suse

Attachmate finalizes Novell takeover

Attachmate's $2.2 billion takeover of open-source software company Novell has gone through, after gaining regulatory clearance.

According to a statement from Attachmate yesterday, Novell will operate as two separate businesses--Novell and Suse--alongside the Attachmate and NetIQ brands under the umbrella of the Attachmate Group.

The takeover was first announced in November 2010. As part of the deal, Novell is selling off 882 open-source patents--not including Novell's Unix patents--to a consortium called CPTN Holdings, which includes Microsoft, Apple, EMC, and Oracle.

Read more of "Attachmate finalises Novell takeover" at ZDNet UK.

Novell investors approve takeover by Attachmate

Novell will soon cease to exist as its own company.

Shareholders of the former network-software giant voted in favor of Attachment's intent to acquire the company to the tune of $2.2 billion.

At a special investor meeting held yesterday, almost 99 percent of the shares voting approved the takeover, representing a majority of about 66 percent of all of Novell's outstanding stock. Once the merger is completed, Novell shareholders will be able to receive $6.10 in cash for each share of Novell common stock owned.

But the deal is not quite done. Novell said the merger … Read more

Report: VMware eyeing Novell's Suse

VMware is reportedly looking to acquire Novell's Suse Linux OS unit in a move that would give it a full stack of enterprise software.

According to The Wall Street Journal, VMware is in talks to buy Novell's Suse unit as the company is split in two. Netware and Novell's other assets would be sold to private equity firm Attachmate.

The real fireworks, however, would be over VMware acquiring Suse. Last quarter, Novell executives made it quite clear that the company was getting cozy with VMware much to the chagrin of partner Microsoft.

Read more of "VMware eyeing Novell's SUSE; Complete software stack ahead?&… Read more

Meet Novell's new best friend: VMware

Novell has a new best friend when it comes to Suse Linux distribution: VMware.

If you recall, Novell's former best friend for Suse Linux was Microsoft. Microsoft and Novell have a partnership where the two parties had certificates that indemnified Suse users from any intellectual-property liability. In addition, Microsoft officially recommended Suse Linux Enterprise for hybrid Windows/Linux shops.

Now that the sales pop from the Novell-Microsoft partnership has played out, Suse Linux growth has stagnated. In Novell's fiscal third-quarter report, released Thursday, the company said Linux platform product revenue was $36 million, down 7 percent from a … Read more

VMware teams up with Novell on Suse Linux

VMware will standardize its virtual appliance-based products on Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Server, a move intended to help ward off a growing threat from Microsoft.

Under the partnership, announced this week, customers buying certain vSphere licenses will be eligible to receive a subscription to Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) patches and updates for SLES instances deployed in vSphere virtual machines. The companies are also working to make it easier to port SLES-based virtual machines across clouds.

VMware offers virtual appliances--self-contained virtual machines preconfigured with an OS and the application--as a way of making them easier to deploy and maintain. … Read more

Novell: 20 chances to reinvent itself

Most companies struggle to reinvent themselves, so shackled by their pasts that they can't reorient themselves toward the future.

Novell, once the king of the software world, is like that. Over the years it has built up a broad portfolio of software (with associated revenue streams) in repeated attempts to regain its glory days. That portfolio now stifles its ability to focus on other areas with the most promise.

But Novell's management may be about to get a lifeline. Twenty of them, actually.

According to Thursday's Wall Street Journal, up to 20 bidders, most of them private … Read more

VMware and Red Hat: The war for the data center

Once upon a time Red Hat was content to be the enterprise Linux leader and VMware was happy to be the dominant virtual infrastructure vendor.

No more.

As the two companies have sought growth, they've increasingly stepped on each other's toes, with recent VMware marketing taking strong swipes at its erstwhile partner, Red Hat, highlighting Pizza Hut as a high-profile customer defection from Red Hat to VMware.

Can't the two companies just get along?

Probably not. Back in 2006, Red Hat and VMware announced an "expanded relationship to support customers and ISVs who are deploying virtualization.&… Read more

Which open-source vendors can afford the cloud?

Cost and quality are two driving factors for open source's role as the bedrock for public cloud computing. Google, Amazon, and other public cloud providers simply can't compete with expensive, proprietary license-burdened infrastructure. They need open source.

As cloud computing matures and moves from public to private clouds, however, we may see enterprises flock to free (as in cost) and open (as in freedom) infrastructure, too.

What would this mean for subscription-based open-source vendors?

It might not be pretty. Tim O'Reilly pointed out nearly two years ago that

almost all of the software stacks running on cloud … Read more

Novell slapped for impersonating Red Hat

It's no secret that Novell would dearly love to trade market share with Red Hat in the Linux market. Red Hat, however, isn't happy with at least one of Novell's chosen strategies for getting there:

Cloning.

As its white papers allege, Novell thinks it can offer high-quality support for SUSE Linux, the Linux distribution it owns and ships, and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), the Linux distribution that it...doesn't. The company has been offering a migration plan from RHEL to SUSE since at least November 2008, but it recently raised the ire of Red Hat … Read more