It sounds like Novell is nearing a deal to sell itself. Newspaper and wire report rumors suggest VMware is bidding to buy Novell’s SUSE Linux business, with another buyer to potentially acquire Novell’s other businesses. Here’s the speculation plus insights from The VAR Guy.
First, the media reports:
- DOW Jones suggests that VMware will bid for Novell’s SUSE Linux Business.
- The New York Post suggests Novell has reached a two-part sale deal that will be announced in three to four weeks.
- Novell shares jumped 6 percent today based on the rumors.
- Merger rumors involving Novell and VMware have been circulating since early July 2010.
- In August 2010, Novell reported lower-than-expected quarterly results. Novell blamed some of the weak performance on the company’s uncertain ownership status.
Novell declined to comment to DOW Jones about today’s M&A speculation.
Novell has been the subject of M&A rumors since the 1990s. But this time, the rumors “feel” right to The VAR Guy. Multiple reports say Novell solicited bidders for the company in recent months. And the Novell-VMware combo sure sounds intriguing, especially since VMware has acquired multiple open source companies to attack Microsoft’s Windows and Exchange Server franchises. Novell SUSE Linux could further that VMware effort.
But who would acquire Novell’s other businesses — particularly the company’s identity and security management offerings, and new options like the Novell Cloud Security Service? Hmmm… CA Technologies has a history of buying systems management and security firms. But in reality, The VAR Guy doesn’t know if Novell will ultimately get purchased… and who will potentially do the buying.
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[...] Linux business, with another buyer to potentially acquire Novell’s other businesses. Here’s the speculation plus insights from The VAR [...]
Maybe MS should purchase SUSE Linux.
I know it is not likely, however I would like to see Red Hat bid for the identity business. I think that if Red Hat purchase the following product line it would pose a true threat especially after Open Sourcing it.
Identity Manager – (the entire line Sentinel, secure login, compliance manager)
Platespin (the entire line)
E-directory
GroupWise ( Alternative to Exchange with Data Synchronizer)
Take all the product wrap it with JBoss and support for RHEV and you have unstoppable Red Hat.
George@2: A year or two ago, The VAR Guy would have said there’s no way that Microsoft would acquire a Linux distribution. Times change. Seems like you can never tell who’s going to acquire whom… Oracle acquired Sun, Intel acquired McAfee … seems like virtualization is blurring the data center line between Windows and Linux. And yes, The VAR Guy suspects Microsoft considered buying SUSE Linux. But will Microsoft actually do such a deal?
The VAR Guy is watching…
-TVG
Mikes21@3: Why would Red Hat acquire Novell’s identity business but not Novell’s SUSE Linux business???
-TVG
I don’t get it. What does Suse Linux have that VMWare needs or is VMWare looking to get into the Linux vendor business?
Regardless of how all of this shakes out, the customers are probably going to get the raw end of the deal, which is always the case with mergers/purchases.
[...] Linux business, with another buyer to potentially acquire Novell’s other businesses. Here’s the speculation plus insights from The VAR [...]
I think that Red Hat is confident in it’s platform they really don’t have a need for the SUSE Linux platform itself. I think that SUSE customers will start to defect to Red Hat Linux regardless of the purchaser.
I really don’t think Red Hat needs the SUSE platform, they really have nothing to gain in my opinion. I think the the consistency and the ability to remain focus and evolve RHEL in to RHEV makes SUSE a non issue.
However
Identity Manager – (the entire line Sentinel, secure login, compliance manager)
Platespin (the entire line)
E-directory
GroupWise ( Alternative to Exchange with Data Synchronizer)
Red Hat could use these pieces now, they are already coded for Linux so there will not be a need for a extensive re-coding like the with Qumranet.
If you truly look at all the Novell pieces minus SUSE integrated with JBoss now you have a strong company.
Regardless of when Red Hat open sources the pieces they will always have the advantage just like with KVM.
Ian@6: Here are five reasons VMware may want to acquire SUSE Linux.
Miles21@8: Can’t see Red Hat having much interest in GroupWise and E-Directory. Identity Manager and Platespin could make more sense…
-TVG
Reason why Red Hat might want eDirectory is because it is more robust than 389 directory server that Red Hat has now. Red Hat might want to combine those two to better compete with MS AD.
Reason why they might want GroupWise is because they failed to buy Zimbra… VMware got it. If the price is right, they might go for it.
Reason why Red Hat is not interested for SuSE is that it is not profitable and has lots of programmers hired. If Red Hat buys SUSE, then, for example, Red Hat has 35% of contributions to GNOME. It would mean that Red Hat is writing most code and everybody leeches. It would also mean that Microsoft only needs to somehow destroy Red Hat in order to seriously damage GNU/Linux. It makes single point of failure. From what I saw from Red Hat so far, I think they (unlike Novell) are very commuted to community and software freedom, and they made their business around that. They wouldn’t like something bad to happen.
Also one thing that everybody forgets: Mono (and that is good thing, that should be shunned). It has funny name, as in MONOpoly or MONOculture, it is trojan horse designed to implant microsoft monoculture in GNU/Linux. Mono is reverse engineered clone of Microsoft .NET framework and it is infested with Microsoft patents. Novell off course doesn’t care about patents because they made Faustian deal with Microsoft (which expires in 2012) and they don’t give two hoot about what happens to others now of when deal expires. But they made a push to include Mono in Ubuntu using their shills and with help of Microsoft astroturfers. Plans is to make GNOME dependent on Mono (which would ensure to be distributed with every distro), and then Microsoft to sue using their proxy trolls like Paul Allen. It would be nice if Red Hat buys Mono to kill it off and remove the threat.
Yepo: The VAR Guy doesn’t always agree with your views, but our resident blogger certainly respects your views. Thanks for sharing them.
-TVG
Very sad to hear about this, would like HP to put in a bid, there is some seriously good tech from Novell and I think they could benefit from Novell’s offerings (long history too). Problem is that people view their products as if from a bygone age. The fact is that in every way their products feature for feature and over the test of time are as good and usually better than MS or the others.
VMware would most likely want Suse, since they already offer it as a licensed OS for use on VMWare platform.
eDirectory is still better than AD, cross platform and proven – so whoever buys it can sell it as a product for various purposes.
In fact the main deal with Novell products is that by and large they are cross platform, Linux, Windows even MAC, so you could use their edirectory, Groupwise and zenworks on low cost servers, and choice of desktop OS. All their products interropt, i.e. edirectory, on Suse with Groupwise managing windows servers and desktops with Zenworks!
What I don’t understand is why people get suckered into the Microsoft way of thinking – is it marketing, is it because they used windows as a kid!
Well undoubtably mistakes have been made, I just hope Suse, Groupwise & Zenworks etc do not dissapear – whoever buys really needs to make the most of the products, and re-launch them .
Very good blog, lots of valuable details.