Novell ready for acquisitions?
Novell got a nice influx of cash when they made their deal with the devil (er, Microsoft) and BusinessWeek says that the company is now ready to start spending some of that cash on acquisitions.
The problem is that there aren't a whole lot of companies that are complementary in a meaningful way.
Raven Zachary at 451 Group suggests that Novell might be interested in one of the open source system management vendors like Hyperic and Zenoss. This makes sense but won't bring meaningful revenue--and both of those companies will be worth a lot more down the road (especially considering Hyperic's recent customer wins.)
So, then who or what does Novell buy? They missed on virtualization with Xensource and they have no apparent SOA or app server strategy.
My suggestion? Buy up all the .NET open source companies and become the center of the open source Microsoft universe. There isn't a whole lot else that will be meaningful and since Novell already went to the dark side they should be happy as the Darth Vader of open source.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
