02.15.08
Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part III: Waltham Forest Council, SiteScape and Novell Partners Including GWAVA
There have been several key events in the past week, including SCO’s return to the headlines and the big (some say rather predictable) Novell acquisition. Let’s break it down using headings.
Business Affairs
Novell can finally get some of that money SCO owes it ‘thanks’ to the latest rubbish.
Waltham Forest Council (not Novell’s Waltham) is taking a look at Novell’s solutions but also at Microsoft’s.
Building on the IT overhaul, Wilde is considering virtualisation and an electronic document management system. He is also deciding whether to stay with a Novell operating system, or move to either Microsoft or open source.
“Changing operating system is incredibly difficult. Open source seems a lot cheaper because you do not have to buy licences, but you do have to invest in a lot of experts and pay people to put it in. You do not have the support network that you would with either Microsoft or Novell,” said Wilde.
SiteScape Acquisition
Press release announcing this development is here, among many other places.
Novell today announced it has acquired SiteScape, a leader in open source team collaboration, extending Novell’s leadership in, and commitment to, innovative and open collaboration solutions.
The New York Times had an article covering this.
Novell also says it will continue to support other SiteScape tools at least through 2010, including Forum ZX and ST, which provide chat, threaded discussion, blogs, wiki, workflow, and document sharing among other tools; SiteScape Zon, which is integrated into ZX and provides voice and Web conferencing; and Web Work Zone, an online hosted platform based on Forum.
Here is another article from a lesser-known outlet.
Novell Inc. said Wednesday it has acquired SiteScape Inc., a company that specializes in open source team collaboration products.
John Dragoon explains why the acquisition was made.
You may recall that in early 2007, Novell announced an agreement with SiteScape to license their technology for Novell Teaming + Conferencing. As a result of that agreement, SiteScape open sourced its technology, resulting in the ICEcore open source project. This project, to which SiteScape and Novell have been contributors, underpins Novell Teaming + Conferencing and its SiteScape corollary: SiteScape ICEcore Enterprise.
Partners
GWAVA makes a few headlines again because of this press release.
GWAVA, Novell’s largest Collaboration partner for GroupWise and Teaming + Conferencing, announced today that sales of Retain for GroupWise have surpassed sales of previous products, becoming the fastest growing offering in GWAVA history.
In CRN, Novell’s attempt to reaffirm its relationship with partners produces an article.
After roughly 90 days on the job, Novell’s new VP of Global Channel Sales, Pat Bernard, knows the company has some work to do in order to regain a partner-centric focus — and the trust of former partners. By focusing on margin protection and weaving partnering into every aspect of the business, Bernard says Novell can begin to realize its vision to be a preferred channel partner for the most companies it can get.
Pat Bernard is pretty new. His predecessor left the company not so long ago. █
Highlight: Novell was the first to acknowledge that Microsoft FUD tactics had substance. Novell then used anti-Linux FUD to market itself. 
Highlight: Xandros let Microsoft make patent claims and brag about (paid-for) OOXML support. 
Highlight: Linspire's CEO not only fell into Microsoft arms, but he also assisted the company's attack on GNU/Linux. 
Highlight: Microsoft craves pseudo (proprietary) standards and gets its way using proxies and influence which it buys. 
Highlight: The invasion into the open source world is intended to leave Linux companies neglected, due to financial incentives from Microsoft. 
Analysis: Xen, an open source hypervisor, possibly fell victim to Microsoft's aggressive (and stealthy) acquisition-by-proxy strategy.