* Novell's potential buyers; Novell's top spot on a negative list
In last week’s “Rumor Mill” newsletter, I neglected to mention that Vikas Mahajean’s comments were entirely off his own bat, and didn’t reflect the opinion of his employer, PricewaterhouseCoopers. The comments spring from his long association with NetWare and Novell, not from PwC’s work as Novell’s auditor.
A few of you asked why we didn’t consider IBM as a possible buyer of Novell (answer: we have, for a dozen years now!) and one long-suffering reader (Hi Lance!) wondered why I didn’t mention BorderManager. It’s probably because BorderManager is so easy to overlook – even Novell has barely mentioned it in the past few years. The current version, 3.8, originally shipped in November of 2003!
Finally, more than one of you requested an end to the constant round of rumors. I wish I could promise that, but I didn’t start them; it was the huge number of references to Larry Ellison’s quote that Oracle was at one time interested in acquiring SuSE that lead me to comment. So I won’t start any new ones.
It wasn’t rumors that caused Novell’s bad publicity last week. As reported in the Boston Globe: “Novell closed the year at the top of a Globe 100 list no company wants to be on: It had the biggest profit-to-loss nosedive of any Massachusetts company.” Ouch! The article didn’t note, though, that the $414.1 million net profit in 2004 was largely the result of a one-time cash infusion from Microsoft as settlement of a lawsuit.
Still, we can end on an up note. Gartner released its “Magic Quadrant for Security Information and Event Management” report covering the first half of 2006 and Novell placed right at the top of the leadership quadrant which – according to Gartner – reflects the vendor’s overall ability to execute and completeness of vision. That’s very good news.
Come back next time and I’ll share some information about a new product release that leverages NetWare’s strengths. Really!
