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Novell to Release 20% of Their Employees?
sicariusdracus writes to tell us that Ron Hovsepian, the new president and COO of Novell may have his hands full in the near future. Ron has been tasked with getting the troubled business back on track which many have speculated could result in more than 20% of the 5,800 man workforce getting a pink slip (although Hovsepian suggests that may be an over exaggeration). Part of the restructuring will be announced with Novell's fourth-quarter financial results.
Smithers: Mr. Hovsepian there's some solicitors at your door to see you.
Hovsepian: Release the employees.
i just got a mental picture of evil novel monkeys with wings being released......
What about MIGUEL and NAT? Are they going to have to get real JOBs soon?
Who cares about the rest of the people anyways. MIGUEL and NAT are the only two main Novell engineers.
So after the 4th quarter results are in, that would be a good time to buy Novell stocks? $7/share is pretty tempting...
It makes it sound like they're in prison!
I sure hope they're released under the GPL... It's good to see companies like this releasing human resources though. I'm going to download some today! Anyone got a torrent?
Pretty old news, it will be around 10% or 600 jobs
Ciao, Marcus
Wait a minute, are you saying we're FIRED?
I have such a hard time with this Newspeak.
Lets just hope this has no effect on Mono. I'm amazed how far thay have come with the project. There are so meny sin-off projects now, it has to be taken seriously.
Or like "really OK."
man, i hate those over exaggerations. as if exaggerations weren't bad enough already!
All joking aside, who uses them anymore? Is their business all legacy support?
Do any of you guys use them? I guess I ask because I'm surprised they are still in business.
I hanve't seen a novell system in many years, and never hear about copanies doing a big novell roll-out.
Will Ron Hovsepian be different than many other high powered COO's in the long run? What if he fails to resurect Novell, he will be paid either handsomely as a saviour or bid adieu with a seperation package. Either way he will be far better than the pink slip recipients. It's never about the little guy when stockholders are involved. Even when those laid off deserved to be.
FREEEEEEEEDOM!
Lets just say they've been "open sourced". 1160 people liberated, people want to be free.
But not me, I'm expensive.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
I'd had a feeling that that story wasn't going to get posted here...
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
I know what it means to exaggerate. What in the heck does it mean to overexaggerate? Does overexaggerate mean to exaggerate too much? Can someone exaggerate and not go to the extent of overexaggerating?
into the wild?
In this context, it doesn't mean "not very". It's like saying "Windows 3.1 isn't really an OS". Maybe it only makes sense in en_GB. I don't know.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
>
>Anyone got a torrent?
In other news, 1160 ex-Novell employees said to be raising capital for hostile takeover of Krispy Kreme donut franchises, said to be interested in realigning business model with .torrent releases targeted directly at the Japanese pr0n market.
Finally in business news, Fuller Brush Company stock is up 50% on the day. A spokesperson for Fuller Brush Company said that despite initial concerns about the Slashdotting of their website last Wednesday, no DDOS attack in fact took place. Credit card companies have reported no chargebacks from orders; none of the PCs from which orders were placed were zombies, despite a quintupling of sales of "brain brushes".
Is that the opposite of "misunderestimation", as coined by a certain US President?
Quantum mechanics: the dreams that stuff is made of.
Were they being kept in the basement?
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
So it is true! There really are no women in IT!
I kid, I kid.
EvilCON - Made Famous by
Burns to Homer: You can considered yourself DOWNSIZED.
Homer : What does that mean??
Smithers: I think it means you're dismissed, Homer.
Homer: Oh, good! Phew! Can I go back to work now?
Release them? As part of a coordinated tag and release programme I assume. We'll soon be seeing poor tagged IT professionals with broken wings and tracking bands for anklets arriving in flocks all round the country, perhaps stopping at a workplace near you. A pity.
Yes $7/share is pretty tempting, but Novel's stock will only go up if they start being profitable. Novel had it coming to them when they bought Ximian, a gnome vendor that made a hodge podge of different products that are now dead (remember RedCarpet?). Novel should stick to SUSE/KDE and re-orient all its developers towards improving _only one_ application for each particular need (ie. YAST for installation/maintenance, KDE for desktop, etc).
