Novell Finally Finds the Linux Way Back to Success
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Opinion: By embracing Linux and not forsaking NetWare with its Open Enterprise Server, Novell may have made its best move in years.
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First hardware maker to align with community-based Linux offering.
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At the BrainShare Conference in Barcelona , Spain , Novell chairman and CEO Jack Messman talked up Linux and renewed his company&#39;s attack on rival Microsoft.
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Novell is consolidating operations in an effort to remove overlap between its four business units. The Waltham, Mass.-based software vendor is folding its Nterprise and SuSE Linux operations into a single
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(InfoWorld) - Novell on Wednesday said its deal with Microsoft is helping drive gains in its Linux business, but danced around questions concerning how that deal may be altered given coming changes in open source licensing.Novell made the comments during its quarterly earnings call with financial analysts where the company reported nearly a $2.2 million loss in income during its fiscal second quarter. Novell executives danced around questions concerningÂ its deal with MicrosoftÂ as it relates to the new GNU General Public License 3.0, which is expected to be approved as a final draft in June. In addition, Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian would offer no comment beyond Novell's already published public statement on Microsoft'sÂ recent claimsÂ that Linux infringes on 235 of its patents. During its earnings call, Novell focused on the news that its revenue was up 2.6 percent to $239.2 million from $233.1 million during the same quarter a year ago, and that the revenue numbers beat Wall Street's expectations of $235 million. Net income, however, showed a loss of $2.192 million compared to a profit of $3,342 million in the same quarter a year ago. Despite the numbers, Novell executives remained upbeat, highlighting an increase in sales around its Suse Linux software. Sales of Linux platform products produced $19 million in revenue, an 83 percent increase year over year. In addition, invoicing for Linux products was $29 million for the quarter, an increase of 114 percent. Novell said those increases were largely due to the strength of a wide-ranging business and technology partnership signed with Microsoft in November 2006. Microsoft helped account for $18 million of that invoicing, while non-Microsoft-influenced revenue was $11 million. "I am pleased by our results this quarter," said Ron Hovsepian, Novell's CEO. "Our Linux business delivered another strong quarter, workgroup [business unit] performed better than expected and identity [business unit] is recovering although it is still below plan. Novell said revenue for identity and access management was up 5 percent over the same quarter a year ago. But it was Linux and the relationship with Microsoft that Novell focused on, saying it provided a hefty bump to revenue. "Customer deals associated with the Microsoft relationship accounted for 25 percent of the Linux platform product revenue," said Dana Russell, Novell's CFO. Hovsepian said in the two fiscal quarters since signing the deal with Microsoft that Novell has invoiced $91 million in sales with $73 million occurring in the first quarter. He said that total was nearly 38 percent of the $240 million that was called for in the five-year deal with Microsoft. He also said that Novell expects to have 49,000 certificates for maintenance and support, which are handed out by Microsoft, activated this year. He added, however, that going forward Novell would no longer report that number. Instead, Novell will track progress by reporting the percentage of invoicing over the life of the contract. As part of the agreement, Microsoft had said it would distribute 70,000 coupons for Suse Linux Enterprise Server maintenance and support. In terms of the patent claims Microsoft has made in recent weeks, Hovsepian said Novell would focus on customers and said statements it made in an open letter to the Linux community would stand as its public comment. He also was mum on the effect of the forthcoming open-source GNU General Public License (GPL) 3.0, which couldÂ change the dynamicsÂ of the patent protection clause that is part of the agreement with Microsoft.Novell said in a 10-K filing it made with the Security and Exchange Commission last week that there was a risk factor in the "grandfather" clause that is currently part of the working draft of the GPL 3.0. Hovsepian said during a question and answer session that he would not answer questions about what effects the grandfather clause may have on Novell's contract with Microsoft saying any answer would be "broad speculation." Other numbers highlighted by Novell included revenue from its Identity and Access Management business unit of $23 million, a 5 percent year-over-year increase. The company reported that revenue from Systems and Resource Management unit was $32 million, a 4 percent drop over the same quarter a year ago, and that revenue from its Workgroup business unit dropped 4 percent compared to the second quarter of 2006 to $84 million. Going forward, Novell stated that it expects net revenue for 2007 to be between $925 million and $955 million. Those numbers were adjusted to account for the recent divestment of its Salmon business consulting group.
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The past month has introduced an interesting new distribution that is based on the Gnome and Debian projects. &nbsp;Ubuntu Linux is the end-user-oriented distribution funded by Mark Shuttleworth's company Canonical. &nbsp;
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Novell's OpenSuse Build Service now can be used to test software for Red Hat Linux.
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The Ubuntu open-source community chalked up another milestone today with the release of version 7.10 of its flagship Linux operating system.
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Playing catch-up to Novell, RHEL 4.0 offers full support for 2.6 kernel.
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Novell is this week expected to spruce up a version of its Linux desktop aimed squarely at enterprise users. Built on the same core code base as Suse Linux Enterprise Server 9, Linux Desktop 9 is best suited
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Company becomes last of the four major server sellers to fully support Novell's SuSE Linux.
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OS sales up 77 per cent year-over-year Novell narrowed losses in the third quarter, bolstered by the SUSE Linux business beginning to pull more weight.â¦
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&quot;Novell is focusing its enterprise desktop efforts on Linux deployments where users can gain the most benefit.&quot; - Jack Messman, Novell&#39;s chairman and CEO.
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Yesterday, Novell shipped its Linux Desktop 9 product, the software maker&#39;s attempt to unseat Windows on business PCs. Developed with SUSE underpinnings and based on Kernel 2.6, Novell liberally sprinkled
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There is a fascinating article on Groklaw called Searching for Openness in Microsoft's OOXML and Finding Contradictions. One of the most relevant comments in the article is "So, they plan to be the only one in the Linux world that can actually interoperate with Microsoft. How do you think they will achieve that? By sharing? On the contrary, they already market themselves as uniquely interoperable, which means they get to interoperate and you don't, unless you are their paying customer."  There is also the Novell comment, "Only Novell has Microsoftâs endorsement as its partner to drive Linux-Windows interoperability."
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I remember the major turning point that took Linux from an OS that Microsoft used to call competition during their anti-trust case to a serious commercial operating system.
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Novell today unveiled Linux Desktop 9, claiming that the platform is robust and complete enough to offer a viable alternative to Microsoft Windows on corporate desktops.