Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: Clarifications from Elliott Associates, Hosted Conferencing, and BrainShare 20TEN

Mountains



Summary: Elliott Associates still insists that Novell will stay in tact; Utah prepares for the annual Novell pilgrimage

EXCEPT for many articles about the SCO case, Novell hardly appeared in the news. There's this one new case study and also an analytical report of many companies that include Novell:





*The report covers the following IT systems management vendors: BMC, CA, EMC, Fujitsu, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Novell and Symantec.


Novell's future is still very much unknown although the 'vulture fund' which wants to buy Novell keeps saying that it wouldn't sell Novell in pieces (if it was bought). The VAR Guy writes:

Elliott Associates, the hedge fund that’s seeking to acquire Novell and SUSE Linux, is denying a report that it plans to break up Novell and sell off the pieces. Hmmm… But The VAR Guy still wonders: Will Novell and Elliott Associates reach a buyout agreement in time for Novell BrainShare — a big customer and partner that starts March 21? Here’s some speculation.

[...]

The VAR Guy has also wondered if a white knight — IBM, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, or CA Inc. — would emerge to buy Novell. But the best potential fit on that list — CA, which has a bunch of security and system management synergies with Novell — seems to be out of the running, The VAR Guy believes.

The reason: CA just opened its wallet to acquire Nimsoft, the managed services software provider, for $350 million. The VAR Guy doubts CA would open its wallet even wider only a few days later to buy Novell.


He does make some valid points. Jarrad Zalkin says that Novell might be acquired by SAP (we have heard this before from another person who was quoted a lot by the mainstream press).

Jarrad Zalkin, a vice-president at investment bank TM Capital who works on technology deals, says he believes McDermott and Snabe will follow through. He says Novell (NOVL) and privately held SAS Institute are among potential targets for SAP. McDermott and Snabe didn't say which companies might pique SAP's interest.


Finance



On the financial side, Novell is keeping steady as a stock. Coverage from the past week includes:

Unusual Trading Activity for Novell Inc (NOVL)

Biggest Technology Losers (Sprint, BRCD, YHOO, NOVL)

Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOVL) also fell 1.38% to close at $5.72 on 14.82 million shares. The stock is up over 55% in the last one year of trading sessions.


A post-earnings checkup on McAfee, Inc.; MFE, NOVL, CHKP

Top Software Stocks Trading Higher (CHRD, ORCL, CTXS, NOVL, VRSN)

Novell, Inc. (NASDAQ:NOVL) climbed 0.87% over its previous day’s price and now trades at $5.77. The stock has a 52-week range of $3.52-$6.15. So far in this year the stock went up over 39%.


A post-earnings checkup on McAfee, Inc.; MFE, NOVL, CHKP

MFE peer Novell Inc. (NOVL) has seen a 19.42% stock price gain over about the last month, while another peer, Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (CHKP) saw a 6.14% gain. So with a return of 11.30%, McAfee, Inc. saw less price gain than NOVL and beat CHKP’s price performance over the last month.


Market Has Rebounded Though Number of M&A Same as 2009

Granted, not all of the announced deals will get closed (Upek’s unsolicited bid for publicly traded rival AuthenTec (AUTH) comes to mind), and not all of the bids will play out smoothly (the hedge fund agitation against Novell (NOVL), for instance), but it does indicate a rebound in activity from this time last year.


Novell gains highlight mixed day for tech stocks

Owners Research Group Announces Results of Investor Consensus Study for Novell, Inc.

No new owner has been found for Novell (yet), except a shell that's not even a company.

Netware



Novell is being dumped at Melbourne college.

Bannan said Novell was no longer continuing to develop the platform.


Another new article bears the headline: "NetWare is dead. Long live NetWare?"

Just how much NetWare, which saw its last major update seven years ago, is out there? "A ton," said Adam Gray, CTO of Novacoast, a Santa Barbara, Calif., IT specialist with a strong Linux and open source focus.


Here's one person bragging about login speed. It's a new video.

Virtualisation



The partnership of Citrix and Novell is still being brought up and in the Indian press there are non-event reports. None of this is new.

Talking about SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10/11, Mishra asserted that it has best in class RAS features, can host most popular ISV products, comes with a Virtual Machine Driver Pack, provides enhanced application security using AppArmor, network detection, monitoring, and filtering, comes with certified workloads like SAP and Oracle, and has Active Directory integration, migration tools for UNIX/Windows amongst other features.


Some advertisements for Novell are now embedded in ZDNet 'articles':

I haven’t had a chance to speak with anyone from Novell in a while. Dipto Chakravarty, Novell’s General Manager, Cloud Security, and VP WW Engineering, reached out to me and after a rousing game of calendar alignment, we spoke about the Cloud Security Alliance, its goals and how it plans to go about achieving those goals.


Another new example of borderline advertisements comes from Forbes.