Novel's premier Linux distribution, SUSE, is historically based on KDE yet the individual projects that they're supporting (Beagle, Evolution) are gnome apps. I think in the long run KDE will become the de-facto standard primarily because of the tight integration among its applications and excitement in its developer and user base about KDE 4. If you don't believe me, take a look at how many more posts there are in KDE-Look than in Gnome-Look. In fact, there is KDE-Apps for independent apps built with the KDE/QT framework, while there is no such place to aggregate gnome apps.
In conclusion, Novel should get their gnome developers to work on KDE so that they have a tightly integrated system with no duplicated functionality.
I hope I don't catch the Mono.
I too amz amazed out how much cumz in the project are infectious Mono.
Stay awayz from meesa.
Didn't the New Zealand government just announce a big partnership with Novel? How are they reacting to all this negative news coming out of the company?
I submitted this days ago when it actually was news, and it got rejected. Bloody Slashdot :-).
It's just that Novell wants to cut down on the number of long bearded, frighteningly overweight men in IT... and increase the ratio of long bearded, frighteningly overweight women in IT... :D
===
Stereotypes are fun!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
netware is crap it cant sustain our collage network without crashing at least onec a day. we have 5 or six servers serviceing 400 pcs at once and some times (monday morning is the worst) it can take as long as 10 mins to get logged in and the clients are quite fast. (cel 2.4 512 meg ram ) and the windows client is bloated to hell. they should be fired it might persude the rest to make a better product. personally i think microsofts active directory is better and faster (mod me down karma is for pussys)
Novell's old products are great. But their sales force sucks beyond belief. They are one of the few companies where you have to defeat their sales force to get them to sell you anything.
And you had better know exactly what you want because they're not going to offer any advice.
The only time you'll see/hear a Novell rep is when a tech support company goes cruising for clients. The Novell reps love to be driven around to see customers that they wouldn't ever call on their own.
I could double Novell's sales with nothing more than a two line phone and an email account. Seriously. Microsoft takes executives from potential clients to expensive dinners. Novell won't even waste a phone call on an existing customer. They won't even let you know when new products come out that could fit with the stuff they have on record that they sold you.
So, depending .... yes, now might be a good time to buy Novell stock.
Not to mention that the big drop in employee salaries and such will kick up the profit/expense ratio (assuming flat profits).
All of which just thrills the Street. The question is, can you get back out soon enough, at a profit before it comes down again?
Novell didn't "trip over its Linux strategy". Novell's primary product, Netware, was dead when Microsoft finally incorporated equivalent functionality into Windows. That's what the company "tripped over". Novell was essentially dead before they started doing anything with Linux. I find it amazing that they have managed to stay so relevant and important, and their acquisitions of SuSE and their support of Mono look like excellent ideas.
There is no way that their move into Linux was ever going to keep them going at their past levels. That's neither surprising, nor is it Linux's fault. You can make a decent business out of FOSS, but it's not going to be a cash cow like Windows or the old Novell.
I frankly can't judge whether Novell is executing right with SuSE. But the quality of SuSE as a distribution has been consistently high, and they have a good shot at selling to businesses, in particular in the European markets. I hope they'll make it, alongside RedHat and a completely free Debian; we need more and smaller companies, not a few behemoths. And, to me, the Linux distributions strike a good balance between compatibility and diversity.
First they "lose" their employees (what, you can't find them?). Then they "let them go" (as if they wanted to). Now they "release" them (from what, a prison cell?). The euphemisms just keep getting better!
SSL Certificate
"over exaggeration"
As opposed to an under exaggeration?
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
Google will hire them. They are hiring everybody.
Since the folks involved with this story may be reading this story. If so, and you happen to be a experienced PHP developer, please respon to this advert.
LANTASTIC!!!
Jack Messman says Novell now has two primary businesses: identity management and open source. That's the business Novell wants to go after, anyway. I think it has a decent amount of what you call legacy-support business as well, but it's constantly shrinking.
Identity management is a pretty hot area right now and a lot of companies want a piece of it, including the big guys like IBM and Sun. Novell remains a leader, however, largely because it has a superior directory product.
