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Attachmate To Acquire Novell For $2.2B Cash
wiredmikey and a few others wrote in to let us know that Novell has agreed to be acquired by Attachmate Corporation for $6.10 per share in cash, in a transaction valued at approximately $2.2 billion. The Boston Globe reports that the deal also includes the sale of some intellectual assets to a consortium organized by Microsoft. Attachmate plans to operate Novell and SUSE as separate business units. Here is the press release.
My guess will be the items that were relevant to the MSNovell patent deal, to remove that need for MS to provide protection for those that have used SuSE..
Time will tell I suppose.
- This sig deliberately left blank. Nothing to see, move along.
Attachmate's strategy for the economic downturn was to lay off most of their development staff while still collecting maintenance from all their customers. And they only had to follow that strategy because the private equity group that owns them had sucked a ton of money out of the company by saddling it with a gigantic debt.
I don't feel very good about the prospects for sane, customer focused management from this particular company.
Need a Python, C++, Unix, Linux develop
Think about it: Novell hold the copyrights and trademarks to UNIX. They would make for a nice addition to Microsoft's portfolio, don't you think?
"Slashdot - the one place on the internet where guys brag about how small it is." - that IT girl
Attachmate is a venture capital firm, which means:
- They're loaded but you never heard of them,
- VCs usually buy or invest in a company to make a lot of money quickly,
- If Novell's market cap doesn't increase a lot soon, or they don't turn a huge profit soon (fat chance), they're hosed, like most companies taken over by VC money.
In short, expect Novell to be up for sale within 3 years.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Another one (that made a deal with MS) bites the dust.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
I for one would be wondering whether this move was intended to acquire the Unix copyrights that Novell owns (as determined by the SCO case). The idea here is that SCO was stopped largely because they didn't actually have copyright on what they claimed infringement for.
Not that there weren't lots of other reasons why the case didn't hold water, but this does look like potentially a way to get the whole thing started up again.
I am officially gone from
I am amazed at how - once again - Novell blundered and lost the opportunity to capitalize on something. Back in '05 I thought Novell and SUSE (SLED, SLES...) would have a viable future competing against Wintendo and Unix. However, I noticed way back in '08 that they were slipping and I eventually jumped ship myself (over to Ubuntu) and gave up trying to persuade my server room staff to switch to Novell.
Too bad.
Kind of reminds me of 1995...
The Kai's Semi-Updated Website Thingy
Microsoft is involved, so that is not good news. SuSE is dead, or soon will be.
What's going to happen to the UNIX copyrights, and will this IP sale be the stick that they will continue to try to beat Linux with?
Software patents? OMG, in the hands of Microsoft?
One can theorize that this is Microsoft's way of trying to get Google. Windows Phone 7 needs a way to beat Android, and I'm sure the whole Linux copyright, patent BS will be focused on the mobile phone market.
There is a reason for that according to netcraft:
Walker, Richer Quinn Incorporated IT Operations 1500 Dexter Avenue North Seattle WA US 98109 150.215.214.130 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 31-Jul-2010
Attachmate Corp. 1233 West Loop South Suite 1800 Houston TX US 77027 149.82.9.36 Windows Server 2003 Microsoft-IIS/6.0 25-Feb-2010
Get a web developer
as an employee of one of the remaining groupwise customers I think this falls in the category of "anything would be an improvement"
Maybe the Attachmate CEO just ran out of shit to kill and has moved on to companies.
From Wikipedia:
Jeff Hawn—the president and CEO of Seattle-based Attachmate who lives in Austin, Texas—has been sentenced to 10 days in jail for authorizing the slaughter of 32 of his neighbor's bison that wandered onto his Colorado ranch. Hawn pleaded guilty in November to criminal mischief and animal cruelty. Hawn and hired hands shot and killed 32 bison, which had wandered onto and near his property from a neighboring ranch in Park County, Colorado — including cows carrying calfs. In Colorado, bison are allowed to wander under open-range laws.
The arrest warrant said most were left to rot.
Hawn, plead guilty to criminal mischief and cruelty to animals and was released free on a $15,000 bail. The Denver Post reports that the judge sentenced Hawn to 10 days in jail.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
...is "What IP did Microsoft acquire in this deal?" If they've acquired the UNIX copyrights, we could very well see the zombie corpse of SCO rise from the grave to terrorize the world again.
