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Novell News Summary - Part III: SCO Updates, Financial Results Are Near

Davis Canyon moonrise



Summary: News touching on Novell's non-Free/libre component of the business

THIS is the third part which covers Novell news from the first two weeks of February. This part covers Novell's proprietary side, of which there is a lot (Novell is predominantly a closed-source company). What we happen to have found along the way this week is that Novell is not just a company that makes jewelry; there is yet another company called Novell Pharmaceutical Laboratories. Here is what we gather from the press release:





Company Report is a private Company Report that provides up to date insight into the structure and operations of privately-held pharmaceutical, biotechnology and biomedical companies.


Well, Novell is many other things. There are at least two more companies with the name Novell and it is also a surname (often mentioned in the case of murder, martial arts, and basketball).

Anyway, let's move on to the news.

Novell's CMO John Dragoon asks himself whether Twitter is the next CB Radio. With new products like Pulse, Novell is trying to ride tomorrow's wave, so far without success. Here is a fairly new article which covers Wave and mentions Novell.

Since then the firm's wonks have been working on extension ideas for the tool, and reminding anyone that might want to listen that the likes of Novell and Salesforce.com have also been happily toying with it.


Here is another news article that recalls Novell's affair with Lotus. This contains religious elements for some reason:

Novell wanted to take over Lotus but the deal fell through in New York City when the Lotus atheists had a wee bit too much to drink and the Mormon Novell folk pulled the plug on the deal. Lotus was always going to be the kind of company IBM - originally a Quaker company - would buy.


"Mormon Novell folk," eh? Well, anyway, here is some more news from Utah.

SCO



Groklaw seems to be the only site that looks at the SCO-Novell case. The latest sample of articles actually happens to show the relationship between SCO and Maureen O'Gara. Here is a key part:

SCO's materials on its website are not really what I expect them to bring up at trial, by the way. Paul Murphy, for example, isn't likely to be used any further than on that list, I would think. SCO calls him an analyst. And even the witness list isn't for sure. For example, while Maureen O'Gara is listed still on SCO's witness list, I can't imagine what usefulness she has now that the court has just ruled that a decline in stock value isn't special damages SCO can claim. But with SCO, who knows? It's a very small group of willing helpers now.


Other coverage of the SCO case includes:

Two More Bills From Pachulski Stang - Still no MORs - Updated: Ocean Park's 3rd Bill

Novell Asks For Extension to File with Supreme Court & Judge Stewart Issues Trial Order - Updated

Novell has filed a second request for an extension of time to file its appeal with the US Supreme Court. It would like until March 4th.


Novell Motion in Limine No. 1 - Let's All Live by the Mandate Rule, Shall We?

Novell has filed its first motion in limine [PDF], the full title of which is Motion in Limine No. 1 to Exclude Evidence and Argument Concerning Claims Not Included in SCO's Appeal or the Tenth Circuit's Limited Mandate. It's making me chuckle.


A Blizzard of Motions in Limine in SCO v. Novell - Updated - SCO's as text (many texts here)

More texts in:

Novell's Motions in Limine, as text, #s 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 - Slander of Title Motions

Novell's Motions in Limine - to Exclude Testimony, #s 12-19

Novell's Motions in Limine #s 9, 10, 11, as text - RE: SVRX Licenses, Substantial Performance, Arbitration

SCO's Opposition to Novell's Motion in Limine No. 1: Hey! No Fair, You Guys!

SCO has filed its response to Novell's Motion in Limine No. 1. And Novell has added another lawyer to the team, Daniel P. Muino.

SCO's opposition in essence says, "No fair, Novell! We appealed the copyright ownership issue, and the slander of title is sort of related, and so that should be enough."

Here's what I don't see SCO saying: "We *did* appeal the slander of title decision."


Finance



In less than two weeks from now, Novell will deliver its financial results. It comes on February 25th:

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) today announced it will issue a press release providing its first fiscal quarter 2010 financial results on Thursday, February 25, 2010, following the market close.


