Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: Mostly Videos, Kablink 2.0 Release, and Utah Event

Bryce Canyon



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:





And another one:



Finance



The following person claims that Novell's debt is $121 million. Can this figure be confirmed?

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."


Here is a nice recollection from one former Novell employee:

[O]ne of Red Hat's early investors was...Novell, an investment that made Novell over $100 million. That's foresight!


Novell's performance currently looks poor compared to Red Hat's.

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.


Novell suffered a bit of a blow some days ago.

NOVL Novell Inc. -6.49% 78% (18 of 23) 17


Older Days



Here is a new opinion piece that compares Novell to Leeds United. It is also mentioned here.

Novell would be Leeds United They used to be huge when I were a lad.


More memories of Novell in:

i. A Jacobian Value Search: Invert, Always Invert!

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.


ii. WinInfo Short Takes: Week of July 13, 2009

"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.


Virtualisation



PlateSpin makes a rather rare appearance here.

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).


Novell also promotes this virtualisation video tutorial from Novell's Alan Murray.

Mail and Collaboration



Novell's Kablink 2.0 has been released, so its employees make some noise about it.

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.


There is also this new video from Novell.

GroupWise gets rejected publicly.

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.


Here is an article about Gwava.

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.


There is also this new video tutorial for GroupWise 8.



More progress on Novell and E-mail is to be found in this updated page about Pegasus Mail 4.51.

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.


More Novell staff on the move:

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.


Old bits of wisdom from Noorda:

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.


Some more sightings of past Novellers:

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.


Commercial Relationships



Here is Novell discussed as a competitor:

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.


Novell is also listed as a friend.

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 few more places, but none of this is notable.

Marketing



Novell's account in YouTube has spewed out a lot of promotional videos such as this one of Matt Richard that Novell also promoted here. Other new examples include success stories. Probably a little older is the following addition.



Utah



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.


More here:

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.


SEO.com claimed bragging rights too.

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.


Here is a video from the event (also identical here).



This is the summary/description:

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.


More Utah publicity for Novell can be found in:

i. Utah Job Skills & Digital Literacy Training Program Reaches Milestone

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.


ii. Utah's Nu Skin doing something right ... for 25 years

"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.


And that's about all for now.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Links 14/07/2026: Plagiarism Spun as "Training", Zelensky Announces Leadership Shuffle
Links for the day
The Register MS Has Just Published "AI" Webspam That Mentions "AI" 54 Times. It Was Paid to Do This.
Who pays for all this "AI" hype or "buzz"?
Gemini Links 14/07/2026: Self-Advocacy Online; "The Internet Is Dead: How the Web Lost Its Human Soul"
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, July 13, 2026
IRC logs for Monday, July 13, 2026
Modern Technology Harms Women More Than Men (Because the 'Tech Bros' Who Dominate STEM Have a Poor View of Women)
“Privacy protects us from abuses by those in power, even if we're doing nothing wrong at the time of surveillance.”
Internet Relay Chat Trolls Are Not Expressing Opinions, They Are Saboteurs
For the record
Links 14/07/2026: "The Freedom of Information Act Is in Serious Trouble"; Irish Datacenters Use Up Almost 25% of Total Energy
Links for the day
The Register MS: "AI" Puff Pieces for Sale, Not Journalism at All, Just "Webspam"
The Register MS isn't the sole culprit
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, July 12, 2026
IRC logs for Sunday, July 12, 2026
How We Do Techrights (and What's Changing Next Week)
Many former news sites no longer yield much non-meaningless news (not anymore); there's a gap to be filled
Links 12/07/2026: Palantir Unrest and Wireshark 4.6.7
Links for the day
Links 12/07/2026: New Instrument Time and PalmOS Experiences in 2026
Links for the day
Red Hat Staff Says IBM Policy Has Stigmatised Him as a Tool and a Slopper With Plagiarism Tools
IBM is killing Red Hat with slop
Freedom of Choice or Freedom Versus Choice (or When All Choices Are Incompatible With Freedom)
When some business asserts that it gives people different options, then it can rightly argue that it offers some choices, but that is not the same as freedom
Techrights IRC Turns 5 Without a “Code of Conduct”, “Code of Conduct Committee”, and All Those Bureaucratic Nightmares
18+ years if one counts our time in Freenode as well
Why U No Use AI???
Many hype waves come and go
There Are Still Slopfarms in Google News
Google is trying to participate in if not lead this pyramid scheme
The Cyber Show Explains How Slop and Promotion of Slop is About Taking Control Away From Computer Users
"On making a trustworthy machine"
Keeping Available the Site at All Times
Informal arrangements and crowdfunding keep our work available despite resistance (including from people who break the law)
What If "Era of AI" and "AI Revolution" (Fake News) Never Happened?
So how much longer before the bust (or bubble-burst)?
GNU/Linux Approaches 5% in Australia
5% by year's end?
Europe/EU is Moving Towards Independence, Fast to Adopt Free Software
More and more states (governments, public sector) in Germany are dumping Microsoft
GNU/Linux Grows at the Expense of Windows
People who want to get work done already left Windows
Tux Machines Growing as a Volunteers-Run Site
Historically the site did not have many original stories, but this changed as the audience grew and the site gained more recognition
Links 12/07/2026: European Commission Versus ‘Addictive Design’, "Google Loses Final Appeal Over $4.7 Billion EU Android Antitrust Fine"
Links for the day
GNU/Linux Market Share Increases Some More Today, statCounter Measures It at 7.3%
Will more such thresholds and records be broken?
Gemini Links 12/07/2026: Studying Languages and 2026 Old Computer Challenge (OCC)
Links for the day
EPO "Cocaine Communication Manager" - Part XIII - At the EPO, Cocaine Addicts and Their Friends Are "Protected Class"
What does that tell us about the EPO?
Increasing Output by Focusing on Originals
It's probably more important to carry on with these than it is to keep abreast of non-crucial news
Amid Strikes and Industrial Actions, Young Professionals at the European Patent Office (EPO) Kept on 'Short Leash', According to the Local Staff Committee The Hague
Issues affecting Young Professionals
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, July 11, 2026
IRC logs for Saturday, July 11, 2026