Bonum Certa Men Certa

Further Financial Analysis of Novell (Looking Grim, Despite Grooming)

Even embellishment has its limited capacity

IT Jungle has the tendency to patiently cover news stories about a week after they make their initial appearance. The analysis is typically more profound as result.



Last week, for Novell at the very least, was the week that everyone took advantage of. They discussed Novell's alleged successes, as measured in terms of the state of its Linux business alone. This was bogus [1, 2, 3]. Now comes the following decent analysis, which delves a little deeper into the details others tended to miss, primarily folks whose inner self wanted to see Novell succeed. Everyone tends to prefer hearing just the good news, unless Microsoft is involved.

Commercial Linux distributor Novell may be very happy about the growth that it is seeing from its SUSE Linux products and has certainly dodged a bullet by embracing Linux as plain vanilla NetWare sales go into what is probably a permanent, if very elongated, decline. But Linux is still, by the numbers, a very small piece of the business at Novell, even if it does give Novell mindshare in today's IT space as the major--some might say only--alternative to Red Hat.

[...]

Of course, Novell's Workgroup division, which sells the Open Enterprise Server amalgam of NetWare and Linux, should probably be counted as much as Linux as not at this point, and this is still the largest part of Novell. In the second fiscal quarter, OES sales fell by 1.5 percent to $48.2 million, and NetWare sales fell by 7.1 percent to just under $6 million, with NetWare licenses down and support costs up. Novell's GroupWise and related collaboration software brought in $28.2 million in sales, up 7.7 percent, within the Workgroup division, and with all the other software in this unit tossed into the mix, the Workgroup division brought in $92.4 million, down 9/10ths of a percent. Identity management, a big deal for Novell for the past decade, accounted for $30.7 million in sales, up 6.4 percent, and systems and resource management, another area where Novell has tried to put a heterogeneous stake in the ground, brought in just under $41 million, up 15.4 percent.


There are conflicting views, which most likely depend on one's preference. You might find some who argue (unsurprisingly from Matt Asay again) that Novell did not need Microsoft for a boost in sales while Ed Moltzen, for example, seems to indicate that Novell should attribute this boost to Microsoft. He merely refers to the remarks of Novell's CEO, who seems keen to pass Microsoft some flowers.

Part of the deal called for Microsoft to pony up $240 million to Novell so, in exchange, it could hand out coupons to customers for Novell's server Linux. From the looks of it, Microsoft hasn't exactly been wasting time.

"To date, we have invoiced $157 million, or 65 percent of the original five-year, $240 million agreement," Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian told financial analysts last week when discussing his company's most recent financial performance.


You are hopefully seeing just how Novell's CEO feels about Microsoft. That's his #1 competitor, or at least what ought to have been his #1 competitor before losing focus and essentially signing off a non-compete clause with the company that hates Linux with passion.

At the end of the day, only one company truly enjoys this deal. That company is Microsoft. It doesn't need to even write code. All it takes is a handshake and a software patents portfolio.

Ron Hovsepian and Steve Ballmer



MS Novell

Recent Techrights' Posts

Coming Soon: Microsoft Fake Results, Mass Layoffs, and Silence About All the People Microsoft Pressured to "Quit" (So That They Don't Get Counted as Layoffs)
there will be more mass layoffs
Speed of GNU/Linux
The media seldom speaks of the dangers of "proprietary software"
Proprietary Windows Versus "Linux" News (Trying to Keep People on Windows, Never Exploring GNU/Linux)
Good editors know better how to recognise threats and not give them lip service
Ensuring That Every Computer User Anywhere in the World Can Take Control of All His or Her Computers
We must fight the people who attack general-purpose computing, in particular those who push this agenda very aggressively inside Linux
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: Autism and Structural Navigation
Links for the day
What Happened to the Open Source Initiative (OSI) Elections: The Purge, the Cover-up, and the Witch-hunts
OSI has gone "full Microsoft"
 
