Partners mull over Novell roadmap

Novell partners are more concerned about Novell's product overlap and commercial relevance than the proposed takeover of the company by Attachmate. 

Novell this week accepted Attachmate’s offer to buy it for $US2.2 billion and said it expected the transaction to close in the first quarter of next year after regulatory approvals.

CRN understands that partners were contracted by Novell via email and their local account managers advising them of the merger. They were also told that Attachmate planned to operate Novell as two business units: Novell and SUSE, and that they should continue business as normal.

Silver-partner InSync Solutions’ Paul Williamson told CRN that Attachmate’s decision to hold on to the Novell brand name was “probably a good thing”. 

“It sounded like they’re going to trade as Novell, so I think from that side of things the Novell brand name from my perspective is probably more well known that the Attachmate one. I’m not really too familiar with Attachmate," he said.

A former Novell-only house, Williamson said he wasn’t surprised by the merger having felt a change coming for about three years when he pursued other vendors. He questioned the product roadmap, in particular in the security space, which Attachmate also has a hand in.    

“My only concern is that we’re a partner in Novell’s security and identity space and Attachmate also owns NetIQ and they make a lot of security and identity products as well.

“So from my perspective, it’s an interesting point as to which products will stay around or whether Attachmate will continue to run both companies with the full suite of products.”

Further, Williamson questioned which patents were being bought by a Microsoft-backed consortium.

Novell said it had entered into a definitive agreement for the concurrent sale of certain intellectual property assets to CPTN Holdings LLC, a consortium of technology companies organised by Microsoft Corporation, for $US450 million in cash.

“The other interesting part will be the 800-odd patents being sold to a company backed by Microsoft. It will be interesting to see what those patents are and if they’re [involved with] security and identity,” Williamson said.

A South Australian-based partner who preferred to remain anonymous said the acquisition hadn’t raised alarm, but he nonetheless questioned Novell's product relevance. 

This partner told CRN that in the commercial space the reseller “gets more value from migrating people away from Novell than servicing Novell customers.

“If we’d kept our skills sets [with Novell only] we’d be classed as legacy," he said. "There are products that just don’t seem to be attracting the commercial space that we work in.

“In the commercial space I don’t think the offerings are being realised as attractive in South Australia.”

The partner said it had helped Novell GroupWise customers shift over to [Microsoft] Exchange.

In the Government space, however, Novell “really protects those accounts,” the reseller said.