I wrote an article profiling Novell and it's current business prospects last year. It still pretty much holds. Try to look past the fact that it quotes Laura DiDio -- before joining the ranks of the "notorious foes of Linux," she covered Novell for years and years.
The latest news is that Novell's shareholders have been pressuring it to focus more and more on Linux and open source. I'm not sure that's necessarily the best move, because I don't think Suse Linux is generating all that much revenue so far. The open source angle seems to be perceived as the "sexiest" way to go forward, however, with the hope of reviving the Novell brand.
Breakfast served all day!
I was at their huge 'BrainShare' conference last year, and the keynote address each day takes place in a huge convention center set up with fancy audio/video & graphics for 6000 attendees. With all the money they spent, it was the worst/most boaring event of the day each of the three times they had it. Their print marketing is horrible, their graphic identity (a bunch of black and white pictures of yuppies in wierd poses) and everything else about their marketing is just putrid.
As others have stated, their Identity management products for large organizations can't be beat. Their full fledged jump into being a complete enterprise linux vendor, from the desktop to the server room, is a great move. They just need to find a way to get non-novell users to realize this!
nice now they're even opening their workforce for everyone to use!
Hey! They're in violation of equal opportunity hiring laws if they have no women on staff.
Oh, wait. They're in Utah. All the women must be at home in order to have that polygamy thing work...
One has got to believe that Novell will not remain an independent company for long. How long before CA, the grim reaper of IT, will acquire them, fire the remaining 80% and suck the legacy customers dry for maintenance revenue at inflated rates until they finally are fed to Microsoft? You heard it here first. Gartner analysts? - here's a new idea for you to pitch now that CA is your best buddy... (read the Ilumin acquisition press releases...) CA has always wanted an operating system anyway.... Cheers. -blacknerd
is to get rid of employees when things are not profitable, rather than try and fix the problems causing expenses to be so high. Something like job cost accounting could be used to find the products and services that cost more to support than the revenue they bring in. Then either remove the products and services that are not profitable, or use quality control to improve them so there does not need a lot of expenses in supporting them anymore.
An example of this was when Apple was bleeding billions of dollars. They got rid of unprofitable products like the Newton, scanners, printers, Pippin, etc, and improved the Macintosh quality and features, until the company started to show a profit again. Of course they also downsized, but if they did things correctly they would not have to downsize. Keep in mind that they found new markets to be profitable in like music and video files, and the iPod.
There is some risk involved in doing that, but anything in business has a certain degree of risk.
Novell ought to see if Netware is costing more to support than the revenue it brings in. Sadly there are still organizations using Netware 3.X on MS-DOS and older Windows based workstations. If Novell was smart, they'd find a product or service to offer these organizations, or allow them to upgrade the Netware 3.X servers to a version of SuSE Linux with the Netware server application designed for the older servers, and then use SAMBA to connect to Windows clients as well. Perhaps Novell could make a deal with a PC maker to bundle SuSE Linux on their workstations and servers. Maybe make a SuSE Linux based rackmount server for web, email, IM, and other functions with some PC maker.
Anyway Novell ought to see what new markets they can get into, perhaps partner up with IBM/Lotus, Oracle, Sun, or even contribute to the Mozilla Foundation.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Phase 1: Release Employees
Phase 2: ???
Phase 3: Profit
Most linux users don't know this, but the man pages were named after Chuck Norris. Chuck Norris fsck'ing hates noobs!
foreach NovellWorker Worker in CurrentlyHired {
if( Worker.TooOld || Worker.EarnsTooMuch || Worker.HatedByBobInAccounting ) {
Worker.Release();
Worker.Dispose();
}
}
How bad does your work environment have to suck to start describing layoffs in prison terms?
Help us build a better map!
Is the CEO that spends their time coming up with new ways to say 'kicked out' going to be 'moving on' or 'exploring different career options'?
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
you may want to watch where you're pointing that gun...after all, you only have one foot left now
So only men are getting the "pink slip"? This is either sexist or homophobic. I can't figure which.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
"Hello, welcome to Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom!" ...