It was over $200,000,000 in losses the last time, under rather exceptional circumstances

Other financial coverage of Novell (fairly minor) includes:

Unusual Options Activity Review - SCSS, NOVL, CY, CPB, OSG, FLO, ELX, PNRA, VIX, XLU

Bullish trading was also seen in Novell (NOVL), Cypress Semiconductor (CY), Campbell's Soup (CPB).


SmarTrend's Candlestick Scanner Detects Bearish Inside Day Pattern for Novell (NOVL) (also here)

Looking ahead to McAfee, Inc. earnings; MFE, NOVL, CHKP

MFE is in the Security Software & Services industry group where it competes for investor dollars with companies like Novell Inc. (NOVL), which is set to release its earnings on 02/25 and last reported a -1331.16% decline in quarter-over-quarter EPS.


Back to Back



One of Microsoft's favourite liars, the Yankee Group, is cited right here in relation to Novell:

Zeus Kerravala, a distinguished research fellow at Yankee Group, said Cisco needs to be careful that its plan doesn't backfire, recalling how Novell drove away many customers because of its frustrating 90-day reinstall cycle for trial software in the early 1990s.


It is not entirely clear if the following article refers to SUSE or to Netware.

Several other ATUS staff are testing Windows 7 in different applications, such as faculty and administrative environments, and Nichols said the only problem has been with using a mix of Novell and Microsoft servers.


Another related new article:

VTB24’s IT infrastructure is a distributed heterogeneous system that includes Microsoft Windows, as well as UNIX and Novell network operating systems.


Here is how Active Directory and Novell act as barriers to Mac adoption in businesses:

"Apple's traditional structure was that they were rather closed off; for ten years or so they were rather an insular solution," he said. "But a lot the integration we are doing these days is putting Macs into Active Directory environments, putting Macs into Novell environments. Vendors like Novell are also coming to the party… and there are a bunch of standards that traditional enterprise customers are familiar with. The other place we have being doing a lot of stuff with enterprise is in with multimedia and digital education content delivery. It is a vehicle we are talking more and more with customers at the moment."


GroupWise is mentioned in this related piece which is titled "Why Apple Won't Let the Mac and iPhone Succeed in Business"

Macs in enterprise: The bigger you are, the harder it is One factor working against Apple's prospects in business environments is that fact that businesses that have gone all-Mac have had to figure out themselves how to make it work. For smaller businesses, that's not so hard to do. Microsoft Office for Mac has perhaps 90 percent of the capabilities of the Windows version, for example, and if you need Visual Basic support, you can use the older Office 2003 version rather than the VB-less Office 2008 version. For email, there are clients for Exchange, Lotus Notes, and Novell GroupWise available. The Mac OS, of course, supports POP and IMAP email servers as well.


Mail



Speaking of GroupWise, it gets mentioned in quite a few articles, but none is focused just on GroupWise. For example we have:

New York Consolidating E-Mail Statewide

But another 24 agencies (totaling 93,000 users) currently work on one of at least five other e-mail systems, most which are Lotus or Novell. Those will be migrated. "We don't know what we'll encounter in terms of their own applications that might have been embedded in their own e-mail systems," Mayberry-Stewart said.


Global partnership brings better email archiving to Alfresco

OpsMailmanager enables enterprises to store and search for email messages and their attachments in an Alfresco repository. Leveraging open standards-based technologies, OpsMailmanager provides easy integration with all leading email clients including MS Outlook, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.


Global partnership brings better email archiving to Alfresco

Leveraging open standards-based technologies, OpsMailmanager provides easy integration with all leading email clients including MS Outlook, Mozilla Thunderbird, Lotus Notes and Novell Groupwise.


Choice of Messaging Architects' M+Archive in Migration Project Results in 30% Cost Savings for Deer Park School District (also here)

Messaging Architects, global experts in email risk management, announced today a complimentary online seminar, at which Deer Park Independent School District will share with attendees the strategies they employed for a successful and painless email migration from Novell GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange.


