Bonum Certa Men Certa

Novell News Summary - Part III: Mostly Videos, Kablink 2.0 Release, and Utah Event

Bryce Canyon



Summary: The rest of Novell's news (from two weeks)

THE past week has been slow and the company's staff has been mostly dormant, so let us start with a couple of new videos. Novell carries on posting instructional videos -- a practice it has been following for several months now. This first one is about ZENworks:





And another one:



Finance



The following person claims that Novell's debt is $121 million. Can this figure be confirmed?

To manage default risk, Kaufman sticks with solid companies that have a lot of cash on their balance sheets and are generating free cash flow. A favorite holding is a bond from software maker Novell(NOVL Quote). The company has $1 billion in cash and only $121 million in debt. "I am not interested in distressed debt," Kaufman says. "I am interested in getting double-digit yields from high-quality issuers."


Here is a nice recollection from one former Novell employee:

[O]ne of Red Hat's early investors was...Novell, an investment that made Novell over $100 million. That's foresight!


Novell's performance currently looks poor compared to Red Hat's.

The enterprise Linux maker revealed some stonkingly good quarterly figures last week, laughing in the face of the global downturn and making the Linux vendor that relies on Microsoft's trust fund money (Novell, in other words) look like a right old Charlie.


Novell suffered a bit of a blow some days ago.

NOVL Novell Inc. -6.49% 78% (18 of 23) 17


Older Days



Here is a new opinion piece that compares Novell to Leeds United. It is also mentioned here.

Novell would be Leeds United They used to be huge when I were a lad.


More memories of Novell in:

i. A Jacobian Value Search: Invert, Always Invert!

Screening the lower EV/Assets ratios results in a list of many fairly healthy software businesses with excellent balance sheets. I have posted at length on Novell Inc. and RealNetworks, but Microsoft and Cray Computer (a software business disguised as a hardware business) also look good to me in the longer run.


ii. WinInfo Short Takes: Week of July 13, 2009

"I just gave up," Schmidt said, while simultaneously forgetting about the OS beating Microsoft handed Novell when he ran that company.


Novell's NetWare gets labeled a "dying IT skill". It makes #2 in the list (among a total of 10).

2: Novell NetWare

Novell’s network operating system was the de facto standard for LANs in the 1990s, running on more than 70% of enterprise networks. But Novell failed to compete with the marketing might of Microsoft. Novell tried to put up a good fight by acquiring WordPerfect to compete with Windows Office, but that move failed to ignite the market, and Novell eventually sold WordPerfect to Corel in 1996. Novell certifications, such as Certified Novell Engineer, Master Certified Novell Engineer, Certified Novell Certified Directory Engineer, and Novell Administrator, were once hot in the industry. But now, they are featured in Foote Partners’ list of skills that decreased in value in 2008. Hiring managers want Windows Server and Linux skills instead.


Virtualisation



PlateSpin makes a rather rare appearance here.

PlateSpin’s partner program will be amalgamated into Novell’s channel structure from November 1 as part of efforts to bring the two organisations closer together.

PlateSpin channel manager Asia-Pacific, Mathew Donoghue, said the virtualisation management vendor had also recently struck distribution agreements with Novell’s Australian distribution partners, Express Data and Open Channel Solutions (OCS).


Novell also promotes this virtualisation video tutorial from Novell's Alan Murray.

Mail and Collaboration



Novell's Kablink 2.0 has been released, so its employees make some noise about it.

Kablink, the Novell-sponsored open source platform that provides collaboration tools that can be integrated into every business, today announced the availability of Kablink 2.0 with teaming functionality. With Kablink, users can integrate the most popular collaboration tools (blogs, wikis, forums, microblogs) into their infrastructure and harness the power of their knowledge workers under one standardized platform. Check out this video with Kablink Community manager, Brent McConnell, which discusses the evolution of enterprise collaboration and offers a first look at Kablink 2.0.


There is also this new video from Novell.

GroupWise gets rejected publicly.

The IT department and key members across the user community started evaluating the technology options. The selection team considered two options—one to consider alternate solutions such as Microsoft Exchange, Novell GroupWise, etc., independent of existing technology stack in the company. Second, evaluate technology options from the cost and other benefits that can arise at the stack level. After thorough deliberations, the team ruled out Novell GroupWise as an option because of substantial investments in user and IT skills.


