Well, this was bound to happen sooner rather than later. Novell’s recent performance has been quite poor to say the least and I’m no analyst or accountant. It has struggled financially in its “damascus” like conversion to Linux. I think it has left people wondering what is it supporting? Is it supporting SUSE Linux, is it still supporting Netware, is it focused on the Server Enterprise or is focused on the Enterprise Desktop, does it actually care about small businesses? They are too many questions and few answers.
It’s got good products and its SUSE Linux Enterprise Server v9 is far ahead in its manageability than Redhat Linux, yet Redhat keeps trouncing it in the Linux Enterprise Server market. It’s current desktop Linux distribution, SUSE Linux 10 has many features which are being compared favourably to Vista. On the other hand it has got a strange product called “Open Enterprise Server” which is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server v9 with its Netware Services ported to Linux. The only major deployment of this I have seen Novell announce is the one at my local University, De Montfort, where it is going to be supporting 25,000 student and staff.
Let’s hope the new guys can sort out its strategy because they just wouldn’t be able to afford me!
![[This is a SBS Community blog you are reading. Are you subscribed to the Official SBS blog?]](http://www.sbslinks.com/images/sbsblogweb.jpg "This is a SBS Community Blog you are reading. Are you subscribed to the Official SBS blog?")
June 23rd, 2006 at 9:50 am
Here is Computer Weekly’s article on the dismissal. Apparently, Novell made a profit for the last financial year, but only because of a legal settlement with Microsoft!