So what's the next step? Let's move those servers to the cloud so we only need them when they are running applications. Let's move the work to where it is cheapest and easiest to perform. Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing at Novell, calls this vision Intelligent Workload Management, but here's where the challenges start to surface.


None of the above is news. They begrudgingly repeat old announcements.

Mail/Collaboration



GroupWise is mentioned here and there, but probably the biggest announcement is that of hosted conferencing (also in [1, 2, 3]:

Novell today announced the availability of a hosted version of Novell Conferencing. This new conferencing solution enables users to conduct virtual meetings, demos and Webinars using a Web browser. With this Web conferencing technology, organizations can significantly reduce the cost and time required for face-to-face travel by instantly sharing documents, desktops, applications, Web pages, whiteboards, audio, video-even record meetings-without installing any software.


This announcement was largely ignored by the press on the face of it. Here is Google's attempt to grab even more of Novell's GroupWise customers. It's a new video (with an HD version that was added later).



Identity Management



"Will Google Tip the Scale Toward OpenID?"

That's the question that IDG asks when it mentions Higgins:

There are other standard and open source identity efforts like Project Higgins (backed by IBM and Novell) and Microsoft's recently announced U-Prove technology. Now that Google is on board with OpenID, I hope we can start to merge these efforts and get the most out of each.


Security



Apart from security holes in Novell's proprietary software, there's still some of the whole 'cloud' security malarkey in parts of the press:

Other industry players have also made recent moves to beef up cloud security. The Cloud Security Alliance and Novell announced on March 1 a certification, education and outreach program targeted at cloud providers.


More in CRN:

Already, Novell has teamed up with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) to give a secure seal of approval to cloud solutions; McAfee this week unveiled its cloud security assessment program, dubbed the McAfee Cloud Secure program; and CompTIA offers a security best practices program in its CompTIA Security Trustmark, which can be applied to cloud computing.


People



Novell pays Sys-Con to participate with talks such as this one and here we have a former Novell Vice President speaking about his new business venture. From the video's description:

Mr Burton has played a leadership role in the development of US technology policy for over twenty years. Prior to joining salesforce.com in January 2006, he was Vice President of Government Affairs for Entrust (2000-2005) and Vice President for Government Relations for Novell (1995-2000). Previously, he was President of the Council on Competitiveness where he was a pioneer in the effort to establish government technology policies for the US high-tech industry.


Partners



Novell still makes partners in India.

Novell has announced that ‘the Novell India Partner Academy, a training programme for Novell’s partners in selling, distributing and supporting of Novell’s suite of enterprise IT solutions, held for the first time in Colombo, was a major success. Novell partners graduating from the training will be able to provide pre-sales consulting and professional services, post-sales support and training to their customers.


Novell was also mentioned in conjunction with some other companies in [1, 2, 3, 4].

Marketing



Novell's CMO John Dragoon can be seen with his latest spin that's implicitly favouring the relationship with Microsoft. Additionally, some new Novell videos found their way into YouTube a few days ago, namely:

Clockwork - Novell Zenworks



How to resolve Intermittent Errors in complex applications by LucyMonahan of Novell



BrainShare



BrainShare 2010 starts very shortly and some companies announce speakers of theirs who will be at the event. Examples include Clerity [1, 2] and GroundWork [1, 2]. There's some promotion of the latter and also a guest post from GroundWork at Novell's PR blog.

According to this report from IDG, Novell will announce the beta of Pulse at BrainShare.

Attendees at next week's BrainShare conference will be the first to get access to the beta preview version of Pulse, which Novell plans to launch in final form in the second half of this year.


Wendy Steinle delivers the last part of her videos about Pulse (we posted the first and second parts in previous weeks).



This video got promoted by Novell's PR people, who also commented on BrainShare a couple of times. BrainShare has quite a stunning new video which we include below. Due to constraints imposed by copyright law, we have not produced Ogg alternatives and we apologise for that.

Recent Techrights' Posts

Someone Expiring Certificates on the Day of the 9/11 Attacks is Not Someone I Would Want Controlling My PC (or Deciding What's Authorised for Booting)
"social justice warriors"
More Microsoft-Red Hat Cross-Pollination as the Company Loses a Managing Director
some people move from Microsoft to Red Hat and some do the opposite
Cloudflare Gives Us All Another Reason to Boycott Cloudflare
If Cloudflare wants to use its vast surveillance network (which is what it does as a CDN) to foist paywalls and maybe something worse (like DRM on top), then Cloudflare should be more widely rejected as a company
 
