division industry computer software fate acquired by micro focus international november 2014 founded 1979 ; 37 years ago 1979 provo utah united states headquarters provo utah united states products novell open enterprise server novell groupwise novell vibe novell zenworks parent micro focus international website www.novell.com novell inc. no v l was an american 1 software and services company headquartered in provo utah . it had been instrumental in making utah valley a focus for technology and software development . novell technology contributed to the emergence of local area networks which displaced the dominant mainframe computing model and changed computing worldwide . today a primary focus of the company is on developing software for enterprise . the company was originally an independent corporate entity until it was acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary by the attachmate group ; this latter was acquired in 2014 by micro focus international of which novell is now a division . contents 1 history 1.1 netware 1.2 beyond netware 1.3 decline 1.4 linux for business 1.5 stagnation 1.6 your linux is ready 1.7 agreement with microsoft 1.7.1 reaction of foss community 1.8 intelligent workload management 1.9 acquisition by attachmate 1.10 acquisitions 2 management and organization 2.1 support system 3 certification 4 products 5 see also 6 references 7 external links history edit the company began in 1979 2 in orem utah as novell data systems inc. ndsi a hardware manufacturer producing cp m based systems . former eyring research institute eri employee dennis fairclough was the member of the original team that started novell data systems . it was co founded by george canova darin field and jack davis . 3 victor v. vurpillat brought the deal to pete musser chairman of the board of safeguard scientifics inc. who provided the seed funding . the company initially did not do well . the microcomputer produced by the company was comparatively weak against performance by competitors . in order to compete on systems sales novell data systems planned a program to link more than one microcomputer to operate together . the former eri employees drew major dale neibaur and kyle powell known as the superset software group were hired to this task . at eri fairclough major neibaur and powell had worked on government contracts for the intelligent systems technology project and thereby gained an important insight into the arpanet and related technologies ideas which would become crucial to the foundation of novell . the safeguard board then ordered musser to shut novell down . musser contacted two safeguard investors and investment bankers barry rubenstein and fred dolin who guaranteed to raise the necessary funds to continue the business as a software company as novell data systems networking program could work on computers from other companies . davis left novell data systems in november 1981 followed by canova in march 1982 . rubinstein and dolin along with jack messman interviewed and hired raymond noorda . the required funding was obtained through a rights offering to safeguard shareholders managed by the cleveland brokerage house prescott ball and turben and guaranteed by rubenstein and dolin . major neibaur and powell continued to support novell through their superset software group . in january 1983 the company s name was shortened to novell inc. and raymond noorda became the head of the firm . later that same year the company introduced its most significant product the multi platform network operating system nos novell netware . it is distributed by tritech distribution limited in hong kong . 4 netware edit the first novell product was a proprietary hardware server based on motorola 68000 citation needed cpu supporting six mux ports per board for a maximum of four boards per server using a star topology with twisted pair cabling . a network interface card nic was developed for the ibm pc industry standard architecture isa bus . the server was using the first network operating system nos called sharenet . later sharenet was ported to run on the intel platform and renamed netware . the first commercial release of netware was version 1.5 . novell based its network protocol on xerox network systems xns and created its own standards from idp and spp which it named internetwork packet exchange ipx and sequenced packet exchange spx . file and print services ran on the netware core protocol ncp over ipx as did routing information protocol rip and service advertising protocol sap . netware uses novell dos formerly dr dos as a boot loader . novell dos is similar to ms dos and ibm pc dos but no extra license for dos is required ; this came from the acquisition of digital research in 1991 . novell had already acquired kanwal rekhi s company excelan which manufactured smart ethernet cards and commercialized the internet protocol tcp ip solidifying novell s presence in these niche areas . it was around this time also that ed tittel of html for dummies notoriety became involved with novell . tittel took up various positions within the newly acquired excelan becoming national marketing manager for novell before being named as novell s director of technical marketing . novell did extremely well throughout the 1980s . it aggressively expanded its market share by selling the expensive ethernet cards at cost . by 1990 novell had an almost monopolistic position in nos for any business requiring a network . with this market leadership novell began to acquire and build services on top of its netware operating platform . these services extended netware s capabilities with such products as netware for saa novell multi protocol router groupwise and bordermanager . beyond netware edit however novell was also diversifying moving away from its smaller users to target large corporations although the company later attempted to refocus with netware for small business . it reduced investment in research and was slow to improve the product administration tools although it was helped by the fact its products typically