Summary: Opinion that Novell will not endure as a standalone company this year; new interview with Ron Hovsepian

LAST WEEK we argued that some time in 2010 Novell is likely to be acquired or merged. Several days later, CIO UK published this list of predictions, which include the following:

June: The silly season begins in earnest. Google and Microsoft buy some companies you've never heard of. Novell is acquired.

As we wrote last week, it is possible for Microsoft to acquire Novell, but this might not be the best strategy.

Another UK-based publication has just published this first interview with Ron Hovsepian in a very long time. Here is an important question that he answered at the end:

How does the interoperability agreement with Microsoft relate to the IWM launches? [The Microsoft/Novell Partnership announced in 2006 gives interoperability and virtualisation solutions for firms using both Windows and Linux]

The agreement means that Microsoft can run their virtualised applications on our environment and we can run ours on theirs.

I think it works really well. Our core assumption is that customers are Microsoft customers and have multiple Java technology stacks. So in a virtualized environment, this relationship allows us to support and optimise those workloads.

This puts us in a stronger position than competitors such as Red Hat for example.

So our strategy is built on that assumption of heterogeneity. Where firms have multiple technology stacks, we can optimise and build security and governance into them.

Microsoft could do that too. A couple of years ago it was argued that Microsoft could buy the WordPerfect lawsuit along with Novell. ⬆