novels

Novell puts Linux on sale as earnings disappoint

Novell's $340 million lifeline from Microsoft appears to be losing its potency.

Although Microsoft originally gifted Novell $240 million to help fight Red Hat, and later added another $100 million to the pile, it doesn't seem to be enough to revive Novell's fortunes, as the company reported disappointing first-quarter earnings and a slide even in its Linux business, which had been growing fairly well.

"The pipe fell apart," declared Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, as The Register reports. That's an intriguing statement, as other open-source companies with which I work have seen their pipelines grow … Read more

Novell chief rues first-quarter Linux performance

This was originally published in ZDNet's Between the Lines.

Novell's fiscal first-quarter results were a mixed bag, and Linux invoices fell sharply as the company failed to sign big deals.

For the first quarter, ended Jan. 31, Novell reported non-GAAP earnings of $24 million, or 7 cents a share, on revenue of $215 million. Those results were a penny better than Wall Street estimates. Net income for the first quarter was $11 million, or 3 cents a share.

On the surface, Novell's quarter told a familiar tale. Open platform sales, which are dominated by Linux offerings, were $… Read more

Novell: More than just a SUSE face

Novell primarily gets public credit (or recrimination) for its Linux business, but on Thursday Novell reminded the world that it's more than just a Linux vendor, acquiring the assets of technology assets of Fortefi Ltd. and a perpetual source code license to ActivIdentity's single sign-on solution.

Both moves strengthen Novell's position in the Identity Management market.

Linux serves as the beachhead for Novell into enterprises that may have lost interest in the former NetWare giant. CIOs that are interested in Linux will consider SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and then, hopefully, give the Novell sales executive time to … Read more

Facebook needs transparency, not apologies

In the face of mounting criticism over its change to its terms of service, Facebook has reverted to its original terms of service, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg issued an apology. It's a nice about-face, but it also misses the point.

The point, as Techdirt intimates, is transparency.

It's hard to think that nobody at Facebook anticipated it and took some proactive steps to address the changes and attempt to allay concerns and preclude the overreaction.

Instead, Zuckerberg responds only after the fuss has been kicked up, and his explanation comes off as damage control, regardless of the motivations … Read more

Microsoft, Red Hat to interoperate patent-free

For years, Microsoft has insisted that open-source vendors acknowledge that its patent portfolio is a precursor to interoperability discussions. On Monday, Microsoft shed that charade and announced an interoperability alliance with Red Hat for virtualization.

The deal includes several key components, all related to virtualization:

Red Hat will validate Windows Server guests to be supported on Red Hat Enterprise virtualization technologies. Microsoft will validate Red Hat Enterprise Linux server guests to be supported on Windows Server Hyper-V and Microsoft Hyper-V Server. Once each company completes testing, customers with valid support agreements will receive coordinated technical support for running Windows Server … Read more

The problems with Microsoft's Moonlight solution

Novell's Mono team continues to improve its "Microsoft Silverlight on Linux" story, now with the release of Moonlight 1.0, an open-source implementation of Microsoft's Silverlight rich media technology for the Web, as CNET reports. It's a major upgrade to Moonlight and brings it closer to parity with Microsoft's Silverlight. Novell's Miguel de Icaza, the developer behind Mono and Moonlight, relied heavily on working in partnership with Microsoft to deliver the upgrade.

Therein lies both the promise and the peril of Moonlight. Well, one of them. For one thing, due to Microsoft-imposed restrictions, … Read more

Novell lays off just under 100 workers

Correction at 1:31 p.m. PST January 31: A much lower figure for the layoffs has been added. My apologies to Novell, though I am glad to hear that the layoffs are much less severe than my source told me).

An inside source at Novell just informed me that Novell laid off a considerable percentage of its workforce on Friday. (That source, as noted above, was wrong. He has been a good source of information in the past, but he got this 100 percent wrong, and I was wrong to post that original number without waiting for comment from … Read more

Suse Studio: Linux customization for the masses

One of the great promises of software is its infinite malleability: software can be whatever you want, so long as you have the skills necessary (and legal rights) to modify it.

Despite this promise, software has long sought to replicate physical goods: mass-produced with customization, if any, coming post-sale by a system integrator or other consultant. This has helped churn out billion-dollar software companies such as Oracle, SAP, and Microsoft, but it has failed to satisfy customer demand for a tailored fit.

I'm therefore hugely impressed by Novell's Suse Studio, an innovative way to enable both standardization and … Read more

Which open-source companies to go under?

Channel Insider has a tasty headline, "Tech Vendors That May Not Survive 2009," with two open-source vendors included in its list of companies destined to be downtrodden this year. But it turns out that the predictions of pending disaster, as suggested by a group of solutions providers that it surveyed, offer more pomp than circumstance.

Novell and Sun Microsystems make the list, but so do a host of other impressive technology companies, including Symantec, NetApp, VMware, and McAfee. Not bad company to keep.

Of Sun Microsystems, which got 16 percent of the solution providers' votes as likely to … Read more