GroupWise was also mentioned in some other places, but it's never important. Tomorrow we will show that GroupWise continues losing in the market.

Virtualisation



"Virtual Desktop with a Twist" is an IDG article that mentions Novell in the context of virtualisation.

This approach is ideal for server virtualization where multiple servers each are running different operating systems like Novell, NT or Linux on a single “real” server through virtual machines. We in turn virtualize individual users under a single operating system.


This new report about Xen -- and one that mentions Novell in fact -- has just been published, but it is merely being promoted as it is not simple to get hold of. Here is another new bit of analysis:

For example, Novell's PlateSpin Recon can help create a list of applications in your data center and provide some of their characteristics and processing requirements.


PlateSpin never gained much popularity under Novell's wing. Here is something from VMware which supports SUSE.

Some of the features included in this release support secure tunnelling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface.


Security



Novell suffered from some flaws in SUSE and in its proprietary software too [1, 2]. SUSE was also mentioned in the following batch of stories:

ESET is First To Win 60 VB Awards

February's Virus Bulletin report focused on the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 platform. Of the nine vendors participating, six passed and three failed. Neither Symantec nor McAfee were able to provide products supporting the Novell Suse Linux server platform.


ESET: First Company to 60 VB100 Awards

ESET breaks records with 60th VB100 award win (also in here)

ADAOX Middle East, the exclusive distribution partner and the regional business development centre of ESET NOD32 Antivirus, announced that ESET, the leader in proactive threat protection, has captured a record 60th VB100 award from Virus Bulletin, the widely-respected independent comparative testing group. February's report focused on the Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 platform. Of the nine vendors participating, six passed and three failed.


ESET: First Company to 60 VB100 Awards

Novell on Aurora Breach – new threats to watch

What are your thoughts on the Aurora breach? Post your comments and let’s start a discussion.


No comments posted. Novell fails to gain attention even when it asks for attention.

People



CBR has a new interview with Novell's CEO Ron Hovsepian, but it is available in a Microsoft format only.

I caught up with the president and CEO of Novell, Ron Hovsepian recently, to find out more about the company's recently announced Intelligent Workload Management strategy.

Of course, I also took the opportunity to ask whether he still believes that the firm's controversial agreement with Microsoft on Windows-Linux interoperability and virtualisation was in the firm's best interests, considering how the open source community reacted to the deal for the most part (angrily).


I've listened to the whole interview and it's pretty decent. Both sides made a good case for themselves and Hovsepian was not given an easy time, either. Hovsepian was speaking at this event too:

Among the key speakers were C S Venkatraman, GM (Electrical and Electronics), ERC, Tata Motors, Ronald W Hovsepian, President and CEO, Novell and Francois Guibert, Corporate Vice President, STMicroelectronics. The Technovation Awards 2010 were also presented at the summit.


Some former Novell employees are entering other companies and John Donovan, who is not CEO as the following text suggests, embarks on a mountaineering trip with other businessmen:

Philip Cronin, the CEO of Intel Australia, is proud of his achievement as a mountaineer. Together with three other Australian businessmen - John Donovan, CEO of Novell, Peter Wright, owner of Priceline, and Enda Mahoney, vice-president of Blackrock - he reached the base camp of Mount Everest. By doing so, the group raised $A50,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.


According to this report and a press release, Kryterion's new Chief Scientist has a 7-year history with Novell.

Kryterion, the world leader in online secure testing and a prominent firm in traditional test delivery, has announced that William Dorman has been appointed as chief executive officer.

[...]

Kryterion has also announced the appointment of Dr. Dave Foster as Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President.

Foster is currently a board director of Kryterion. He founded Galton Technologies in 1997 and Caveon in 2003. Earlier, he directed the test development efforts at Novell from 1990 to 1997, introducing many new innovations, including adaptive testing, testing in multiple languages, and simulations-based testing.


