I had a lovely conversation with both David Patrick, CEO, and Albert Lee, Chief Strategy Officer, of xkoto about their new product, GridScale. I’ve known David for quite some time. We met at Ximian’s Cambridge offices long before Novell acquired the company. If my memory serves me, David later become VP and General Manager of Novell’s Linux, Open Source and Services group. Although I’m sure that I’ve met Albert at some time in the past, neither of us can recall when we met.
The New York Times also mentioned Eric Schmidt's roots in Novell.
At Sun Microsystems, where he was chief technology officer, Mr. Schmidt looked on as Scott G. McNealy, the company’s chairman, railed against Microsoft and its leaders, Steven A. Ballmer and Bill Gates, as “Ballmer and Butthead.” During a four-year stint as chief executive of Novell, Mr. Schmidt routinely opined that it was folly for any Microsoft rival to “moon the giant,” as he put it; all that would do, he argued, was incite Microsoft’s wrath.
Novell's NetWare and eDirectory are still major presences in many organizations today, particularly in some education markets. But fully integrating Mac OS X with both NetWare and eDirectory poses a unique set of challenges to systems administrators.
Lastly, here is a very long story of civil servant which involves implementing a Novell Local Area Network, among many other Novell-related things. ⬆
Microsoft cannot keep a dying unit that makes almost no sales alive just for mere prospects of a bailout (which falls through because even the military turns it down)
So if Microsoft cushions those losses (to delay the bubble's implosion; Microsoft uses the bubble to fake its "market cap", as does NVIDIA), its debt will skyrocket
