Novell expects to evaluate initial takeover bids for the company this week, according to The Wall Street Journal. As many as 20 companies have expressed interest in Novell, the Journal said. Of course, The VAR guy has his own opinion of the situation. Here it is…
How did the Novell bidding process wind up in The Journal? The VAR Guy suspects this may have been a carefully leaked news story. After all, coverage in The Wall Street Journal could either (A) lure more bidders to the table or (B) raise potential bids from interested parties.
Either way, sources told The Journal that initial offers for Novell are expected to top an unsolicited March 2010 bid from Elliot Associates; that bid, which Novell rejected, valued the company at about $2 billion. A Novell spokesman declined comment to The Journal.
Meanwhile, Novell continues to focus on its core business priorities. During the Novell Brainshare conference this week for EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa) partners and customers, the software company debuted a new identity management offering and a SUSE Linux 11 service pack, among other moves.
Novell’s core focus involves Intelligent Workload Management (IWM), which helps partners and customers to manage applications across physical and virtual systems, both on premises and in the cloud.
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NOVELL/SUSE IS OBSOLETE
NOVELL AND SUSE ARE OBSOLETE AGAINST UBUNTU. NO COMPANY WITHOUT MICROSOFT COUPONS WOULD WASTE TIME WITH NOVELL/SUSE IN THE UBUNTU ERA. EXCEPT, OF COURSE, MIGUEL DE ICAZA, THE GNOME/MICROSOFT WHORE WORKING FOR NOVELL.
rr: Um, SUSE sales continue to grow even without Microsoft’s help. Let’s try and stick to the facts.
-TVG
Both Mandriva and Novell seem to be in the same boat. Not enough income, connections, and innovation to keep them afloat amid the global economic crisis.
I do feel bad for the developers, but if there is a silver lining, it is the “reduced fragmentation” of Linux and upstream projects.
Stick a fork in Novell, it is done. Boycotting have proved effective. They practically condemned themselves to death when they signed to be Microsoft’s proxy. Now, they would be history.
Only problem might be their patents and UNIX copyright ownership. That gets to Microsoft’s hands, it can be ugly. It would be nice if Red Hat could buy Novell, but RH has only 1 bilion it the bank and they probably would not want to pay 2 billion for a sinkhole that is Novell anyway. But when Novell assets get resealed, Red Hat should get all important stuff before Microsoft does.
As a novell customer, I really hope they aren’t shopping the company. I don’t know that take overs ever help the customer. At least in my experience, the software and service tends to take a dive in quality. In those cases, I look for alternatives.
Novell has a great product in SUSE and great products in other areas. The real issue is that the Linux community basically abandoned Novell after the Microsoft Deal and they formed more of a Alliance to the Interop initiative.
Novell lack of community integration shows when you look at the progress of KVM within both opensuse and SUSE. Where they once led in innovation in the distro, have been replaced with Mono and Moonlight initiatives. the truth is Novell never really believed in Novell standing on it’s own and jumped at Microsoft integration as the quick fix.
I am a Novell customer I love Open Enterprise Server but their commitment to their own products are not there. even their demos are done with windows. The way I see it you have a desktop platform all your demos should be led from your own products. Would you ever see Apple using powerpoint instead of keynote.
Dennis@3: The VAR Guy thinks Mandriva and Novell are NOT in the same boat. Here’s why.
Ian@4: The VAR Guy thinks it’s pretty clear NOVL is listening to offers.
Devon@5: Fair points regarding NOVL demonstrating on non-NOVL software. The VAR Guy can’t debate you on those items…
-TVG