In a press release on their website, Novell has announced that they will be acquired by a company called Attachmate for $2.2 Billion. The announcement can be found at http://www.novell.com/news/press/novell-agrees-to-be-acquired-by-attachmate-corporation. Microsoft (or a consortium run by Microsoft) will also be acquiring a few hundred patents as part of the arrangement.

Attachmate will be operating Novell and SUSE as two separate business units, calling into question some of the strategy that seemed around the corner in previous quarters. This at the same time that Novell is rebranding its social products into Novell Vibe and Novell Vibe Cloud and really doing better than they have in a long time with products like Platespin, WorkloadIQ, Endpoint Management Solutions, Identity Manager and ZENworks. Novell has also had a lot of success in recent years leading Solaris to Linux migrations.

For many, this has come as a shock. 318 has been a Novell, Microsoft, Redhat and Apple partner for a number of years and can work with you to decide what this means for your organization. Please, feel free to contact our main office at 310-581-9500 or your Professional Services Manager for more information.