Here is an article about Gwava.

Canadian-based Novell GroupWise collaboration software security software provider Gwava has selected French enterprise search engine company Exalead's CloudView OEM Edition to enrich the search functions of the Gwava e-mail archiving platform.


There is also this new video tutorial for GroupWise 8.



More progress on Novell and E-mail is to be found in this updated page about Pegasus Mail 4.51.

Pegasus Mail is an e-mail client that interacts directly with the user, allowing mail to be sent, read, filed, printed and otherwise manipulated through a graphical interface. Small and fast, it can be left running permanently on the workstation and includes powerful tools to notify the user when new mail arrives. It can run on single Windows computers, or local area networks - it has special support for Novell NetWare LANs that allow it to operate intuitively and with almost no maintenance.


People



Jacqueline de Rojas quit Novell some months ago and according to this report she lands in McAfee -- the company some people speculated would merge with Novell.

McAfee has announced the appointment of Jacqueline de Rojas as vice president of UK and Ireland.

Joining from Novell where she was managing director for the UK and Ireland, de Rojas will report directly to David Quantrell, president, EMEA at McAfee, who was appointed in January this year.


Here is more reminiscing of the embarrassment Novell's Jeffrey Merkey has become.

This is not the first time Wales is said to have intervened with the content on Wikipedia's pages. In March of 2008, former Novell chief scientist Jeffrey Merkey accused Wales of extortion in a statement to the Associated Press.


The news about Calix got mentioned last month, but here it is again:

Robert Checketts has gained extensive experience in the past 25 years with successful start-ups and companies in the technology, telecommunications, and networking industry. He joins Calix from Juniper Networks where as director of Americas marketing he supported the full range of Juniper products across all markets. In addition, Checketts has held executive marketing positions at Cisco Systems, Yosemite Technologies, Lucent, Sun Microsystems, and Novell.


More Novell staff on the move:

He spent 11 years at Novell in a variety of Asia-Pacific roles.

Martin began his career in South Australia in 1983 with Abraxas Computers and then joined Canon Australia.

He moved to one of Canon's largest resellers, Q-Dos Computers, and was recruited to as state manager for WordPerfect in South Australia, moving to Novell when it acquired WordPerfect.


Old bits of wisdom from Noorda:

The Internet has provided a major shift in the way we work. Less than 20 years ago, there was a comment by Ray Noorda, the CEO of Novell - "If you don't have an e-mail address on your business card, you will be considered a nobody" and most people did not believe it.


Some more sightings of past Novellers:

Before joining InterSystems, Matz was president and CEO of Route Link for eight years, a leading systems integration and groupware development company that he founded and managed. Prior to founding Route Link, he was vice president of Mashov Computers, the exclusive Novell distributor in Israel, where he was responsible for Novell's Israeli operations. His background includes more than twenty years of technical, marketing and sales management experience in the IT industry.


Commercial Relationships



Here is Novell discussed as a competitor:

During the segment, Boroditsky discusses Passlogix’s continued success despite direct competition from large companies like IBM, CA and Novell. He attributes Passlogix’s growth, with nearly doubled revenues in the past two years, to the role strong customer service plays in swaying customers away from large companies.


Novell is also listed as a friend.

Concentric Managed Backup offers a comprehensive platform support which includes Novell, NetWare, Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM, AIX, IBM i and VMware, as well as application support including Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint, Cluster Services, Oracle, and other applications.


Lastly, Novell's relations with other companies are mentioned briefly in a few more places, but none of this is notable.

Marketing



Novell's account in YouTube has spewed out a lot of promotional videos such as this one of Matt Richard that Novell also promoted here. Other new examples include success stories. Probably a little older is the following addition.



Utah



Novell is quite important to Utah's profile and it has just hosted an event that produced a lot of coverage. There is a special award granted to top "young companies".

The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of its 2009 “Top 25 Under Five” Awards spotlighting outstanding Utah entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Award recipients were recognized today at ceremonies held at the Provo Novell Campus. InnoVentures Captial Partners and The Daily Herald sponsored the event. UVEF recognized ZAGG, Inc. (www.zagg.com), a designer, manufacturer and distributor of protective clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices, as the number one performer among Top 25 nominees.


More here:

ZAGG was recognized as number one among the 25 finalists for 2009 at ceremonies held at the Novell Provo Campus. Other companies in the top five were Imagine Learning, OrangeSoda, Allegiance, and Aribex.


