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Novell Under Pressure From Investors

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hard-times dept.

UltimaGuy writes "The pressure is growing on Novell Inc's management to make major strategic changes after a regulatory filing revealed a Novell shareholder has joined Credit Suisse First Boston in calling for change at the identity management and Linux vendor. The steps proposed by the investment firm include cutting costs by targeting Novell's two corporate jets, its 'overstaffed' R&D department, legacy products, and its 400 NetWare engineers, as well as selling non-core businesses to enable funds to be redeployed."

3 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Sun Could Possibly Buy Novell? by jg21 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Maybe there's truth in the notion then that Sun might buy Novell. If it doesn't buy Red Hat first, as Mark Hinkle here seems to think it might.

  2. The slashdot angle by bfree · · Score: 5, Interesting
    From the article (emphasis mine):

    The investment firm (Blum) has also called on Novell to increase its investment in Linux and open source software through partnerships and acquisitions to move "further up the stack".

    Blum's proposal is broadly similar to CSFB analyst Jason Maynard's suggestion that Novell should focus on software services rather than consulting, increase its emphasis on open source software, and repurchase company stock

    So at least the pressue isn't on for them to dump Suse/Linux which was my initial fear on reading the slashdot post. In fact if anything they aree being encouraged to place more focus on it showing even these (presumably) hardened business types can finally see the long term value in FOSS.
    --

    Never underestimate the dark side of the Source

  3. Re:400 NetWare engineers?? by bonius_rex · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Why so many guys are still working on a dead-end product with no future is beyond me.

    I think Novell is in a hard spot wrt Netware. I admin about 50 Netware servers. *I* know that I can do everything I need on Open Enterprise Server. There is no technical reason to carry on with Netware, but convincing my higher-ups that Linux is no longer "just some hippie hobby thing" takes time.

    I'm afraid that if Novell were to discontinue support for Netware today, my management might decide it would be just as easy to migrate to Windows as to OES.

    Novell has to keep Netware support rolling along, while at the same time convincing PHBs (like mine) that Linux is perfectly acceptable for large scale mission critical deployments. Dropping a significant number of Netware engineers could cause Novell to lose customers if they are not very careful.