Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: SCO, GroupWise, Videos, and Utah

Winter morning - Monument Valley



Summary: The remainder of Novell's news from the past week

THOSE who expect interesting news from Novell should probably skip this post. There is almost no output from Novell and mentions in the press are therefore of little value.



SCO



SCO's liquidation may be imminent, but SCO is fighting against this. For those who have not been following the saga, Novell and IBM are pushing for liquidation. Groklaw covered all this in the following new articles:

i. SCO Files Response to Motions to Dismiss/Convert & Files Objections to Claims - Updated: Response as text

SCO has filed its Response to Motions to Dismiss or Convert, the motions filed by the U.S. Trustee, Novell, and IBM. It has also filed Objections to the claims of Novell, IBM, SUSE, and Red Hat.


ii. Groklaw's Annotated Version of SCO's Response to Motions to Convert/Dismiss

I thought it would be fun to carefully respond to each inaccurate or misleading statement we see in SCO's Response [PDF] to the motions to convert or dismiss The US Trustee's Office, Novell and SUSE, and IBM all filed such motions in the SCO Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and there will be a hearing on the motions on June 15th. I hope some of you plan to attend.


iii. Herb Jackson Files Objection to Motions to Convert/Dismiss

iv. SCO Files Motion to Seal Appendix to its Response and Motion to Shorten Notice

v. IBM Replies to SCO's Opposition to Motion to Convert

vi. Novell Replies to SCO's Opposition to Novell's Motion to Convert

Finance



Here is Novell's 10-Q for this quarter.

A former Novell employee put some positive spin on Novell's financial results a couple of times over the past week, namely:

i. As chip sales plummet, which software vendors will survive?

Recent earnings reports from Novell and from Red Hat suggest that Linux and open-source vendors may clean up even as spending gets chopped.


ii.Red Hat: Go big or play it safe?

Yes, SAP, Oracle, IBM, HP, and others benefit from having Red Hat serve as a strong standard-bearer for Linux. But only if Red Hat never gets too powerful. That's why IBM has invested in Novell to shore it up against Red Hat, and it's why few are probably crying that Novell's partnership with Microsoft appears to be paying handsome dividends.


Here are some remarks on Novell's position in Moblin. It's no longer unique in that regard and SUSE sales were not impressive.

I did see a number of machines running other flavors of Linux in booths from the various Linux makers, notably Linpus and Novell. Intel was the big place to see non-Windows machines. The company was promoting its Moblin version of Linux on a number of netbooks and nettops, and I was particularly surprised by the number of all-in-one designs.

Moblin has its own user interface, but the company also showed off other versions of Linux running on top of it, including Ubuntu, Novell Suse, and Linpus.


Mail



Novell's PR blog has been quite active over the past week and it wrote about GroupWise a couple of times.

Check out this recently published eContent case study to see how Whitelaw Twining is using GroupWise to simplify filing, streamline its legal practice, and get control of the data being stored on it servers.


Here is a little new profile Novell is referring to.

Vendor of Choice: Novell GroupWise Headquartered in Waltham, Mass., Novell first started touting the need for secure corporate networks in the 1980s. It now focuses on providing collaboration tools, security, identity management, resource management, data center applications, and open source operating systems. Novell has more than 50,000 customers in 43 countries. GroupWise 8 provides a collaborative workspace that combines email, calendars, tasks, and content management. It connects to Web 2.0 innovations in a customizable productivity dashboard for each end user.


When it comes to phones, GroupWise was mentioned in relation to Apple's iPhone.

Neither IBM’s Lotus division nor Novell have iPhone clients, so their e-mail access is handled through the Web. That means there’s no local data stored on the iPhone to be stolen, but it also means that there is no mechamism for remote management, such as to kill a device that has access privileges to network-based e-mail, contacts, and calendar information. IBM has announced it will provide Notes synchronization to the iPhone via Microsoft's ActiveSync technology in a forthcomig version of Lotus Notes Traveler, but the security and management implications remain unclear.


GroupWise was also mentioned in relation to BlackBerry.

The smartphones, which support cellular and Wi-Fi networks, work in conjunction with the BlackBerry Entreprise Server software to enable users to access their corporate networks and e-mail (IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange or Novell Group Wise) and access the internet.


According to this press release, Palm Pre will support GroupWise.

ompanionLink€® Software, a leader in synchronization solutions, announced record breaking sales of their CompanionLink for Google product, which supports PC desktop synchronization to Palm€® Pre(TM) through Google(TM). Thousands of Palm Pre users installed the software to synchronize contacts, calendar, and tasks between Microsoft Outlook, Palm Desktop, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, ACT!, GoldMine, Time & Chaos, and other PC desktop data sources.


Support for GroupWise in Pre is also mentioned here.

