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Sunday, November 28, 2010

Novell bought out by private equity firm

Thus ends the era for Novell, sadden by the way the deal was done but I believe Novell needed a new face. Being an ex-Novellian and a strong well wisher for the company, I am unhappy to see the outcome. I do think a proper plan before the push-out would have been better received than what went through.
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2010/11/22/hedge-fund-forced-novell-buyoutbut-didnt-get-rich/

Also am hearing rumors of Novell selling off the Suse unit to VMWare. Why would a virtualization company need an Operating System? VMWare is a pure play; Microsoft is clouded (literally) with its bias from its own Operating System on its virtualization play.

So nontheless, no rants but a list of questions on what will happen with Novell's bits and pieces. Novell lost the IP battle a long time ago. It is a company where the sum of the pieces are not greater than the while entity. Novell's corp-dev would have done better justice if they had done a deal with IBM or Oracle (in either case it would have been a very good exit and a future for the existing Novell folks).

I will I had a deeper association with a large PE/Equity firm to make good on this deal.

My thoughts
SG