China is Already Culling GAFAM (Not Just Microsoft Windows)
OS monoculture or "OS hegemony" may be coming to an end
The "Telephone Operating System in the Vatican" is 95 Years Old, Vatican Moved to GNU/Linux
Maybe Microsoft is down to zero already
If Tesla Shares (and Alleged Value) Fell 55% (From $489 to $222) in a Few Months Maybe It's Not Worth Anything At All (It's Just Gambling)
Tesla swasticars have turned from a "status symbol" into a "public embarrassment" and cause for casual humiliation
Chromebooks' Adoption in Sweden No Longer Depends on Schools
School breaks are when classrooms are shut
No, IBM is Not Investing $150 Billion in the US and It Doesn't Even Have That Kind of Money
Here we go again... media as a vehicle of lobbying and misinformation
Leak: The EPO's General Consultative Committee (GCC) Does Not Consult Staff on Crucial Matters and Bypasses the Administrative Council (AC) to Do Illegal Things
violations against the EPO's very staff
New Leaks Coming Soon, We Maintain 100% Record of Successful Resistance to Censorship
We won't be told what we can and cannot say (especially when it's true)
Central African Republic (CAR): Vista 11 is Only ~0.2% Market Share
99.8% to go!
BSD and GNU/Linux Replaced Microsoft in Secure Servers, All Microsoft Has Left is LLM Slop for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt (FUD)
the FUD machine never rests
Gemini Links 28/04/2025: A Simple Task Tracking and Auto-Prioritization Tool and Other Programs
Links for the day
Links 28/04/2025: Canada's Election, Pakistan-India Conflict
Links for the day
Glue Inside Your Pizza (or Why People Will Get Fed Up With Slop)
People are given "answers" from non-intelligence word dumpsters
Links 28/04/2025: Cyberattacks Happening, Chatbots Disappointing, and "Free Speech Under Fire"
Links for the day
Phone Adoption Very Low in Vatican, Windows Usage Fell Nonetheless
Even in places where people still use desktops/laptops most of the time (and have access to these) Windows is gradually losing ground
GNU/Linux 9% in Cuba, Vista 11 Waning, Android Dominant
Microsoft has pretty much lost Cuba
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, April 27, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, April 27, 2025
In 24 Countries Observed by statCounter Vista 11 is Still Less Than a Quarter of Windows Users Despite All Other Versions Being 'Expired'
They ought to move to GNU/Linux
Links 27/04/2025: Pope Goodbyes, "Politics of Fear", Slop Redux and More Google Shutdowns (Google Debt Had Grown This Year)
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Serenity Dialectics, Hockey Jersey Ethics, and More
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Death of Nest Thermostats, Death of Metaverse
Links for the day
Links 27/04/2025: Projects Workflow and Discovering Technology
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, April 26, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, April 26, 2025
Microsoft Isn't on the Map in USSR
To them, it's either Google or Yandex
In Central America Windows Became a Small Force
These are countries where Windows used to have well over 95% of the "market"
What's Very Vexing to GAFAM, EPO and Others Is That It's Incredibly Hard to Censor Us (and Nobody Ever Successfully Did That Before)
resist, do not capitulate
Site May be Even Faster Now
It basically takes less than a tenth of a second to serve the page
Receiving SLAPPs and Collecting Them Like Trophies (the SLAPPs Always Fail)
People who file lawsuits bring even more attention to themselves (or to embarrassing statements about them)
Year of GNU/Linux on the Laptop?
It's not happening only in Lenovo
What People Must Understand About the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
some facts about the Open Source Initiative (OSI)
Many of the Scandals Are Interconnected (Overlapping People and Corporations)
We're only getting started
More Copyright Lawsuits Against LLM Slop Providers and Suppliers of LLM Slopfarms Would Benefit Society
It's not just bad for the Web and for society; it's also legally dangerous
Links 26/04/2025: General Assassinated in the Town of Balashikha, US Promoting Seafloor Mining
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: Facebook Layoffs Again, Remembering What's Real, and Say No to Mass Surveillance
Links for the day
Links 26/04/2025: NOAA Budget Cuts and "Dog Days Ahead"
Links for the day
In defence of JD Vance, death of Pope Francis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Three Years in Prison for Disney Employee’s ‘Menu Hacking’: The Economic Fallout of Digital Menus
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Friday, April 25, 2025
IRC logs for Friday, April 25, 2025