Novell, now owned by Attachmate, is marching forward with its BrainShare conference (Oct. 10-14, Salt Lake City). But this won’t be any ordinary BrainShare. Instead, topics involving three Attachmate divisions — NetIQ, Novell and SUSE — are on the agenda. And The VAR Guy suspects SUSE will use BrainShare as a stage to launch or elevate its cloud strategy. But can one conference serve so many different masters? Hmmm…
In some ways, BrainShare’s changes won’t be all that dramatic. After all, of the three Attachmate divisions include software products from the former Novell.
But in other ways, BrainShare will be dramatically different. Many of the Novell leaders who led BrainShare 2010 won’t be on hand for BrainShare 2011. Gone are former Chief Marketing Officer John Dragoon — who was last year’s master of ceremonies — and former Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian, who led Novell’s sale to Attachmate. Hovsepian, Dragoon and other Novell executives exited the company when Attachmate completed the Novell acquisition.
Looking Ahead
At this year’s BrainShare, Attachmate must communicate a message of stability — assuring customers and partners that the Novell product lines remain viable under Attachmate’s ownership. Moreover, Attachmate must show progress with newer solutions — such as Novell Vibe (an enterprise and cloud social media platform) and Novell Cloud Security Service (which several major service providers have been testing).
And therein resides yet another challenge: Branding. As some products move from Novell to a different Attachmate division, Attachmate will need to clearly brand the products.
Plenty of challenges. The VAR Guy will be watching to see how Attachmate addresses them once BrainShare rolls around.
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You have to wonder just who will be going to Salt Lake City of attend BrainShare 2011? In its day, BrainShare could pull over 5000 into town for the week’s festivities. Back then Novell put on a good show for customers and partners alike, which I can attest to having attended a handful of these events over the years. In 2009 Novell cancelled the event and revived it in 2010 with much lower attendance. I can understand that Mr. Flynn from Attachmate would like to have a good opportunity to meet and greet the Novell faithful but what if they gave a BrainShare and nobody came? I think the time for BrainShare has passed. Novell’s mindshare and market share is much smaller than it was in the 1990s and the early years of this century. I would rather see Attachmate sponsor a virtual BrainShare and save everyone the expense of going to Salt Lake City. Times have changed and BrainShare needs to change with the times.
However, there is no substitution for meeting one on one with developers, project managers as well as your peers. Vitalization of the event would not work. Confident Attachmate will increase market share and bring the reliable Novell products we all love back to the top! Kudos Attachmate. Make it work!