"Jim Fowler will be attaching these harmless radio collars to the employees before they are released. This will allow us to track them as they find new homes in the wild. Hopefully this information can be used by scientists to ensure a healthy and growing employee population."
"If your family is healthy and growing, you should consider purchasing insurance from Mutual of Omaha to help with all of life's little mishaps."
-- Marlin Perkins
-- Terry
I used to do KDE development (need to get back to it), and I have no desire to see only one desktop out there. Yeah, Sun (and some of the old *nix world) would like see a single desktop. But that comes from the fear of what happened in the *nix world. But the real problem was not that there were parallel projects, but that they did not cooperate. The real battle was dominately between HP and Sun. They both wanted to win. So they each offered up desktops that differed and did not use similar conf. files. Likewise in MS vs. Borland OWL; Of course, Borland was killed by MS's tactics, but that was a different issue.
Gnome and KDE can co-exist very nicely. In fact, there are many things that Gnome learns from KDE and visa-versa. If Novell sees the value in KDE, they will invest in it. If not, than another company will. For example; Mandrake.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Flash news from Provo, UT. This isn't speculation. They cut 20% of their employees today.
You can use them as you wish.
If you let someone else to use them, you must give up the ownership, but that's ok, because you will never do that!
I prefer sticking with Linux distros like Debian or Slackware, etc... I know when I wake up tomorrow that they will still be there.
Meh.
I read it as they're going to give massages.
I feel fantastic, and I'm still alive.
The Firefox Xforms project however will lose out because they fired that employee.
u fournolong_1.html
http://www.beaufour.dk/blog-archives/2005/11/abea
The main problem with Linux sales is that risk adverse enterprise managers have little evidence that a serious Linux based project will succeed.
Novell is well positioned to change that view, IF they make the right moves.
Novell has two major assets in the technology space. The first is SUSe 10, and the second is their identity management servers.
Let me explain. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 is a rock solid distro, and technically does everything it needs to do, which is why it's leading the market...for now.
It is also 1) boring 2) conservative, 3) requires a lot of work to integrate into a typical large enterprise. This is mainly because Red Hat's wants to keep that "rock solid" reputation, and thus doesn't readily embrace new technology.
Not a bad idea, except that those new technologies are whats needed to integrate into a serious enterprise environment.
Novell's SUSe 10 is a lot more adventurous, and besides not being boring, it has all the technology needed to do a end to end implementation of a large enterprise application right out of the box (well, wire, actually, since you can download it).
All of this software is available in the OSS community, so it is available to Red Hat as well, but it isn't integrated, and therefore requires a LOT of work and expertise to connect together.
Work that doesn't show up as realization of business goals on an enterprise managers ROI scorecard.
Red Hat could duplicate that, but it will take a while. Don't get me wrong, I am aware of the wonderful work being done by say, JPackage with Apache, ObjectWeb, Tigris and other OSS communities , but it is not at the same level that you get with SUSe at the moment. (Installing an RPM is not quite the same as getting it to play nicely with everything else on the machine, which is where most of the work comes in).
The other really good feature is that Novell makes the commercial version of SUSe downloable with no time restrictions (though they call it the evaluation version) This is the major feature that attracted everybody to Redhat initially, and is the other major weakness of RedHat now.
When RedHat branched their free version off to Fedora, they lost most of their momentum to Ubuntu. You can't develop something on Fedora (even if it were stable)and be guaranteed it will work on Red Hat Enterprise, it's diverged too much, so why bother?
Red Hat is coasting on past good will and reputation right now, and SUSe 10 is exciting enough, from a users, developers and managers perspective, that it might easily turn the market around; if they do it right...
(continued in next post... what Novell needs to do.)
Yeah right, wake up tommorow and Slackware will be there! The single person behind this distribution has major health problems. Even a person with perfect health can get run over by a bus.
"Their hope of the future is migrating all their existing features to run over Linux."
Lets see if I get this? You say that there products work, and are reliable. But in the next you say that their future is Linux. Why? Is all their stuff suddenly going to go all wonky if it doesn't get imported to Linux? Maybe what you should have said is that Linux's hope of the future needs Novell to migrate all their features over.
