Slashdot Mirror
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......
So after the 4th quarter results are in, that would be a good time to buy Novell stocks? $7/share is pretty tempting...
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.
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.
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...
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.
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?
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.
Either way he will be far better than the pink slip recipients.
I dunno about that... Not being forced to use Groupwise anymore may put you in the "far better off" category.
(Please not in the face! I do tech support for Groupwise!)
But seriously...
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.
I think Scott Adams (Dilbert Author) had pretty good words about layoffs... (I'm paraphrasing this!) 'When they intention to make the company "lean and mean" goes wrong, it makes them "Skinny and Pissed" instead.'
CEO's think layoffs are the best way to save the company because employees are the costliest part of the company, but often those people were actually doing something (most of the time).
Think of the anology of you cutting off your fingers to keep from going hungry.
Sure it works, but over time you start running out of body parts to munch on.
Long term successful companies don't lay off employees, they find more revenue streams along with better business models and expand the business.
If you find yourself having to lay off employees, then you have to actually consider how you reached this point. Did you just hire too many people or are you failing as a company to make money? If you can't answer that question then the company is going into a death spiral and you best start looking for an exist strategy...
As for that, I suggest riding stock options by deceiving shareholders that you are actually making a profit by selling of parts of the company, firing more workers, blaming the previous CEO, suing other companies for IP infringment, and fancy powerpoint presentations.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
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/
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.
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.
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!
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.
foreach NovellWorker Worker in CurrentlyHired {
if( Worker.TooOld || Worker.EarnsTooMuch || Worker.HatedByBobInAccounting ) {
Worker.Release();
Worker.Dispose();
}
}
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.