Novell

More Novell cuts, follow Microsoft cuts

If the recession is, in fact,  winding down, employment truly is a trailing indicator, with tech companies continuing to cut headcount.

Last week, both Novell and Microsoft cut jobs. Novell sliced 3% — or about 100 to 130 —  of its 3,900 employees, according to published reports. And it suspended company-paid 401K contributions, according to its 8K filing. Continued »

Another trade show bites the dust

Novell has canceled BrainShare 2009, its long-running customer and partner conference.

BrainShare 2009 was scheduled for March in Salt Lake City. John Dragoon, Novell’s senior vice president and chief marketing officer, said the company canceled the show because of the recession.

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Microsoft exposes open source’s ‘hidden costs’

Microsoft has spent a surprising amount of time, effort and money on open source initiatives this year.

At Interop back in April, Bob Muglia spent nearly an entire keynote discussing Microsoft’s interoperability with non-Windows environments. In August, the company invested $100 million in Novell support certificates for customers moving to enterprise-class Linux. Microsoft and Novell unveiled a joint virtualization product in September, and just last month they launched a SUSE Linux management pack.

But don’t let all that fool you into thinking that Microsoft is all lovey-dovey with the open source world. In light of a report that Windows’ market share has dropped below 90%, the company went back on the attack today with a press release titled “Microsoft Gives Businesses Lower TCO Versus Hidden Costs of Open Source.”

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Cisco’s Jabber acquisition heats up the collaboration race

Cisco Systems has acquired open source instant messaging and presence company Jabber less than a month after it picked up e-mail and calendaring software provider PostPath. The move signifies Cisco’s ongoing moves to reach out of the network and onto the desktop.

Terms of the deal have not yet been announced. Cisco executives were unavailable to discuss the impact of the deal on Cisco or Jabber partners.

Though Cisco already owns instant messaging and presence features, Jabber’s applications are open source and based on its own Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol (XMPP). These applications are therefore easier to integrate into emailing, calendaring and other Web 2.0 software across the board, giving Cisco a leg up in the collaboration race against Microsoft and IBM. Continued »

Interop: Are tradeshows dead?

I was truly confused Wednesday morning when I jumped off the bus near the Jacob Javits Center in New York for Interop and saw armies of tight skirts and multi-colored stilettos trotting up the ramp to the convention center. This is not IT conference wear. These are not tech rats. No wrinkled khakis. Too many cutesy chicks. Continued »

Maritz flattered by Microsoft’s guerrilla marketing

LAS VEGAS – I just left a Q&A session with VMware CEO Paul Maritz, where I asked him about the “poker chip” guerrilla marketing campaign that Microsoft launched this morning at VMworld. Here’s what he had to say:

“The fact that Microsoft is giving out chochkies to our users is flattering. It is the act of someone in far second.”

Maritz recalled that during his time at Microsoft, he helped organize a guerrilla marketing campaign during a Novell conference in Las Vegas. They had Microsoft pillow covers placed in every hotel bed in the city, so when Novell execs went to bed at night, that’s what they’d see.

Of course, Maritz didn’t mention that Microsoft, which was in “far second” at the time, eventually decimated Novell. But you know he’s hoping history doesn’t repeat itself.

Here’s what else he had to say during the Q&A:

• On the mood at VMware following the departure of former CEO Diane Greene and other execs: “Obviously any time you go through a leadership change, it introduces a certain amount of angst in the organization.” A lot of that angst was because people wanted to know VMware’s vision, which Maritz laid out this week. “People will respond positively to that,” he said.
• And on what the Virtual Data Center Cloud Operating System means for Microsoft: “It’s an indirect threat. … This is the way the world is going, and they have to respond to that.”

Novell names new channel GM

More than a month after former channel chief Pat Bernard left Novell, the open source company has named her successor.

Javier Colado, a two-year Novell employee, will fill the newly created role of general manager of partners. (Bernard’s title was vice president of global channel sales.) In his new role, Colado will manage Novell’s worldwide channel strategy and report directly to CEO Ron Hovsepian, the company said.

Colado has previous channel experience at McAfee and Lucent Technologies.