Novell News Summary - Part III: SCO, GroupWise, Videos, and Utah
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2009-06-14 08:35:26 UTC
Modified: 2009-06-14 08:36:18 UTC
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
And since Microsoft's software contains back doors, only a fool would allow any part of SSH on Microsoft's environments, which should be presumed compromised
IBM is not growing and its revenue is just "borrowed" from companies it is buying; a lot of this revenue gets spent paying the interest on considerable debt