"We look forward to Palm announcing a Synergy SDK to allow CompanionLink to synchronize Outlook, Lotus Notes, ACT! by Sage, Outlook Business Contact Manager, and Novell GroupWise data directly to the Palm Pre. Until that time, our currently available products will support the early adopters of the Palm Pre. As we improve our products, Palm Pre users will be able to upgrade without charge by downloading from our website," says Wayland Bruns, CEO of CompanionLink Software.


Webmail poses a threat to GroupWise, as the following article explains:

Google has been asiduously courting partners like LTech and has given his company much more support than he received from Microsoft, Oracle or IBM, Laczynski said. “Google does a lot with helping us develop a viable business,” he added. That’s exactly how Microsoft built its application server business in the 1990s, by doing a better job of supporting its channels than competitors like Novell.


More on Google versus Novell:

Given that fact, many of Google's competitors long ago saw fit to support Outlook as a client in their battle-against-Exchange strategies, including IBM and Novell, and lesser known alternatives such as Alt-N Technologies, CommuniGate, Gordano, Kerio, Mailsite Fusion, Open-Xchange, Scalix and Zimbra.


People



Not much to see here except the mentioning of Eric Schmidt's roots in Novell.

We sympathize: The criticism of Bartz's background seems more like thinly-veiled swiping at her age and gender than at anything substantive. Eric Schmidt escaped such second-guessing when he moved from PC software company Novell to running Google.


Security



An article about security happened to mention Novell in a much broader list of companies.

Microsoft has built a selector program, CardSpace, into its Vista operating system. Stand-alone selectors are available from two other companies, Novell and Azigo. Google, Oracle and PayPal have joined the industry foundation and there are a few working sample cards available, but no major retailer or financial institution has implemented the system yet.


Partners



Novatium's relationship with Novell [1, 2, 3, 4] was mentioned very briefly in a new press release from Novatium, so coverage inspired by it echoed the same bits.

With enhanced features such as 3G connectivity, printer support, Navigator 2.0 reduces boot up time to fastest of 5 seconds, and includes improved service-category panes on the desktop, display-effect of network on applications, configurable online radio, Task Manager utility, Zoho applications and Clipboard support for Openoffice applications. The company has partnered with technology companies such as HP and Novell.


This can also be found in other sources like CIOL and The Indian Express.

Novell was mentioned in the following press releases in the footer (for affiliation):



Videos



"How to make your own profile on Novell" is the title of this video which landed on YouTube a few days ago.



NovellServices, a YouTube account which promotes the company's products, has added the following:



Utah



Greg Butterfield was mentioned here before as he moved between companies in the region [1, 2]. He has roots in Novell and he is now being recognised.

Greg Butterfield, Managing Partner of SageCreek Partners, Named to Utah Technology Council 2009 Hall of Fame



[...]

Prior to joining Altiris, he served as executive vice president of worldwide sales at Vinca Corporation where he increased revenue from $1.7 million to $24 million in less than three years and positioned the company to be sold to Legato Systems for $92 million in 1999. He also held executive level positions at Legato, Novell and WordPerfect Corporation. Butterfield received a bachelor's of science in business administration, finance from Brigham Young University.


This is also covered here (almost identical):

Prior to joining Altiris, he served as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales at Vinca Corporation, where he increased revenue from $1.7 million to $24 million in less than three years and positioned the company to be sold to Legato Systems for $92 million in 1999. He also held executive level positions at Legato, Novell and WordPerfect Corporation.


Also in the local news:

Butterfield is managing partner of SageCreek Partners, a consulting company that provides mentoring, strategy and coaching to technology companies. He also held executive-level positions at numerous companies, including Altiris, Legato, Novell and WordPerfect Corp. He was winner of the 2002 Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year award and served as the chairman of the board of the Utah Information Technology Association (now Utah Technology Council) from 2003 to 2005.


A couple of weeks ago we wrote about Novell offshoring Utah-based staff. The local press has just written about it.

Novell Inc.'s Provo office will become a showcase for a new deal between the business software developer and giant Affiliated Computer Services that both companies see as a key strategic alliance.

As part of the deal, ACS will take over Novell's computer operations based in its Provo office. That means about 100 Novell employees in Provo will go to work for ACS.


More information can be found here.

In May, Affiliated Computer Services (News - Alert), Inc. and Novell, Inc. announced a strategic partnership to expand their core technical capabilities and suite of services.

As part of the partnership, Novell will outsource part of its internal IT operations to ACS, which will also provide SAP (News - Alert) consulting and applications development and maintenance system integration services as part of a $135 million, five-year contract.

ACS will also partner with Novell (News - Alert) to enhance its global data center operations and will purchase at least $30 million in Novell products during the first three years of the partnership.


Novell insists that no job losses are involved in this peculiar move.

