Attachmate snaps up Novell
The other shoe finally dropped for Novell last week. In the fifteen years I’ve been writing about the company from one perspective or another it seemed to be an annual recurrence for rumors of the company’s imminent acquisition to arise. The question, it seemed, was only who would acquire them. Over the years, the acquirer has been rumored to be IBM, Sun, Microsoft, AT&T, Dell, Oracle, HP and many others. Not once was the name Attachmate mentioned. So the surprise – and it was widespread last week – wasn’t that Novell had been acquired, but that Attachmate had done the acquiring.
The other talking point was that little rider to the deal – the acquisition of unnamed “intellectual property” by a new consortium called CPTN Holdings, one of whose owners is Microsoft. Speculation is rampant in the open source community.
For us, though, it’s the impact on the Identity market that is fueling speculation. Gartner’s Earl Perkins posted a thoughtful analysis of this last week where he said:
“I see challenges for Quest Software ahead, since they often go head-to-head with Attachmate-NetIQ [NetIQ is also owned by Attachmate] for Microsoft centric administration customers. I see some relief for the ‘Big Three’ in IAM now, CA, IBM Tivoli, and Oracle, now that a spoiler in many ways may be out for a bit during the ‘absorption’ phase of acquisition. I see advantages for smaller and more nimble players such as Courion, as well as obvious beneficiaries like Microsoft. What will be interesting to see in the days ahead is the impact this has on Novell partners: Verizon in cloud security, VMWare in virtuatization, SAP in IAM, and Deloitte in IAM consulting and system integration. One would expect Attachmate not to shoot the goose that lays golden eggs, but you never know.”
I can’t disagree with anything Earl said, but until we know more about CPTN, what IP they’re now holding and what the expect to do with it, it’s a bit premature to predict the future very far. And it might be spring before we know those answers.
Speaking of predicting the future, it’s that time of year when I begin to compile my list of what I think the new year will bring. This time, though, I want your input – what do you think is going to happen, or at least dominate the conversation, in 2011? Drop me a note and tell me what you think.
