Comments on: Financial Games: Novell’s Main Strength?

By: Victor Soliz

Victor Soliz — Fri, 30 May 2008 22:45:33 +0000

Enter Novell, a company that attributes its only success to being Microsoft’s sidekick.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:21:20 +0000

Oh, of course Novell ‘recruited’ a lot of people for OpenSUSE. You know, to share the code to [sic] Novell and Microsoft.

By: Miles

Miles — Fri, 30 May 2008 20:01:17 +0000

Novell seems to be putting more of an emphasis on Linux the last year or two and so I suspect that the job cuts have been in non-Linux areas. Ironically, the text that Roy has quoted in red even seem to suggest that

slashed about 10 percent of jobs last year and focused on new Linux products, seeking to counter a drop in revenue from older software.

it showed healthy growth in its core business units around the Linux operating system

Sounds like the cuts were in the aging proprietary software departments (e.g. NetWare?) since it’d be hard to focus on Linux if you are cutting Linux jobs. Plus we also know from reading various blog feeds, etc that Novell has been actively hiring in the Linux departments.

By: David Flax

David Flax — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:59:48 +0000

I agree with you there. I would rather know more about the deal too.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:48:02 +0000

That’s true. Novell knows best, but it keeps the cards close to its chest and its important deal redacted.

By: David Flax

David Flax — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:40:00 +0000

Roy,

That’s a stretch based on what I said. I said it is a normal course of business and not necessarily a bad thing. That certainly doesn’t mean that keeping the same managers and paying your staff well is a bad thing, but many companies expect some turnover. People in general need new challenges. It is a rare person that stays with a company for their entire career. Has it happened sure, it’s just not that common.

Yes Novell is trying to migrate clients to Linux either OES or Suse. You say it does not neccessarily mean they add new clients. It also could mean Novell did add new clients. You just don’t know.

By: Roy Schestowitz

Roy Schestowitz — Fri, 30 May 2008 19:21:11 +0000

According to this logic, David, if a company adds staff, keeps the same managers for ages (maybe an entire career), has investors buying its stock (thriving as a publicly-traded company) and keeps its jobs close to ‘home’ (paying generously to employees), then that does not say anything about the company’s status.

As for OES, it wasn’t an example that I was entirely certain about, but surely enough Novell is migrating old clients to GNU/Linux (in one form or another). That does not necessarily mean that it adds new clients.

By: David Flax

David Flax — Fri, 30 May 2008 18:54:26 +0000

We’ve been through this before. Why is any of this bad news? Changing heads is a normal course of business. Buying your own stock is not necessarily bad news and in this case it is good news since Novell is very cash heavy. Offshoring is common place these days as well. Cutting staff can be good depending on which divisions Novell is cutting staff from? Do you know which divisions Novell cut staff from? Is it possible that these staff cuts were to remove duplicate positions within the company? I don’t know personally and maybe you do. Were they all developers?

You should get one thing straight, Novell does not include OES as part of it’s Linux sales, OES is included in Workgroup sales which dropped 1% to 92 million. Maybe you know something investors don’t know but a 37% increase in revenue is rarely a bad thing.