on RHEL v5 U4 and not on Novell SUSE. You might know that VMware recently decided to standardize on Novell SUSE for all its virtual appliances, and an OEM deal was struck between the two companies. The operative word here is “recently.” Sadly, the deal was struck at such a time that VMware could not use Novell SUSE for vCD. Merely from a standardization perspective, I would like to see that change at the next release of the product, but I think we will have to wait for the vCD 2.0 offering before that transpires.
At around 3:50 of the following video the same subject gets covered.
The idea that VMware might buy Novell is not new at all as it has been floating for months and never quite denied or debunk (not convincingly anyway). █