Leftovers



Novell was mentioned very briefly in the following articles too:

i. Practical Analysis: It's Not Disruptive If It's Not Cheaper

Software vendors had better be ready to sharpen their pencils, because this is the sort of game that Microsoft plays very well. There's no doubt that it's still playing catch-up against VMware, and others will offer management software with more features, but you can bet that Microsoft will set the bar for midmarket data center automation pricing and functionality. Its close partnership with Citrix has resulted in a good management product in System Center, and a great add-on with Citrix Essentials. Just as Microsoft marginalized Novell with its file sharing, Active Directory, and adequate management tools for each, it can do the same to automation vendors.


ii. WWDC Preview: iPhone 3.0 hopes from an IT pro

LDAP is support is important for anyone in an LDAP environment, (Apple’s Open Directory, Microsoft’s Active Directory, OpenLDAP, Novell’s eDirectory, etc.), as it allows iPhone users to access contact info that is stored in the company directory, rather than relying on their own contacts. This would allow iPhone users to not have to use third party software, (like LDAPeople) or have to copy a company’s global address list to their iPhone to have things like email addresses and phone numbers for coworkers on the device.


iii. Preview: IPhone 3.0 Hopes From an IT Pro

Nothing of significance to see here overall.

Recent Techrights' Posts

"systemd is essentially a corporate IBM/Redhat project and corporations of course will comply"
Microsoft and IBM care about users' freedom like Cheeto Lump cares about the US Constitution
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Digital Identity Bifurcation and a "Return to Gemini"
Links for the day
 