I don't think Novell is going to have much in the way of difficulty capturing mindshare among the OSS and Linux user community. There is a few things they need to do (a better Yast, small utilities like service and slocate, etc) but the general feel of Suse 10 is that it is fairly well along to being rock solid itself. The momentum is building, and many of the community that once despised SUSe for releasing their product as source only, now feel that way about Red Hat.
Enterprise managers, however, are a different proposition. Red Hat is the linux "brand name"., and Red Hat legitimately earned that title with their tireless work over the past years. They were the major reason Linux is a serious contender in the industry.
However, Red Hat is coasting on thier reputation, and, outside of that reputation , the competition between Novell and Red Hat is pretty much even. Neither side has serious mindshare among the enterprise managers, who are mostly just experimenting at this stage.
Red Hat will have a lot of serious enterprise implementations to point to soon, they are in a number of companies. However, that won't be convincing to your average manager, since they will see it as one off successes, not a validation.
The deal maker will be a reference implementation, that managers can see as as something they customize, rather than create. Neither side has that yet, though Novell seems much better situated to deliver it.
It isn't simply the wider or more bleeding edge scope of SUSe10 versus RHEL4, it also Novelles Identity Management solutions. Identity Management is at the heart of most major enterprise projects today, and Novell is the "Red Hat" of that industry (rock solid, boring, unadventurous). Identity Management is something that enterprise managers can relate to on their ROI scorecard, unlike OS's, which CFO's don't understand or care about.
So, to summarise, Novell needs to create a reference Enterprise Application, complete with an openly availble (a la Oracle) though not necessarily open source, Identity Management suite, and start demoing that to enterprise managers. Combined with pressure from the techie side, it should be enough to give Novell at least a fighting chance in dominating this still nascent industry niche. In true OSS fashion, they can do it by making alliances with a number of the smaller consulting organizations that have good track records and reputations in these sort of enterprise applications.
"!Worker.IsExecutive"
Oh wait, Executives fall into a completely different class than Workers. My bad.
Red Carpet lives and breathes as ZENworks Linux Management. In fact //I// have posted a few times on Slashdot about that transition.
The Red Carpet - now ZENworks Linux Management - engineering team are alive and well and working on the next release of the ZENworks Linux Management product line.
[As an aside - I know Slashdot is renowned for the innacuracy of posts - but this one just seems steeped in Gnome/KDE politics... Gnome, KDE - I really don't care so long as it's not the Win32 Shell...]
Evil ZEN Scientist
Release the Novell 20!
:(
These management euphemisms get more and more abstruse.
Environmentalism is the new Victorianism. Everyone ties on a green corset and pretends we're virtuous.
probably only when the cretins espousing it lose at the evolution game.
Is that a bit like how foetuses are prematurely 'released' from the womb?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
What's an 'over exaggeration'? I think we need some sort of less non-inaccurate misunderestimation of linguistic abilities with Slashdot editors here.
FYI, this week's Economist suggests that, once Novell is required to expense the fair value of employee stock option grants, its profitability will be halved. That's before any of this restructuring is taken into account.
Yes, I know that this shouldn't affect market valuations. But it may surprise your more casual investor.
Visit Snowflake Showers
A person or two dying will not a distro kill. The key to truly free Linux distros is that there is a huge community behind them.
Meh.
Because release makes it sound like they are imprisoned, trapped, and want to be freed from their current working environment/capacity - like they are doing them a favor.
looks like you better start reading up for your mcse or you'll be out of a job :(
I've been CEO of two businesses, and I am starting up a third. The first business I sold to my partner, and the second is still running.
I hold a bachelors of science in business management with a 3.91 GPA. I do business consulting for various businesses.
You are the CFO of nowhere, Mr./Ms. Anonymous Coward.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Allan Beaufour Larsen, Mozilla's lead XForms developers has gone; a great shame.
Sig Appended to the end of comments you post. 120 chars.
I got "released" from Novell yesterday.
I'm not going to say anymore lest Novell hunt me down here and try to revoke my severance package for divulging any sensitive information, or the SEC run me down for offering insider information (of which I actually have very little).