10.11.08

Do-No-Evil Saturday - Part II: SCO Litigation Update, Few Products News

Posted in SCO, Novell, NetWare, Videos, Mail at 3:57 pm by Roy Schestowitz

Today, for a change, we publish only a couple catchup posts (there’s not much to cover), the first one being about GNU/Linux. This second one catches “everything else”, starting with SCO.

SCO

The Novell-SCO trial has not been through anything too exciting. Groklaw was the only site with some coverage. Here is the first post.

I have a question for those of you who do understand the MORs. On SCO Operation’s MOR [PDF] on page 4, I see under “Other Disbursements” $225,000 in “Security Deposits”. What would that be? And I see zero for “Novell SVRx Fee”. Page 7 shows who did get paid, a river of money flowing precisely away from Novell.

The second post was more interesting because it discussed those Caldera-Pandora boxes we mentioned earlier [1, 2].

That’s the law firm that represented Caldera in the Caldera v. Microsoft case, if you recall, when Ryan Tibbitts was with Snow Christensen, before he joined SCO as general counsel. Nice touch. It’s the same firm that Microsoft is now trying to subpoena in the Novell v. Microsoft antitrust litigation. It seems never to pay off, doing business with SCO, does it? They list the same claim from the firm on both Exhibit A, a list of “Disputed Claims which improperly assert claims of ownership of stock”, and on Exhibit C, which is the list that purports to be claims that lack a basis in SCO’s books and records. So if they can’t get it expunged one way, they’ll try the other. Maybe SCM will start *really* digging in those 158 boxes now.

Finance

It was a tough week. Several days ago, Piper Jaffray & Co. (they seem pro-Microsoft and they defend the Zune) maintained their rating on NOVL.

Piper Jaffray & Co. maintains a ‘Neutral’ rating on Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL), but lowers earnings estimates and price target to $4.75.

Virtualisation

PlateSpin’s Founder and CEO, Stephen Pollack, appeared in the following processor.com article.

Although companies of every size need to address business continuity and disaster recovery issues, small to midsized enterprises have unique needs, believes Stephen Pollack, vice president of business strategy for Novell’s Systems and Resource Management Division (www.novell.com).

Mail

There was not so much on this topic apart from bits of GroupWise here and there, especially when it comes to Blackberry. Here are some articles where it’s mentioned:

1. Blackberry solution comes to Malta

Blackberry Enterprise Server is targeted specifically for organisations that manage their own e-mail servers, and tightly integrates with IBM Lotus Domino, Microsoft Exchange and Novell GroupWise. It uses advanced encryption and IT policy controls to enable secure, push-based wireless access to e-mail and other corporate data.

2. Unitrends Releases Rapid Recovery 4.0

It also offers enhanced functionality for Novell servers, including automatic protection of GroupWise and eDirectory servers.

3. Showdown: BlackBerry Storm VS. iPhone 3G

Moving on to software — the Storm will ship with the popular BlackBerry OS, which, as I mentioned earlier, is optimized for enterprise purposes. Think wireless synchronization with Lotus Notes, Outlook and Novell GroupWise.

4. RIM Takes On iPhone With BlackBerry Storm

The handset is still a BlackBerry, which means it has support for multiple e-mail accounts including Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Domino, Novell GroupWise, and various POP 3 providers. Additionally, the Storm has security features that may make it more enterprise-friendly than Apple’s handset.

Identity Management

There was no news here, but Novell’s existing products were mentioned in:

1. The two-pronged attack to push Information Cards

Founders of the OASIS committee are Novell and CA, in addition to Microsoft and IBM. Novell and Microsoft are also members of ICF (along with many others).

2. CA Acquires IDFocus to Bolster Identity Management

CA has acquired identity management vendor IDFocus to add to its provisioning capabilities and its ability to enforce segregation of duties. CA competes against a number of large vendors in the identity management space, including Oracle, IBM, Sun Microsystems and Novell.

3. Security information and event management: Finding the proverbial needle

The first indications of the full integration that Roedell wants are starting to show up, too, Kavanagh says. Such companies as CA, IBM and Novell have started to bundle or integrate SIEM with other pieces of their portfolios, including identity-based access management; systems management; and IT governance, risk and compliance management offerings.

Here is an article about identity management that mentions Ross Chevalier, a ZDNet commenter… oh, and also Novell employee.

Ross Chevalier, president and CTO of Novell Canada, says some studies suggest as many as 60 per cent of user accounts may be invalid in many organizations because they aren’t updated.

Security

eDirectory had several issues (also here).

