We recently wrote about some of the bad news for Novell in South Africa. On the brighter side of things, a new manager is assuming responsibilities.

Novell South Africa has appointed Michelle Beetar as country manager. Beetar assumed her new position on 2 January 2008 and takes over the reins from Stafford Masie, who resigned in August 2007.

She replaces one who left to join Google before a serious staff exodus. Again, on the brighter side of things, Novell gets some good pat on the shoulder from ComputerWorld UK.

Whether you think Novell is a pioneer or a pariah for signing an agreement with Microsoft in November 2006, it is inarguably an important player in the open source world, employing many key hackers like Miguel de Icaza. That alone makes its moves worth watching, and these blog posts worth reading.

In a separate context, Eric Schmidt, who is Novell's former CEO, gets just a quick mention in the following article.

The study's weakness is that it's a look in the rearview mirror and may not best reflect today's leadership factories. The companies that groomed today's CEOs did so in decades past. Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, came from Novell by way of Sun Microsystems. But Baxter International in the 1990s was the CEO farm system for today's biotech industry, so Google could well be grooming the tech CEOs of tomorrow, says Joe Moglia, CEO of TD Ameritrade, who became a Merrill Lynch trainee after 16 years as a football coach.

Novell's days of glory probably predate Eric Schmidt and go back to Ray Noorda's watch. ⬆