Life after Novell - the rosy gets rosier
I wrote a week ago about the rich opportunities that await those that end up leaving Novell, whether by choice or by RIF. Today, I got an email from an old friend who left Novell last year. Funny what happens once you shake off the spell Novell weaves:
I saw your article last week about "life after Novell." I wholeheartedly agree. I?m so very glad that [the people you mentioned] ended up in a happier place. My company [is going exceptionally well] and the people here are great. We're solving real customer problems and making a bit of money at the same time. What I don't get is why nobody at Novell seems to think this way.
Before the Novellites suggest, "But we do!" you need to realize that outside Novell financial success is measured in double-digit growth (or better), not the 2% and 4% that most of Novell's businesses are growing at (and yes, while Novell's Linux business is growing, it's still unclear by just how much).
Contrast this with the ex-Novellite alternative: several ex-Novellites have or shortly will sell their companies. A few more are with companies that are on track to IPO in the not-so-distant future. So, the person above is talking about real financial and personal success, and not merely 2% growth that Novellites crow about.
When you're in the miasma of Novell's inner decline, it's hard to see the rising opportunities elsewhere. But they're there. It's hard to feel just how disruptive and fun open source can be from within a company that continues to hedge its open-source bets with a Microsoft ploy designed to stifle open source. It's hard to see the open-source forest for the hybrid-source trees (with most emphasis on the proprietary pines rather than the open-source oaks), in other words.
What with the AppArmor team mostly RIF'd, the Workgroup team in the process of being RIF'd, and people throughout the OS and other teams on the block, look outward. It is scary, yes. But the future is so much brighter outside of Novell than it is within. Trust me on this. I really don't have an axe to grind here. Ask Greg Collier, Charlie Martin, John Vigeant, Charlie Ungashick, Lars Nordwall, etc. etc. They'll all tell you the same:
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
It's now three years later. Building a business from the bottom-up has been tough, but great fun. I now deal with Novell as a supplier and a partner (among others). I help customers find real solutions to their problems and am thrilled to do so.
While doing that we've grown rapidly and are finding that, quite often, old-school Novell support engineers are crawling out of the woodwork and telling us about how our success gives them hope.
There really is life after Novell - you just gotta take life by the nuts and give them a good squeeze!