Bonum Certa Men Certa

“Novell Is Bleeding to Death”

Hardcore tattoos not the cause

Novell tattoo



ONE of the regulars from LinuxToday has just published a talkback saying that "Novell is bleeding to death." This was pretty much said there before and the layoffs which are coming confirm that there are issues. Anyway, here is the body of the message:

Novell Is Bleeding to Death



Novell was never going to die in one big go (these companies never do) but it is gradually bleeding to death and is not in a great position to ride out the current climate. I know everyone has been laying people off, but Novell have been having large rounds of layoffs for several years now and the situation hasn't improved.

From their deal with Microsoft that puts Microsoft in the driving seat, their complete inability to make anything out of the open source software that has dropped into their lap to the bleeding of their Netware, eDirectory and Groupwise businesses in favour of Windows Server, AD and Exchange - that other posters have pointed out here for years - the prognosis is looking terminal.


Over here in the United Kingdom, Novell is obviously suffering quite badly. The country's affairs with Microsoft (statistically much higher than the rest of the world) might have something to do with it.

Siruis, a UK-based company, had previously defeated Novell and it did this again thanks to Debian GNU/Linux, the poster child which was conceived by a Brit, Ian Murdock. Here is a new report about it.

"We had one client who moved from a Novell/Microsoft-based environment to a Debian-based one and they saved something like 80 percent of the cost in the first year - they couldn't have done that moving to Red Hat - not when their licences cost €£1000," Callway said. He added that Sirius was set to announce a major educational project that would show the extent to which open source software was becoming more accepted.


Novell UK is in ruins, based on our sources. Jacqueline de Rojas still works around Novell in the vicinity of Europe (in the Operation side) and she was responsible for this role until recently (she has run the UK/Ireland operations since 2007). Novell's business in UK/Ireland is now considered a total failure, however, as Microsoft has taken a lot of municipal projects, deployments, and contracts from Novell (GroupWise, Netware, etc). This could easily be seen across various UK news outlets and Groklaw pointed this out at least once in 2008. We gave many examples over the past couple of years, so there is extensive solid evidence.

This week's news serves as a reminder of Ray Noorda's newly-coined term, "co-opetition". It's truly a shame that Novell's new management is doing such co-opetition with a company that Noorda could not stand.

The late Ray Noorda, founder of Novell, coined the word "co-opetition" to describe these sorts of deals, where competitors sometimes find it sensible to actually work closely together for the common good. Sometimes, as in this case, customers seem to win as well.


How has Novell gained from the Microsoft patent deal? Have its customers benefited? Red Hat did it right, without any patent tax.

"I've heard from Novell sales representatives that Microsoft sales executives have started calling the Suse Linux Enterprise Server coupons "royalty payments"..."

--Matt Asay, April 21st, 2008

Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

KillerStartups.com is an LLM Spam Site That Sometimes Covers 'Linux' (Spams the Term)
It only serves to distract from real articles
 
Gemini Links 21/11/2024: Alphabetising 400 Books and Giving the Internet up
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: TikTok Fighting Bans, Bluesky Failing Users
Links for the day
Links 21/11/2024: SpaceX Repeatedly Failing (Taxpayers Fund Failure), Russian Disinformation Spreading
Links for the day
Richard Stallman Earned Two More Honorary Doctorates Last Month
Two more doctorate degrees
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, November 20, 2024
IRC logs for Wednesday, November 20, 2024
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: Game Recommendations, Schizo Language
Links for the day
Growing Older and Signs of the Site's Maturity
The EPO material remains our top priority
Did Microsoft 'Buy' Red Hat Without Paying for It? Does It Tell Canonical What to Do Now?
This is what Linus Torvalds once dubbed a "dick-sucking" competition or contest (alluding to Red Hat's promotion of UEFI 'secure boot')
Links 20/11/2024: Politics, Toolkits, and Gemini Journals
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: 'The Open Source Definition' and Further Escalations in Ukraine/Russia Battles
Links for the day
[Meme] Many Old Gemini Capsules Go Offline, But So Do Entire Web Sites
Problems cannot be addressed and resolved if merely talking about these problems isn't allowed
Links 20/11/2024: Standing Desks, Broken Cables, and Journalists Attacked Some More
Links for the day
Links 20/11/2024: Debt Issues and Fentanylware (TikTok) Ban
Links for the day
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar), Magna Carta and Debian Freedoms: RIP
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Jérémy Bobbio (Lunar) & Debian: from Frans Pop to Euthanasia
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
This Article About "AI-Powered" is Itself LLM-Generated Junk
Trying to meet quotas by making fake 'articles' that are - in effect - based on plagiarism?
Recognizing invalid legal judgments: rogue Debianists sought to deceive one of Europe's most neglected regions, Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Google-funded group distributed invalid Swiss judgment to deceive Midlands-North-West
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Gemini Links 20/11/2024: BeagleBone Black and Suicide Rates in Switzerland
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, November 19, 2024
IRC logs for Tuesday, November 19, 2024
Links 19/11/2024: War on Cables?
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Private Journals Online and Spirituality
Links for the day
Drew's Development Mailing Lists and Patches to 'Refine' His Attack Pieces Against the FSF's Founder
Way to bury oneself in one's own grave...
The Free Software Foundation is Looking to Raise Nearly Half a Million Dollars by Year's End
And it really needs the money, unlike the EFF which sits on a humongous pile of oligarchs' and GAFAM cash
What IBMers Say About IBM Causing IBMers to Resign (by Making Life Hard/Impossible) and Why Red Hat Was a Waste of Money to Buy
partnering with GAFAM
In Some Countries, Desktop/Laptop Usage Has Fallen to the Point Where Microsoft and Windows (and Intel) Barely Matter Anymore
Microsoft is the next Intel basically
[Meme] The Web Wasn't Always Proprietary Computer Programs Disguised as 'Web Pages'
The Web is getting worse each year
Re-de-centralisation Should Be Our Goal
Put the users in charge, not governments and corporations in charge of users
Gemini Links 19/11/2024: Rain Music, ClockworkPi DevTerm, and More
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 18, 2024
IRC logs for Monday, November 18, 2024