SEO.com claimed bragging rights too.

Crowds gathered into the Novell building in Provo, Utah to celebrate and honor entrepreneurs and some of the state's top companies under five years old. In a bright contrast to the current economic struggle, optimism reigned here where companies were boasting both recent and future success.


Here is a video from the event (also identical here).



This is the summary/description:

PROVO, Utah July 9, 2008 The Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum (UVEF) today announced winners of its 2009 Top 25 Under Five Awards spotlighting outstanding Utah entrepreneurs and start-up companies. Award recipients were recognized today at ceremonies held at the Provo Novell Campus. InnoVentures Captial Partners and The Daily Herald sponsored the event. UVEF recognized ZAGG, Inc. (www.zagg.com), a designer, manufacturer and distributer of protective clear coverings and accessories for electronic and hand-held devices, as the number one performer among Top 25 nominees.


More Utah publicity for Novell can be found in:

i. Utah Job Skills & Digital Literacy Training Program Reaches Milestone

Skilled2Succeed provides the final link in the chain from job retraining to meaningful advancement in the workplace. Certified program graduates have been placed in professional positions at companies like DirectPointe, Coldwell Banker and Novell, among others. “Everyone pushes down, but Skilled2Succeed lifts us up,” stated budding artist and Skilled2Succeed graduate Dorothy Boyle.


ii. Utah's Nu Skin doing something right ... for 25 years

"It's funny because even here in our community, if you go back 20, 25 years, the stars of the local business environment would have been WordPerfect, would have been Novell, would have been Geneva Steel," CEO Truman Hunt said in an interview from his office in the striking building that seems to want to define downtown Provo.


And that's about all for now.

Recent Techrights' Posts

With Net Income of One Billion Dollars Tesla Claims It Can Pay a Fake Founder (Who Paid for This Lie) 1,000 Billions
What does this tell us about Wall Street?
The 'Politics' of Operating Systems (or Exclusion for Inclusion's Sake)
This whole 'wrongthink' policing is getting out of hand
The Internet is Becoming Dead or a Zombie
The Internet is becoming like a giant botfarm
Gemini Links 10/11/2025: Homelabs and KeePassRX Manual Now Available
Links for the day
 