Some vulnerabilities have been reported in Novell eDirectory, which can be exploited by malicious people to cause a DoS (Denial of Service) and potentially compromise a vulnerable system.

A “critical” flaw was found too. There were some cross-distro issues and the following rather startling flaw had Novell’s Netware mentioned.

In theory at least, this situation should not happen, so Lee and Louis did a bit more digging and realised that the TCP/IP stack had a number of flaws that no-one had previously noticed.

Well, not quite. I remember attending a Novell seminar in the mid-to-late 1990s at a Networks show event in Birmingham, at which Novell techies outlined their gameplan for Intranetware, which was the Internet-enabled version of the firm’s popular (at the time) Netware networking software.

People

The following politically-charged article contained some bits about Kevin Moore of Novell.

Such well-rounded candidates are rare. Ten years ago, CTO Matt Kesner of law firm Fenwick and West cherry-picked networking guru Kevin Moore at Novell to help shore up the law firm’s network. Kesner, a former lawyer and programmer, needed a technician to complement his visionary skills. (Indeed, Kesner recently created a new practice at Fenwick and West as a result of that vision.)

Another former Noveller in the news is Rhonda O’Donnell.

IF THERE were a cliche that could fairly be applied to Rhonda O’Donnell, chief executive of Melbourne-based international technology company Freshtel, it would be that you can take the girl out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the girl.

And in O’Donnell’s case, the country background, almost entirely in Seymour, 100 kilometres along the Hume Freeway, north of Melbourne, has been a distinct help, in her family life and in her multinational corporate career.

[…]

For the past decade, from her late 30s onwards, she has served variously as managing director, director and president and Asia-Pacific chairman of three multinational companies — Global Customer Solutions, a subsidiary of Texas Utilities, Cambridge Technology Partners, and Novell — and through that time has resolutely resisted living anywhere other than in Seymour.

[…]

In there, too, is a determination to hold to her personal values. Novell, the American multinational IT company, of which she was Asia-Pacific president from July 2001 and chairman from December 2006 until she left in March last year, was based in Sydney.

Several Novell employees are cycling in Europe.

Vansevenant retired after 14 years in the professional peloton, first riding in 1994 as a stagiaire for the Novell team before spending four seasons with the Vlaanderen 2002-Eddy Merckx team. Vansevenant spent his last six seasons with the Lotto team.

[…]

Danish rider Michael Blaudzun hung up his bike after the world championships time trial, and according to an interview on his now former team CSC-Saxo Bank web site, he’s not regretting his decision to end his career. He began as a professional for the Novell/Word Perfect team in 1994 - a squad which went on to become Rabobank the next year. Blaudzun stayed with Rabobank until 1998, when he spent one year with Team Telekom before joining the CSC team and staying put for the rest of his career.

Another former Noveller, Lars Nordwall, is appointed SVP of business development at Pentaho.

Mr. Nordwall brings over 15 years of technology sales and executive management experience to Pentaho. Previously, Mr. Nordwall was the Vice President of Worldwide Sales for SugarCRM where he helped transform an early stage start-up in 2005 into a global firm with thousands of customers. Prior to joining SugarCRM, he spent four years in senior sales leadership positions at Novell focused on the company’s open source and solution strategy. Mr Nordwall joined Novell as a result of an acquisition of Cambridge Technology Partners where he spent six years in various sales and consulting leadership positions, including Senior Director of the Global Business Intelligence Practice.

Zenoss appears to have snatched another one from Novell.

– Brian Riley, Director of Global Alliances, joins Zenoss from Novell and prior to that, e-Security. Brian’s role at Zenoss will be to bring integrated solutions to market by developing partnerships with systems integrators and like-minded enterprise software companies.

Partners

Xenocode, which recently was involved with Novell [1, 2, 3, 4], has introduced Virtual application studio for developers. The relationship with Novell is mentioned further down in the press release:

Xenocode-virtualized applications can be easily deployed on USB devices, corporate intranets, the Internet, or existing desktop management infrastructure software such as Novell ZENworks, Microsoft SMS, LANDesk Management Suite, and BMC Configuration Management.

Moonwalk is another company that does business with Novell. It’s raving about something not so significant.

Moonwalk Inc. today announced that its GSA certification has created a new vibrant sales channel that makes it quick and easy for U.S. federal government agencies to purchase the company’s award-winning enterprise data management software.

Marketing

The following promotional video, which seems like a Novell case study, has been added YouTube.

It contains the Novell logos and everything, so it’s a bit of a SUSE commercial, which is the only video posted by this user (unlike others). It’s worth keeping an eye on.

Last but not least, there was another meeting at the Novell cafeteria at Provo. Nothing too exciting though. █

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