Identity Manager wins an award; Novell support receives certification

If the only news you get about Novell is what you read in this newsletter then you might have a skewed view of the company. Not that I have a skewed view, mind you. After all, I read just about everything anyone says about Novell. But, I’ve been told (often by Novell’s PR department, for one) that I seem to sometimes focus on the negative aspects of the news about Novell.

Well think about this: does the weather channel have specials about some area experiencing a rash of warm sunny days? Does your local TV station headline say “Traffic moved smoothly at rush hour today. Film at 11”? Which event occurs more often on the learning channel, Shark Week or Penguin Week? Draw your own conclusions.

Still, some good things have happened to Novell recently and they should be news – if only because we expect bad tidings so anything else is newsworthy.

Network World’s sister publication InfoWorld, for example, just named Novell Identity Manager as “Best Identity Manager” in its 2006 Technology of the Year Awards. That means the product beat out products from Sun, IBM, Microsoft, CA, Oracle and all the other purveyors of full-service identity products and systems. Novell, which at one time was the only identity services company, seems to have woken up and regained the advantage in this strategic area of IT. Bravo; someone’s doing something right in Waltham!

The company also recently announced that its Global Support and Services organization has achieved certification under the Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program, the only Linux vendor to do so. Novell joins the ranks of leading technology companies that have achieved this prestigious certification, including Lockheed Martin, McKesson, Rockwell Automation, Nokia, Sage Software, EMC and Xerox, among others.

SCP Certification quantifies the effectiveness of customer support based upon a stringent set of performance standards and customer satisfaction, and it represents best practices in the industry. Novell achieved certification after an extensive audit of support capabilities. A lot of the credit for this award should go to the irrepressible Mike Lyons, Novell’s vice president of Global Support and Services. I’ve known Lyons for many years and he’s always been focused on delivering the best product he can to his customers – Novell users with questions and problems. That’s a tough audience to serve, but he’s always done it well. This certification merely codifies what we’ve all always known about Novell’s support organization. Well done, guys!

In other happenings, SCO has moved to amend its Slander of Title suit against Novell (which was originally filed two years ago this month). Since no trial can occur for at least 18 months, though, this isn’t worth you spending a long time thinking about. This could actually be good news, as it might indicate that SCO is no longer comfortable pursuing its initial claims.

So there you have it: two, and maybe three, “good news” items. Who’s an old curmudgeon now?