"MIT Technology Review Insights" is the Selling of Ponzi Schemes for Sponsors (MIT Lacks Integrity)
Just like IBM, they're chaining buzzwords now
Rust Keeps Breaking Ubuntu in All Sorts of Extraordinary Ways (and All Distros Based on Ubuntu Will Break Also)
The FSF's stance on this is unclear
Boot-locking Laptops and Desktops After Falsely Marketing That As 'Security' and Not Obligatory
If anyone can confirm this to us
GNU/Linux Cannot Buy Fake Journalism and It Won't Bribe Large Publishers
Free software developers don't purchase "sponsored" placements and that will never change
Static Site Generators (SSGs) Save You Lots of Money and Problems
We've basically reduced the environmental/carbon footprint of the site by a factor of ~100 (2 orders of magnitude)
IBM Does Not Care About Families, Communities, and Even Its Own Workers
Red Hat isn't a family and to believe that it is would be the makeup of cults
Too Much of Today's Web is Fake, Not Just Fake News
We'll continue to advocate for adoption of Gemini Protocol
Simulating a Downtime Tomorrow Night
It is expected that network redundancy will make this maintenance invisible to us, but IRC hangups or general slowness are still a possibility
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, November 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, November 10, 2025
Links 11/11/2025: Conflicts and Politics From National Broadcasters
Links for the day
Gemini Links 11/11/2025: Poetry and Electronics Studies
Links for the day
Apple's Debt Grew by About 16 Billion Dollars This Past Year, "Disappointing iPhone Sales" Reported
People who buy Apple's goods based on some false notion that Apple is "cool" or ethical or "underdog" (late 90s) aren't just living in the past; they're fools
Turning Down Proprietary Software is About Making Society Better
We should not be tempted to shame people for merely trying to keep programmers honest and human rights-respecting
Debian GNU/Linux Became the Most Popular (Most Distros Are Based on It) Owing to Richard Stallman
New presentation
A Day for Poppies
This site will run as usual today. We continue our fight for Software Freedom.
"Modern" Doesn't Mean Better, It Typically Just Means Newer
RMS demonised as someone who rejects "modern society" ("rejecting modern society") by a site that uses slop extensively
The Cocaine Patent Office - Part IV: European Patent Office to Come Under Media and Political Scrutiny
We'll persist until we get some answers
63-Page Response to the EPO's Effort to Decrease the Salaries of Workers While EPO Management Snorts Cocaine for 20,000 Euros a Month
"Read more in these written comments we sent to the members of the GCC"
Response to Another New Hit Piece About Richard Stallman (RMS)
We see similar smears floating about and tackling them can help not only RMS but anyone who thinks similarly about computers
Shrinking and Cheapening the Workforce: the Future of Red Hat and IBM
Does Red Hat cheapen the workforce?
Links 10/11/2025: BBC Turmoil and Iranian Drought Crisis
Links for the day
The Register MS Still Occasionally Uses Slop
some articles don't use real images
Links 10/11/2025: "Scam Altman Gets Served Subpoena" and "China will Rule Renewable Energy"
Links for the day
ubuntupit.com Has Paused the LLM Slop (for Now)
No slopfarm ever offered any real value
More Media Coverage From Austria Regarding Cocaine Use by EPO Management
The ultimate goal is full accountability
Ponzi Economics and the Media's Role in Defending Ponzi Economics
We occasionally notice weak or almost-non-existent coverage regarding the economy
Links 10/11/2025: Very High Windows TCO and XBox Continues to Languish
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, November 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, November 09, 2025
Governments That Financially Benefit (Profit) From the EPO Have a Long History of Covering Up Fraud and Corruption at the EPO
Many people are aware of it, even some of the biggest EPO stakeholders
Our Time in London
10 Days Ago We Were Down in London
Giving Red Hat a Second Life and Second Chance: Drop the LLM Slop, Stop Publishing Promotion of LLMs or Text Made by LLMs
For Red Hat to earn more trust it needs to quit participating in the biggest "pump and dump" pyramid scheme since the 1990s
Gemini Links 09/11/2025: Garden Room Complete, FreeBSD 15.0 on the ThinkPad T480, and Known Gemini Caspules Sorted by Number of URLs
Links for the day
Links 09/11/2025: Fung-wong Strikes Maharlika, "Open" "AI" Wants Taxpayers to Give It Bailout Money
Links for the day
Links 09/11/2025: "Avoid MSI Graphics Like the Plague", Harms of Social Control Media More Widely Recognised
Links for the day
Rocky Linux's Embrace of Mindless Cargo Cults Will Harm Rocky Linux in the Long Run
focus on technology, not marketing that defrauds many people and plagiarises many producers
Many of Red Hat's Official Blog Posts Seem to be Fake, Written at Least Partly by Bots (LLM Slop)
Can one trust Red Hat on technical things if it cannot even write words?
Suggestions Regarding Techrights Search
In some cases, Daily Links also serve to obscure our original articles
"Open" "AI" is Going Bankrupt, Appealing for Government Bailout
The writings have been on the wall for years
Reaffirming Rumours of More Microsoft Layoffs, Halo Impacted, XBox Business Winding Down
XBox has a huge target painted on its bum
"Secure Boot": Stop Trying to Boot Into GNU/Linux, Use Vista 11 Instead
It's all about reducing the user's cybersecurity under the false guise of improving it
This is What We Always Wanted to Spend Our Time on
2026 will probably be our most productive ever
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, November 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, November 08, 2025
LowEndBox Resorts to Ableism to Smear Software Freedom
Not some "low-level" pundit but an administrator
IBM is Destroying Red Hat (by Extension, It Also Harms GNU/Linux)
IBM is where things come to die, more so in the past decade or so
Austrian Media Coverage of Luis Berenguer's (Top EPO Official) Getting Busted for Cocaine
This wasn't some rich tourist caught by cops, it was a local official whom they busted
This Coming Thursday EPO Staff Meets Online to Discuss the Salaries Going Down While Stoned Managers Increase Their Own
compensation going down relative to inflation and other factors
Misinformation of IBM Spread via LLM Slop
Since a lot of sites now rely on LLMs we can expect the corporations' lies to be perpetuated by bots. That includes the myths of IBM Red Hat.
Gemini Links 09/11/2025: File Managers and DPC Commissioner
Links for the day