Links 24/09/2025: "NASA Moving Out of Entire Buildings as It's Gutted" and Purge of Online Critics (Opposing Fascism Becomes Unlawful)
Links for the day
Science is Under Attack
Oligarchy prefers a dumbed-down population
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has Reportedly Failed People With Wrong Advice
At the moment the SRA has a PR blunder
The Man Suing Brett Wilson LLP and Gervase de Wilde (5RB)
Now he's probably using the (almost) 200,000 pounds he's supposed to receive to sue Brett Wilson LLP and former colleagues/partners
Slopwatch: A World Wide Web That's Rotting for Companies That Won't Even Exist in a Few Years
some of the junk Google News is promoting
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, September 23, 2025
IRC logs for Tuesday, September 23, 2025
Links 24/09/2025: Qt Creator 18 Beta, Microsoft Cannot Bail Out "ChatGPT" Anymore, China and US Intensify Censorship
Links for the day
Gemini Links 24/09/2025: Gemlogs and Politics
Links for the day
Links 23/09/2025: Japan Limits Uses of Skinnerboxes ('Smartphones') With Toxic "Apps", Fentanylware (TikTok) Tapped by "MAGAts"
Links for the day
Brett Wilson LLP Has Just Been Sued (by Their Own Clients!)
Vladimir and Alla Yanpolsky sued Brett Wilson LLP in BL-2025-001167 at the end of last week
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part II - UK SLAPPs for Americans, SLAPPs for Profit
Brett Wilson LLP has a track record of this kind
Mayday: Optus emergency calling crisis
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 23/09/2025: Massive Data Breach, Slop Versus Productivity, and Vista 11 Update Breaks Things Again
Links for the day
Code of Censorship
Extortion is peace
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has Un-cancelled the Best People, Just in Time for the Big 4-0
Mr. Oliva should have been there all along (since 2019)
Most "Modern" Technology Makes You Slower and Dumber
Because proprietary software makes you worse off
"What Comes After Free Software?" Wrongly Insinuates We've Reached the Goal (Prison is Not the Goal)
The oil tycoons use similar tactics against environmentalists, giving them fake "wins"
Making More Work Space
I learned the hard way that less is more in circumstances where more means distraction
MAHA is a Lie, Public Officials Never Valued Citizens' Health (They Still Value Private Businesses, Their Sponsors)
Reject demagogues
Free Software Foundation (FSF) Has a New Press Kit for the Weekend After Next Weekend (40th Anniversary)
miles better than social [sic] media [sic] quips, moderated by narcissists and oil tycoons.
Microsoft Had Two Waves of Mass Layoffs This Month (That We Know of) and It'll Get Worse for Microsoft Soon
Will the axe fall again by month's end?
Gemini Links 23/09/2025: Happy Equinox, Photronic Arts, and Perception Cognition
Links for the day
Lessons We've Learned After 17 Years of American Hosting
GAFAM is "all-in" with the "Trump agenda"
Back to Normal Now, We Plan to Do More In-Depth Series (or Multi-part Stories)
Articles (or series thereof) that contain philosophy are important to us
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, September 22, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, September 22, 2025
Microsoft Media is Panicking Amid Mass Layoffs Every Month, H-1B Fees, and "Seattle’s Tech Scene in Trouble"
In "late stage Microsoft", copyleft becomes proprietary
The Next Wave of IBM/Red Hat Layoffs Being Discussed Already
Red Hat is sort of disappearing the way Tivoli did
New Techrights Turns 2
Today starts the third year of the SSG-based Techrights
What Scares Them the Most is Independent News Sites That They Cannot Control and Censor
Wikileaks was a good example of this
If You Don't Control Your Online Platform, Then Someone Else is Controlling You
be (or become) independent
Oracle Started This Year With Slop. Then It Stopped.
Passing fads are like this
Distros That Run on PCs Made 20 Years Ago and Don't Use Systemd
Betas for now
The Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) Has a Policy on Racism and Sexism
In then future we'll show the misogyny and racial slurs
The Complaint About Brett Wilson LLP - Part I - Abusing British Women on Behalf of American Men Who Abuse American Women
Transparency is important to us, so we've decided to make this series
Slopwatch: Google News and the Evident Slopfarm Infestation
This is what people get about Linux when they query Google for Linux
Links 22/09/2025: Murdochs Might Join Fentanylware (TikTok) 'Investors' (Masters), United Kingdom Recognises Palestinian Statehood
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Esperanto Music History and Apps For Android
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: More American 'Censorship' (Retaliation for Journalism), Cheeto "Might Be Losing His Race Against Time"
Links for the day
The Blob Slop
Give me more words, give me some text
The 50-Pound Note Experiment and the "War on Cash"
Britain is actually seeing a rebound in cash payments, and it's not a temporary phenomenon
Slopwatch: Blaming the Victims for Microsoft's Failures and Plagiarising Phoronix
That's what Google has been reduced to: slop and slopfarms
Links 22/09/2025: Breaches, Windows TCO, and Arrests
Links for the day
Gemini Links 22/09/2025: Rabbit Hole and DeGoogling Fairphone
Links for the day
Links 22/09/2025: Russian War Planes Invade NATO Airspace While Dihydroxyacetone Man Escalates Attack on Free Speech Because of Critics
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, September 21, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, September 21, 2025