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Public ( NASDAQ : NOVL )
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Software for the Open Enterprise
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Provo, Utah (1983)
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Waltham, Massachusetts , USA
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Jack Messman , Chairman and CEO<br />Ron Hovsepian, COO and President<br />Bill Hewitt, Senior Vice President, CMO<br /> Joseph S Tibbetts, Jr , Senior Vice President, CFO
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~6000 (2005)
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Software
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Novell EDirectory <br /> Novell Open Enterprise Server <br /> SUSE Linux Enterprise Server <br /> Novell NetWare <br /> SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop <br /> Novell GroupWise <br /> Novell ZENworks <br /> Novell Identity Manager <br /> Novell IChain <br /> Novell ExteNd <br />
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$1166 billion USD (2004)
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, Inc. (Big Red) is an
American high-
Technology Corporation specializing in network operating systems such as
Novell NetWare and
Linux , secure identity management products, and application integration and collaboration solutions. Together with
WordPerfect , Novell was instrumental in making the
Utah Valley a focus for high-technology software development. Today this area has many small companies whose employees have previously worked at Novell. As per a recent ranking, Novell is the 22nd largest software company in the world.
The company began in
Provo ,
Utah as
Novell Data Systems Inc. in
1979 , a
Hardware Manufacturer producing
CP/M based systems. It was co-founded by
George Canova ,
Darin Field and
Jack Davis .
Victor V. Vurpillat brought the deal to
Pete Musser , Chairman of the Board,
Safeguard Scientifics, Inc. who provided the seed funding. The company initially did not do well and both Jack and George left the firm.
The name for the company ''Novell'' was suggested by George Canova's wife who mistakenly thought that "Novell" meant "new" in French.
In January 1983, the company's name was shortened to Novell Inc., and
Raymond Noorda became the head of the firm. Also in
1983 , the company introduced its most significant product, the multi-
Platform Network Operating System (NOS),
Novell NetWare .
Novell based its
Network Protocol on
XNS , and created its own standards from IDP and SPP, which it named
IPX (Internetwork Packet eXchange) and
SPX (Sequenced Packet eXchange). File and print services ran on the
NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) over IPX, as did Routing Information Protocol (RIP) and Service Advertising Protocol (SAP). To accompany this, Novell touted Novell DOS (formerly
DR-DOS ), similar to
MS-DOS ; this came from the acquisition of
Digital Research in 1991. Early versions of NetWare were somewhat notorious for presenting the administrator with an
ABEND .
Novell did extremely well throughout the 1980s, acting aggressively to increase the market initially by selling the expensive
Ethernet Card s at cost; by 1990, Novell had an almost
Monopolistic position in NOS for any business requiring a network.
With this market leadership, Novell began to acquire and build services on top of its NetWare operating platform. These services extended NetWare's capabilities with such products as NetWare for SAA, Novell Multi-Protocol Router, GroupWise and BorderManager.
However, Novell was also diversifying unwisely, moving away from its smaller users to target large corporations, underinvesting in research and leaving their key product opaque and difficult to control and administer. In in
1996 . DR was also sold to
Caldera Systems in 1996.
As Novell's performance faded in the face of new competition, Noorda was pushed out in 1994 and in around 1996 the company began a belated move into internet-enabled products, ditching the proprietary network protocol in favor of native IP. The move was accelerated when
Eric Schmidt became CEO in 1997, and the result was NetWare 5 and the associated
Directory Service s through
Novell Directory Services . With falling revenues, the company pushed hard at net services and platform interoperability.
In
July 2001 , Novell acquired the consulting company
Cambridge Technology Partners , to expand offerings into services. Novell felt that the ability to offer solutions (a combination of software and services) was key to satisfying customer demand. This change was strongly resisted within the firm's software development culture as well as the finance organization which recommended against the merger. The CEO of CTP,
Jack Messman , engineered the merger using his position as a board member of Novell since its inception. He soon became CEO of Novell as well.
In July 2002, Novell acquired SilverStream Software, a leader in Web services-oriented application development, but a laggard in the marketplace. The business area called
Novell ExteNd contains
XML and
Web Service tools based on
J2EE .
In
August 2003 , Novell acquired
Ximian , a developer of
Open Source Linux applications (
Evolution ,
Red Carpet and
Mono ). This is significant, because Novell now plans to move its
NetWare product to the
Linux Kernel by the time of its next release.
In
November 2003 , Novell acquired
SUSE , a developer of a leading
Linux Distribution , which could lead to a major balance of power in Linux distributions, now that
IBM also distributes Linux. IBM invested $50 million to show support of the SUSE acquisition. Within the
OpenSUSE project Novell continues to develop SUSE Linux as base for its business products. SUSE Linux 10.0 is available as Open Source only-Version (OSS Edition), free downloadable but not limited eval product and as boxed retail product.
In summer 2003, Novell released "Novell Nterprise Linux Services", expanding its
NetWare services to
SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server 8.
In
July 2004 , Novell acquired Salmon, a UK-based IT consultancy firm, in order to strengthen its consultancy delivery capabilities in Europe and the UK.
In
November 2004 , Novell released the enterprise desktop
Novell Linux Desktop 9 based on SUSE Linux Professional 9.1.
In
March 2005 , Novell released the "
Open Enterprise Server " which offers all services from
NetWare 6.5 on either a NetWare or
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 kernel.
In
September 2005 , Novell released "
ZENworks 7" which offers automated identity-driven resource management to deploy, manage and maintain IT resources in diverse IT environments.
In
October 2005 , Novell announced the availability of
Novell EDirectory 8.8
