In early August, Novell annonced its acquisition of Ximian. This is important enough that I thought I should comment–even if it is a little late.
Novell does not have a great track record when it comes to acquisitions. Time and time again it has acquired a company only to end up shutting down the business or selling it off to a buyer at greatly reduced prices (Btrieve, Tuxedo, Wordperfect and Unix Systems Labs come to mind.)
However, all of the previous acquisitions that have failed were done under different management. The new management (Chris Stone and Jack Messman) might play this differently. While I would like to see Novell handle the Ximian acquisition with success, it will take a significant effort.
The only way Novell can pull out of its dive is to successfully become a cross-platform vendor of systems services. This requires moving away from the NetWare OS as its core platform and main revenue source. Linux is the only real platform that Novell has as a target. Novell has been nortoiously slow to act on the Linux opportunity and open source software. Let’s hope the Ximian acquisition and change of direction isn’t too little, too late.
