Q&A: New Novell CEO in all-out Linux push

Novell’s new CEO Ronald Hovsepian and current CTO Jeffrey Jaffe have a lot to talk about, as the company refocuses on open-source software following an executive shakeup in June. Both executives gave some insights on Novell's strategy to use the majority of its resources - support, marketing, sales, product development and some $1.4 billion in cash reserves - to become a full-fledged Linux company. The CEO and CTO also talked about why everyone should have a Linux desktop pilot running. (The following is an edited transcript.)

What will change at Novell now that you’ve moved into the CEO post?

Hovsepian: [There are] three basic things we need to do stronger as a corporation. One is simplification. By that I mean we just have to drive a level of simplification into our business processes and our business model. We have room to improve there dramatically in the way we work with out partners and the way we run the business for our customer - really being very customer-oriented in terms of simplification.

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Novell’s new CEO Ronald Hovsepian and current CTO Jeffrey Jaffe have a lot to talk about, as the company refocuses on open-source software following an executive shakeup in June. Both executives gave some insights on Novell's strategy to use the majority of its resources - support, marketing, sales, product development and some $1.4 billion in cash reserves - to become a full-fledged Linux company. The CEO and CTO also talked about why everyone should have a Linux desktop pilot running. (The following is an edited transcript.)

What will change at Novell now that you’ve moved into the CEO post?

Hovsepian: [There are] three basic things we need to do stronger as a corporation. One is simplification. By that I mean we just have to drive a level of simplification into our business processes and our business model. We have room to improve there dramatically in the way we work with out partners and the way we run the business for our customer - really being very customer-oriented in terms of simplification.

The second piece is focus. Under focus I think of it in terms of market segments and customer segments - bringing more focus and prioritization into those pieces as to what we need to do inside the company as a second dimension.

The third aspect of it is execution. We made a statement to Wall Street that we would deliver 12% to 15% operating income by exit fourth quarter of 2008. We have to deliver on our commitments. We have to deliver on our product commitments. We have to deliver on our financial commitments. And we have to deliver on our employee commitments.

So what are you simplifying, and what is the focus?

Hovspeian: Really a couple of things. One, taking Linux as the centerpiece of what this company is capable of doing. One of the great things of what Linux brings to us is the opportunity to do things differently.

I view Linux as one of the great enablers. Linux holds a lot of things inside the distribution that are going to be very important to our customers.

We're doing two things with Linux. One is the enablement - virtualization enablement and other things like that. The second part of it is introducing a separate enterprise approach for our customers.

When you stop and think about what Linux can bring and what we're doing - we're really focusing in on creating this server-to-the-desktop story. This is really what we're focused on in the Linux dimension.

Right now, we run our Linux distribution on a zSeries mainframe, we run on RISC processors, we run on Intel processors, we run on kiosks. We run it on point-of-sale devices, banking devices. Then we have two desktops: one is a thin client; one is a fat client. That story is an enterprise story for our customers.

What can enterprises expect from the upcoming version 10 of SuSE Enterprise Linux Server and Desktop?

Hovspeian: The great part is that the Code 10 release is going to give us one single common code base across all those platforms. So why is that good for my customer? It's efficiency - operationally efficiency. Train them once, get the scale across the organization. Why is it good for us? Same reason: operational efficiency.