needed little tweaking they just ran . in june 1993 the company bought unix system laboratories from at & t corporation 5 acquiring rights to the unix operating system seemingly in an attempt to challenge microsoft . in 1994 novell bought wordperfect as well as quattro pro from borland . these acquisitions did not last . in 1995 novell assigned portions of its unix business to the santa cruz operation . wordperfect and quattro pro were sold to corel in 1996 . novell dos was also sold to caldera in 1996 . as novell faced new competition noorda was replaced by robert frankenberg in 1994 6 and was followed by several ceos who served short terms . one of novell s major innovations at the time was novell directory services nds now known as edirectory . introduced with netware v4 .0 . edirectory replaced the old bindery server and user management technology employed by netware 3.x and earlier . eric schmidt in 1996 the company began a move into internet enabled products replacing reliance on the proprietary ipx protocol in favor of a native tcp ip stack . the move was accelerated when eric schmidt became ceo in 1997 and then christopher stone was brought in . the result was netware v5 .0 released in october 1998 which leveraged and built upon edirectory and introduced new functions such as novell cluster services ncs a replacement for sft iii and novell storage services nss a replacement for the traditional fat filesystem used by earlier versions of netware . while netware v5 .0 introduced native tcp ip support into the nos ipx was still supported allowing for smooth transitions between environments and avoiding the forklift upgrades frequently required by competing environments . similarly the traditional fat file system remained a supported option . novell s decline and loss of market share accelerated under eric schmidt s leadership with novell experiencing industry wide decline in sales and purchases of netware and a drop in share price of 40.00 share to 7.00 share . decline edit the inclusion of networking as a core system component in all mainstream pc operating systems after 1995 led to a steep decline in novell s market share . unlike windows 3.1 and its predecessors windows 95 linux and os 2 all included network functionality which greatly reduced demand for third party products in this segment . analysts commented that the primary reason for novell s demise was linked to its channel strategy and mismanagement of channel partners under eric schmidt s leadership . under ray noorda s leadership novell provided upgrades to resellers and customers in the same packaging as a newly purchased copy of netware but at one third the cost which created a gray market that allowed netware resellers to sell upgrades as newly purchased netware versions at full price periodically which novell intentionally did not track . ray noorda commented to several analysts he devised this strategy to allow front line resellers to punch through the distributors like tech data and ingram and acquire netware versions at a discounted rate where novell looked the other way then allowed them to sell these versions as newly purchased netware versions in order to pay the novell field support technicians salaries who for the most part were employees who worked for the front line resellers as novell cne certified netware engineers . noorda commented that this strategy was one he learned as an executive at general electric when competing against imported home appliances allow the resellers to make more money off your product than someone else s . eric schmidt embarked on a disastrous strategy to remove the upgrades as whole box products without understanding novell s channel dynamics then directed novell s general counsel to initiate litigation against a large number of novell resellers who were routinely selling upgrades as newly purchased netware versions . although this move bolstered novell s revenue numbers for several quarters novell s channels subsequently collapsed with the majority of novell s resellers dropping netware for fear of litigation . 7 8 9 10 by 1999 novell had lost its dominant market position and was continually being out marketed by microsoft as novell s resellers dropped netware for fear of litigation allowing microsoft to gain access to corporate data centers by bypassing technical staff and selling directly to corporate executives . most resellers then re certified their novell cne employees as microsoft msce technicians the field support technicians who were novell s primary contact in the field with direct customers and were encouraged to make netware look second place with windows 2000 features such as group policy . microsoft s gui was also more popular and looked more modern than the character based novell interfaces . with falling revenue the company focused on net services and platform interoperability . products such as edirectory and groupwise were made multi platform . in october 2000 novell released a new product dubbed dirxml which was designed to synchronize data often user information between disparate directory and database systems . this product leveraged the speed and functionality of edirectory to store information and would later become the novell identity manager and form the foundation of a core product set within novell . in july 2001 novell acquired the consulting company cambridge technology partners founded in cambridge ma by john j. donovan to expand offerings into services . novell felt that the ability to offer solutions a combination of software and services was key to satisfying customer demand . the merger was apparently against the firm s software development culture and the finance personnel at the firm also recommended against it . the ceo of ctp jack messman engineered the merger using his position as a board member of novell since its inception and soon became ceo of novell as well . he then hired back chris stone as vice chairman and ceo to set the course for novell s strategy into open source and enterprise linux . with the acquisition of ctp novell moved