Novell News Summary - Part III: Mostly Videos, Kablink 2.0 Release, and Utah Event
Dr. Roy Schestowitz
2009-07-11 22:15:06 UTC
Modified: 2009-07-11 22:16:39 UTC
Summary: The rest of Novell's news (from two weeks)
THE past week has been slow and the company's staff has been mostly dormant, so let us start with a couple of new videos. Novell carries on posting instructional videos -- a practice it has been following for several months now. This first one is about ZENworks:
To manage default risk, Kaufman sticks with solid companies that have a lot of cash on their balance sheets and are generating free cash flow. A favorite holding is a bond from software maker Novell(NOVL Quote). The company has $1 billion in cash and only $121 million in debt. "I am not interested in distressed debt," Kaufman says. "I am interested in getting double-digit yields from high-quality issuers."
The enterprise Linux maker revealed some stonkingly good quarterly figures last week, laughing in the face of the global downturn and making the Linux vendor that relies on Microsoft's trust fund money (Novell, in other words) look like a right old Charlie.
Screening the lower EV/Assets ratios results in a list of many fairly healthy software businesses with excellent balance sheets. I have posted at length on Novell Inc. and RealNetworks, but Microsoft and Cray Computer (a software business disguised as a hardware business) also look good to me in the longer run.
"I just gave up," Schmidt said, while simultaneously forgetting about the OS beating Microsoft handed Novell when he ran that company.
Novell's NetWare gets labeled a "dying IT skill". It makes #2 in the list (among a total of 10).
2: Novell NetWare
Novell’s network operating system was the de facto standard for LANs in the 1990s, running on more than 70% of enterprise networks. But Novell failed to compete with the marketing might of Microsoft. Novell tried to put up a good fight by acquiring WordPerfect to compete with Windows Office, but that move failed to ignite the market, and Novell eventually sold WordPerfect to Corel in 1996. Novell certifications, such as Certified Novell Engineer, Master Certified Novell Engineer, Certified Novell Certified Directory Engineer, and Novell Administrator, were once hot in the industry. But now, they are featured in Foote Partners’ list of skills that decreased in value in 2008. Hiring managers want Windows Server and Linux skills instead.
PlateSpin’s partner program will be amalgamated into Novell’s channel structure from November 1 as part of efforts to bring the two organisations closer together.
PlateSpin channel manager Asia-Pacific, Mathew Donoghue, said the virtualisation management vendor had also recently struck distribution agreements with Novell’s Australian distribution partners, Express Data and Open Channel Solutions (OCS).
Kablink, the Novell-sponsored open source platform that provides collaboration tools that can be integrated into every business, today announced the availability of Kablink 2.0 with teaming functionality. With Kablink, users can integrate the most popular collaboration tools (blogs, wikis, forums, microblogs) into their infrastructure and harness the power of their knowledge workers under one standardized platform. Check out this video with Kablink Community manager, Brent McConnell, which discusses the evolution of enterprise collaboration and offers a first look at Kablink 2.0.
The IT department and key members across the user community started evaluating the technology options. The selection team considered two options—one to consider alternate solutions such as Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise, etc., independent of existing technology stack in the company. Second, evaluate technology options from the cost and other benefits that can arise at the stack level. After thorough deliberations, the team ruled out Novell GroupWise as an option because of substantial investments in user and IT skills.
Canadian-based Novell GroupWise collaboration software security software provider Gwava has selected French enterprise search engine company Exalead's CloudView OEM Edition to enrich the search functions of the Gwava e-mail archiving platform.
Pegasus Mail is an e-mail client that interacts directly with the user, allowing mail to be sent, read, filed, printed and otherwise manipulated through a graphical interface. Small and fast, it can be left running permanently on the workstation and includes powerful tools to notify the user when new mail arrives. It can run on single Windows computers, or local area networks - it has special support for Novell NetWare LANs that allow it to operate intuitively and with almost no maintenance.
People
Jacqueline de Rojas quit Novell some months ago and according to this report she lands in McAfee -- the company some people speculated would merge with Novell.
McAfee has announced the appointment of Jacqueline de Rojas as vice president of UK and Ireland.