Experience with Novell spotted here:

Zerbib has 16 years of professional experience from employment at QUEST Software, Compuware, SoftCompany, NEURONS and EMS Concept, working with IT and networking products and services from such providers as Alcatel, Checkpoint, Cisco, Citrix, HP, IBM, Novell, and Nortel Networks.


The new Director of a Technical Engineering Team at Messaging Architects has a past with Novell:

Messaging Architects, global experts in email risk management, today announced that Richard Cabana has joined the company as Director of the new Technical Engineering Team.

[...]

"...As we start to deploy our next-generation of Identity-Driven and Policy-Based products, the expertise he acquired while at Novell and then at Red Hat will be of tremendous value to both our current and prospective clients.”


Utah Technology Council (UTC) has added someone with a past at Novell too:

* David Bradford (photo) – Bradford is currently the CEO of Fusion-io. Previously he was with Novell, Inc., where he served as Senior Vice-President and General Counsel. He was instrumental in taking the company from a small start-up to a multi-billion dollar corporation. He has also served as chairman of the Business Software Alliance, the world’s leading trade association for business software companies. Bradford was also approved as a member of UTC’s Executive Committee.


Here is SD Times advertising a job opening at Novell:

James Bottomley, distinguished engineer at Novell and maintainer of the Linux SCSI subsystems, has learned how to deal with such problems. As the Linux community is larger than the Rails community, there are more egos to butt up against, he said. He has three pieces of advice for smoothing over the inevitable social friction that can occur within an open-source project.

[...]

Joe Brockmeier worked with Bottomley at Novell until the end of January, when he left the company to pursue other interests. At Novell, he served as openSUSE community manager, and also oversaw the documentation development processes on the platform. Brockmeier said that "community manager" is a misleading title.


Partners



Here is a training milestone for Novell and TAR College.

These include incorporating professional certification curriculum such as Cisco Certified Network Associates (CCNA) and network security into networking-related courses, Novell Certified Linux Professional programmes into information systems programmes, SAP modules into business information systems courses as well as incorporating the latest programming concepts and tools governed under either Java development teams or Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) into the respective programme of studies.

Due to concerted efforts to promote students to go for the CCNA certification, TAR College was awarded "In Recognition of Great Collaborative Efforts for Student Certification" during the 4th Cisco Networking Academy Annual Conference 2009. The college was also awarded the "Best Novell Academic Training Partner 2009" at the NATP Summit 2009. The NCL Solutions and TAR College collaboration has led to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on SUSE Linux Innovation Club Evangelist (SLICE) programme to mark a higher level of synergy for more new and dynamic collaborative activities.


Novell is also mentioned in relation to SIEM:

With much of the interest in SIEM products driven by compliance initiatives, the market for SIEM products is jam-packed with vendors, many competing with similar products. Established names include Arcsight Inc., CA Inc., Intellitactics Inc., IBM, NetIQ Corp. and EMC's RSA Security division. Other vendors include LogLogic Inc., NetForensics Inc., Novell Inc., Sensage Inc., Symantec Corp. and TriGeo Network Security Inc.


Other press releases and articles where Novell is mentioned are:



Marketing



A YouTube account called "IBMInnovation" has uploaded this video which sheds light on the current relationship between IBM and Novell.



John Dragoon, the marketing manager, writes about GNU/Linux in relation to Apple's latest hypefest [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].

I believe Linux is the ideal operating system for creating and delivering the “Platform Specific User Experience”. The market, however, is moving rapidly and we must focus on the magic formula for success if reality is to match the vision.


Novell is still offering some real estate for Utah events, based on this assorted report.

Networking €» The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum presents local author Larry Myler, who will give the keynote address at the forum's luncheon event, 12 p.m., Novell Building A, 1800 Novell Place, Provo. Free for UVEF members, $25 for nonmembers. RSVP at www.uvef.com.


There hasn't been a word about BrainShare for quite a while. What's up with that? Might it be canceled again due to lack of interest?

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