Attachmate
Attachmate is a software company owned by an investment group led by Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital, and Thoma Cressey Bravo. Attachmate focuses on terminal emulation, legacy modernization, managed file transfer, and enterprise fraud management software. It is the largest privately owned software company in Washington, USA.[citation needed]
Products
The Attachmate logo on older software products.As a result of the mergers and acquisitions detailed below, Attachmate has broadened its solution set to include several brands:
[edit] Terminal Emulation
Attachmate develops a variety of Terminal emulators:
Reflection (IBM, HP, UNIX, OpenVMS, X)
EXTRA! (IBM, UNIX, OpenVMS)
INFOConnect (Unisys)
[edit] Systems and Security Management
The NetIQ business unit delivers systems and security management software.
Among the NetIQ product offerings is AppManager, a suite that provides network, applications and systems monitoring. The product includes monitoring support Microsoft operating systems, Microsoft SQL Server databases, a variety of messaging environments, UNIX and Linux operating systems, Oracle systems, and Voice-over-IP for Cisco, Nortel, and Avaya.
[edit] Secure Communications
Reflection for Secure IT, formerly F-Secure SSH, is an SSH (secure shell) client and server for Windows and UNIX.
[edit] Application Integration
Attachmate Verastream provides application integration tools that quickly and noninvasively service-enable mainframe and enterprise host data and logic.
Attachmate DATABridge is an extract, transform, load (ETL) solution for securely integrating Unisys DMSII and non-DMSII data to a secondary database such as Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server.
[edit] PC X Server
Reflection X allows Windows users to use graphical and command-line based applications on remote UNIX, Linux, and OpenVMS hosts.
Free Martian Whores!
Umm, not exactly.
Attachmate may be a VC firm now, but it started out as an IBM (or at least, mainframe) terminal emulation company. They used to make boards that emulated a 3270 that you could install in PCs. Plenty of people have heard of them.
-- "In order to have power, I must be taken seriously." -Mojo Jojo
If gnome is being handed off - goodbye and good riddance. With mono together. And with the Microsoft worshipper AKA Miguel de Icasa as an added bonus. Please, pretty please...
I am more concerned about the Unix copyrights. That may allow restart of the whole sorry SCO affair on a whole new level - not just going after Linux per se, but also after all of the stuff running on top it like Android.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
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They will attach themselves to you and then mate
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
The question is...what "IP" has been sold to Microsoft?
Probably 127.0.0.1.
*buh-boom tick*
I'll be here all night.
Just sent two tweets to Miguel de Icaza about this:
@migueldeicaza So does it mean you will be somehow now working for Microsoft
@migueldeicaza Sorry meant to add a question mark... And how about IP rights for Mono? What does it mean copyrights-wise? Not worried?
And here's his answer:
@2green Dont know the answer to that.
Wow.
This sucks...
What surprises me is that a company found to have illegally used its monopoly in operating systems is even allowed to be involved with a deal like because operating systems are involved. And the EU had lots of issues with MS middleware and this includes lots of middleware too.
To top it off, this deal involves a company with current antitrust legal efforts on going. I guess this is a form of settlement but without any open market considerations, this seems more like the bully won again.
We will once again see Microsoft's true colors regarding open source and they will not be friendly. If you've not seen recently, Microsoft had to pull revenue from losing divisions to prop up their Windows divisions so they look like there was growth. What that means is they have peaked and the wounded lion is going to come out pissing on everything. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I spent years working a job where we used Attachmate Reflection software to connect to the mainframes where we did our work. It is a terminal emulator for Windows machines. Wrote quite a few macros for it.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Nothing of value will be lost.
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I read this on another site. I have not yet checked for myself.
NOVL has now filed its 8K. The IP deal is for 882 patents.
A quick search of the Patent-Pair Assignment database indicates that this likely every "friggin" patent Novell owns. That is Patent-Pair has 1711 entries with Novell as an assignee, but since these include duplicate application and granted patents, as well as other stuff, the total patents sold down the river to Redmond likely represents everything touched by Novell.
Here's a link to the actual SEC 8K: http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/758004/000119312510265964/d8k.htm
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