Joining from Novell where she was managing director for the UK and Ireland, de Rojas will report directly to David Quantrell, president, EMEA at McAfee, who was appointed in January this year.
Here is more reminiscing of the embarrassment Novell's Jeffrey Merkey has become.
This is not the first time Wales is said to have intervened with the content on Wikipedia's pages. In March of 2008, former Novell chief scientist Jeffrey Merkey accused Wales of extortion in a statement to the Associated Press.
The news about Calix got mentioned last month, but here it is again:
Robert Checketts has gained extensive experience in the past 25 years with successful start-ups and companies in the technology, telecommunications, and networking industry. He joins Calix from Juniper Networks where as director of Americas marketing he supported the full range of Juniper products across all markets. In addition, Checketts has held executive marketing positions at Cisco Systems, Yosemite Technologies, Lucent, Sun Microsystems, and Novell.
He spent 11 years at Novell in a variety of Asia-Pacific roles.
Martin began his career in South Australia in 1983 with Abraxas Computers and then joined Canon Australia.
He moved to one of Canon's largest resellers, Q-Dos Computers, and was recruited to as state manager for WordPerfect in South Australia, moving to Novell when it acquired WordPerfect.
The Internet has provided a major shift in the way we work. Less than 20 years ago, there was a comment by Ray Noorda, the CEO of Novell - "If you don't have an e-mail address on your business card, you will be considered a nobody" and most people did not believe it.
Before joining InterSystems, Matz was president and CEO of Route Link for eight years, a leading systems integration and groupware development company that he founded and managed. Prior to founding Route Link, he was vice president of Mashov Computers, the exclusive Novell distributor in Israel, where he was responsible for Novell's Israeli operations. His background includes more than twenty years of technical, marketing and sales management experience in the IT industry.
During the segment, Boroditsky discusses Passlogix’s continued success despite direct competition from large companies like IBM, CA and Novell. He attributes Passlogix’s growth, with nearly doubled revenues in the past two years, to the role strong customer service plays in swaying customers away from large companies.
Concentric Managed Backup offers a comprehensive platform support which includes Novell, NetWare, Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM, AIX, IBM i and VMware, as well as application support including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, Cluster Services, Oracle, and other applications.
Lastly, Novell's relations with other companies are mentioned briefly in a fewmoreplaces, but none of this is notable.
Novell is quite important to Utah's profile and it has just hosted an event that produced a lot of coverage. There is a special award granted to top "young companies".
The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of its 2009 “Top 25 Under Five” Awards spotlighting outstanding Utah entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Award recipients were recognized today at ceremonies held at the Provo Novell Campus. InnoVentures Captial Partners and The Daily Herald sponsored the event. UVEF recognized ZAGG, Inc. (www.zagg.com), a designer, manufacturer and distributor of protective clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices, as the number one performer among Top 25 nominees.
ZAGG was recognized as number one among the 25 finalists for 2009 at ceremonies held at the Novell Provo Campus. Other companies in the top five were Imagine Learning, OrangeSoda, Allegiance, and Aribex.
Crowds gathered into the Novell building in Provo, Utah to celebrate and honor entrepreneurs and some of the state's top companies under five years old. In a bright contrast to the current economic struggle, optimism reigned here where companies were boasting both recent and future success.
PROVO, Utah July 9, 2008 The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of its 2009 Top 25 Under Five Awards spotlighting outstanding Utah entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Award recipients were recognized today at ceremonies held at the Provo Novell Campus. InnoVentures Captial Partners and The Daily Herald sponsored the event. UVEF recognized ZAGG, Inc. (www.zagg.com), a designer, manufacturer and distributer of protective clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices, as the number one performer among Top 25 nominees.
Skilled2Succeed provides the final link in the chain from job retraining to meaningful advancement in the workplace. Certified program graduates have been placed in professional positions at companies like DirectPointe, Coldwell Banker and Novell, among others. “Everyone pushes down, but Skilled2Succeed lifts us up,” stated budding artist and Skilled2Succeed graduate Dorothy Boyle.
"It's funny because even here in our community, if you go back 20, 25 years, the stars of the local business environment would have been WordPerfect, would have been Novell, would have been Geneva Steel," CEO Truman Hunt said in an interview from his office in the striking building that seems to want to define downtown Provo.