Novell - its future in Linux

Hi folks:

I came across this article on SuSE and thought you
might be interested.

Tony

***

  Is Novell losing its way?

By Sam Varghese

December 24, 2005

When Novell, a company which once controlled the PC
networking business,
got into the Linux trade two years ago, there were
great expectations.
And the way the company went about its business, it
looked as though all
those expectations were justified.

Two years down the track, things are not looking half
as rosy. As Novell
heads into 2006, the company faces a crucial 12
months, a period which
is likely to decide its future.

Novell chief executive Jack Messman had asked for two
years to turn the
company around from the time it entered the Linux
business and his time
falls due in January. In the run-up, things have not
been looking good,
with the most recent bit of bad news being the sacking
of 600 staff
<http://www.smh.com.au/news/breaking/novell-to-shed-600-staff/2005/11/03/1130823317260.html>

in November this year - more than 10 per cent of the
worldwide workforce.

In August, Novell announced a 90 per cent decline in
quarterly profits
to $US2 million ($A2.72 million), and a five per cent
slide in sales, to
$US290 million.

The slide has been gradual.

Novell bought SUSE Linux
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/05/1067708246802.html>,
the most
widely used Linux distribution in Europe, in 2003.
Prior to that it
acquired Ximian
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/05/1059849378217.html>,
a maker
of business desktop software for Linux. Ximian's other
product, Mono, a
project that has created portions of Microsoft's .Net
programming
environment as an open source effort, also became part
of Novell.

Then in November 2004, Novell put out a branded Linux
distribution
<http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/11/17/1100574520142.html>
of its
own, called the Novell Linux Desktop (NLD), aimed at
businesses.
Everything seemed to be going smoothly.

But around the same time, Chris Stone, who was second
in command at
Novell, abruptly quit. An open source advocate, Stone
was widely seen as
driving what was then a fairly aggressive Linux
marketing strategy. His
departure took a lot of the wind out of Novell's
sails.

This year the exit of high-profile employees has
continued. A week after
the announcement of the sackings, SUSE Linux founder
Hubert Mantel quit
the company, declaring that after being acquired,
"this is no longer the
company I founded 13 years ago." Mantel was a kernel
developer.

SUSE has resonance for the entire Linux community -
its founders were
the ones who put out the first commercial Linux
distribution, Soft
Landing System Linux, way back in 1992.

Mantel isn't the only big name from SUSE to leave this
year. In October,
SUSE channel chief Petra Heinrich quit. And in May,
former Novell
Europe, Middle East and Asia president and onetime
SUSE president
Richard Seibt resigned.

Novell hasn't helped its cause by announcing, soon
after the sackings,
that it would standardise the deskop of both SUSE and
its own Linux
distribution, using GNOME instead of the more widely
used and popular KDE.

KDE and GNOME are the two desktop environments most
widely used by Linux
users and any debate on the merits of one over the
another arouses
strong emotions.

Until this announcement, SUSE had always used KDE as
the default
environment. Novell's own distribution used a mix of
both desktops.

This announcement is likely to have put a large
section of the SUSE user
base offside.

Meanwhile, the other well-known commercial Linux firm,
Red Hat, is
leaping ahead - in 2004, it had 63 per cent of the
Linux server market
share, compared with just 20 per cent for Novell.

Novell has a big mountain to climb next year. It has
gained support from
HP, IBM and Dell and this may help its ascent. Else,
it's not only
Novell which will suffer - the whole open source
ecosystem will be
pushed back more than just a little.

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Received on Thu Dec 22 07:17:19 2005