Gemini Links 20/03/2026: Depictions of Culture and The Social Smolnet
Links for the day
SimilarWeb Was Never a Reliable Yardstick for Traffic
5RB may need some "house-cleaning"
Strangulation, suffocation, Jonathan Carter & Debian toxic culture confirmed
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Reports or Hearsay Suggest Ogilvy Broke Up With IBM and Insiders Report Mass Layoffs in "Infrastructure" (Might Impact Red Hat Entrants)
hearsay in Social Control Media
Scheduled Server Maintenance Tomorrow Night
Starting 9PM
None of the Above (NotA) & Debian snubbing Sruthi Chandran
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 20/03/2026: Cryptography Pioneers Win Turing Award and BMG Sues Anthropic for Copyright Infringement
Links for the day
Even Uganda Understands That Journalists Never Belong in Prison
"Ugandan authorities must respect the spirit of this ruling and abandon any measures that seek to jail Ugandans for the free flow of ideas."
Inaction Helps Your Enemies
Without freedom, there's nothing else left
Windows Down From 99% to ~50% in Republic of Seychelles (République des Seychelles)
Windows fell by a lot
Confluent Insiders: IBM Laid Over Over 800 at Confluent, Not Just 800
For the record, the layoffs at Confluent won't be over. After the bluewashing there will be "IBM RAs" impacting Confluent folks, aside from PIPs
The Layoffs at IBM Carry on (Shades of Enron)
Is IBM another Enron?
"IBM boss Arvind Krishna... financial package valued at $38 million in calendar 2025 - equivalent to the average collective pay of 765 Big Blue workers."
continues to ruin the company to enrich himself while pretending he has a strategy
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Thursday, March 19, 2026
IRC logs for Thursday, March 19, 2026
SLAPP Censorship - Part 16 Out of 200: Detailing the Actors and Explaining Techrights' Own Internet Relay Chat (IRC) Network
For those who have not followed our story
Microsoft "hiding behind bigger news of war, Epstein, other companies' layoffs"
They know what's coming, they just don't know when
Joerg Jaspert (Debian Account Manager/DAM) personally approved Raphael Hertzog's wife Sophie Brun
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Letter 'A' prohibited by Code of Conduct extremism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Spoiler: Diversity & Debian means different things to different people
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Admits Failures and Criticism of Inaction on SLAPPs
many if not all solicitors and solicitor firms in the UK are in effect unregulated
Archiving or Preserving Pages About IBM Layoffs
Layoffs at IBM and the media does not talk about these
ABC, the American National Broadcaster, "Now Publishes Slop"
If the "big media" absorbs slop, it'll no longer be trusted and therefore not read/watched by the public
Links 19/03/2026: Culling Deepfakes of Artists’ Music and "Age Verification Isn’t the Answer"
Links for the day
Gemini Links 19/03/2026: "Aktion GPT-4" and "Kill All Descendants"
Links for the day
"AI" 15 Times in Short 'Article' From The Register MS. And The Register MS Got Paid to Publish It.
gets paid to do this
People Who Decided to Boycott Novell Over Its Microsoft Alliance Should Also Boycott Canonical
As an associate put it, "selling out further, due to Microsoft moles inside Canonical"
Links 19/03/2026: "AI Glasses" as Euphemism for Mass Surveillance and ABC (US) Has Begun Publishing Slop as 'News'
Links for the day
The European Patent Office, Europe's Second-Largest Institution, is on Strike Today
Lots more to come
What People Impacted by the Bluewashing Layoffs at IBM Confluent Say (While the Media Says Nothing at All, in Effect Burying the News)
Worse yet, the mainstream media spreads lies about it right now
IBM Has Turned Red Hat and Fedora Into Slop
This is IBM policy
IBM is Being Robbed, Companies and Jobs Are Destroyed
Companies taken over by IBM will be exploited and destroyed to keep a bubble inflated for a little while longer
In Confluent Layoffs, IBM Vapourises a Quarter of Its Workforce (IBM Buys Something That It Destroys Already)
In the past, such things were typically referred to as "media blackout"; now it's just "the norm".
IBM Effect at Confluent: Mass Layoffs and IBM's Business Conduct Guidelines (BCGs) Said to be Violated
For Confluent employees who survived the layoffs there will be "culture chock"
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Wednesday, March 18, 2026
IRC logs for Wednesday, March 18, 2026
Links 19/03/2026: LLM Fatigue (It Doesn't Work as Advertised), "Small Web Feeds"
Links for the day
SLAPP Censorship - Part 15 Out of 200: Background and Particulars of Truth Regarding Techrights and Tux Machines
the basic facts (this has aged well, except the times/ages/numbers)
A Slopfarms Survey for Today (linuxteck.com, linuxsecurity.com, linuxjournal.com)
Not only did Google news link to a slopfarm; it linked to three run by the same team!
Links 18/03/2026: "Venture Capitalist Warns That It’s All About to Come Crashing Down" Due to Slop Bubble, "Birdwatching for Fun and no Profit"
Links for the day
IBM Red Hat is Still Promoting Restricted Boot Which Restricts Users' Control Over Their Computers
Red Hat under IBM is a total catastrophe
Arvind Says... Something Something "Hey Hi" (the State of Today's Media)
Look for news about IBM and most likely it'll boil down to some sound bites from an executive and nothing else
New Post Has Just Explained How IBM Gets Robbed by the People Who Fail IBM
Their plan for IBM is a personal plan
Slop-Spewing GAFAM LLM That Knows Nothing and Understands Nothing, It's a Stochastic Parrot That Cannot Even Figure Out Tux Machines is a Community That Started in Tennessee 22 Years Ago
RMS rightly calls those things "bullshit generators"
Cusdeb Makes New Presentation About Where GNU Hurd (Still a Possible Linux Replacement) Stands in 2026
coming from a generally RMS-friendly account
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Librarians, Phone Anxiety, Growing 'Small' Net, and Slop Versus Software Engineering
Links for the day
Estimates That IBM to Lay Off Close to 10,000 Workers in 2026 (Not Counting People Pushed Out)
There's still chatter about Confluent mass layoffs
Smug Threat by Garrett to Put My Family and I in Prison Doesn't Prove We Did Anything Wrong, It Only Proves He's Truly Desperate to Stop Further Publications That Embarrass Him
his reputation is poor in the United States
systemd Increasingly Microsoft Project, Controlled by Microsoft and Slopware
Cannot allow choice
What IBM Meant to Red Hat: "Proprietary Bundling, Restricted Source Access"
Anyone or anything that joins IBM likely shortens its lifespan
IBM Thrashing Confluent Upon Arrival, Based on Rumours
We deem it a bigger issue that investigative journalism perished, not that one must rely on hearsay online or mere "rumours"
Slop Is Plagiarism, Not (Vibe) Coding, and It's Not Automated, It Doesn't Save Money
Reject misnomers, explain what's actually happening
UPC is Still Illegal and Unconstitutional (Kangaroo Court for Patents, Manned by Corporate Staff), Federal Court of Justice of Germany Receives Belated Complaint About It
What is happening to Europe???
EPO Demonstration Happening Right Now, Later This Week Things Will Only Escalate Further
The SUEPO The Hague Committee wrote to staff this morning
Sophie Brun, Raphael Hertzog & Debian sexual conflicts of interest
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 18/03/2026: Commodore's Hedley Davis Dies, Apple Not Good Enough, Cheeto "Floats Treason Charges for Iran War Coverage"
Links for the day
A Step Close to Shutting Down the European Patent Office (EPO)
Not going to work all month long
EPO Staff Demonstration Today
The demonstration will be live-streamed for those thousands of colleagues who don't live in Munich
Gemini Links 18/03/2026: Brazilian SYN Attacks and BGP
Links for the day
LibreLocal Also Coming to Jordan, Kenya, Mexico, New Zealand, and Spain
It helps raise awareness of Software Freedom
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, March 17, 2026
IRC logs for Tuesday, March 17, 2026