”...Novell received some positive press coverage as well.“The most major news, at least from Novell's perspective for this week, is all to do with postponement of its financial report (due to a SEC probe). We covered this on Thursday after the Wednesday's downtime (caused by heavy load). It was the same day that Novell received the grim news. However, Novell received some positive press coverage as well. Some of it is presented below.

Novell Partnerships

Novell is still chasing its partners in the channel for their assistance, in terms of marketing and reach.

Novell is scouting for sale and service partners to create better business opportunities and to provide wide range of business solutions in the Indian market.

There is one lucky partner. Novell grants a special honour to Novacoast, which is claimed "partner of the year".

Novacoast, Inc., an IT professional services and product development firm, won Novell's 2007 Solution Partner of the Year award for the Americas, seizing the top honor for the fifth time in the past six years. A Santa Barbara-based company, Novacoast continues to hold top partner status with Novell due to a strong customer focus, technology expertise, and a results-oriented approach. Novacoast has been a key partner in helping Novell expand its Linux and enterprise management offerings to new customers and new markets in 2007.

In Novell's PR blob you'll find information about Novell's role in Science Applications International Corporation.

Just recently, government information technology vendor Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) announced that it, along with its team members, has been awarded a certificate of completion for its HSPD-12 vendor evaluation. Team members include Novell, Honeywell, ImageWare and ActivIdentity.

For future reference, Sequiam's ties with Novell's technology are worth taking note of. They are described in the following new press release.

Sequiam Corporation (OTCBB: SQUM), a leading provider of innovative consumer and commercial identity-management technologies and services, announced today that production is underway on several versions of the new biometric hardware kits for Fujitsu. These kits will be used in multiple applications, including Novell€® eDirectory(TM), enabling NMAS Authentication for client and server login. They will also be used for secure access to www.annesdiary.com, the world's first secure social networking site for children, which utilizes Novell eDirectory.

More information on this story with a less promotional language:

The hardware kits will be used by Fujitsu for multiple security access applications including Novell's eDirectory and www.annesdiary.com, which Orlando-based Sequiam (OTCBB: SQUM) touts as the world's first secure social networking site for children, particularly young girls. The site has 600,000 subscriptions around the world.

Novell Marketing

The following Novell commercial seems similar to a bunch of older ones. It may be just a part of them, but it might also be a new one based on the datestamp.



Novell's PR blog reveals a migration from Windows to GNU/Linux where Novell's SUSE was chosen.

Guangdong Mobile’s Windows environment couldn’t provide the stability and security the company needed, so after testing a variety of alternative solutions, Guangdong Mobile replaced its Windows with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

ELCOT's migration to SUSE Linux, which has been covered here several times before, makes the news again.

That day, Elcot’s managing director, C. Umashankar, walked into his office in Chennai, Tamil Nadu and was handed a brand new laptop. He recalls promptly giving it back to his PA. “I asked him to load Suse Linux on it. I guess he was surprised. But when the installation — complete with drivers and wireless networking — only took 45 minutes and very little external effort, there was a new confidence in my PA.” That confidence spread quickly. And with it came more penguins. Within weeks, the Rs 750-crore Elcot was undergoing a enterprise-wide migration to Suse Linux. A year later, Umashankar and his team had moved 30,000 computers and 1,880 severs belonging to some of the state’s schools to Linux — creating possibly the largest Linux rollout in India.

[...]

As users caught on with Umashankar’s infectious enthusiasm, they started getting more familiar with the features of their new OS. Soon a cycle of interest developed and users found new ways of switching mail clients to work on Suse Linux.

Miscellany

Techworld has an article that servers as somewhat of a non-technical networking primer. Of course, Novell doesn't escape the author's attention.

While Novell has its Novell Open Workgroup Suite Small Business Edition and Microsoft has its Small Business Server offerings, you have some research to do before deciding which way to go. And there are several open-source products that will probably work well for you as well.

A story that first made the news about 4 months ago has recently returned.

The judge's approval of 200 hours of community service drew comments from law enforcement officials frustrated by an MIT professor who faked his own death.

[...]

Donovan is well-known and widely respected in the IT community because of his text books and inspirational speeches. A serial entrepreneur, he started several companies, the most famous of which was Cambridge Technology Partners, which was sold to Novell for $266 million in 2001. The Cambridge Technology Partners operation was recently spun off by Novell.

This story was not mentioned here before because it barely has anything to do with Novell. Being a large company with an even more glorious past, the number of people out there in industry who are also former Novell employees is quite vast. Eric Schmidt is doing well at Google and Matt Asay cannot help criticising Novell for its deal with Microsoft. Both of them are former Novell employees (among many more). ⬆