Novell now will operate as two business units under the Novell and SUSE Linux brand names and join Attachmate and NetIQ as holdings of the Attachmate Group.
Attachmate Group on April 27 reported that it has closed the $2.2 billion acquisition of open-source
enterprise software maker Novell, a deal first announced on Nov. 22, 2010.
Novell, whose
stockholders accepted the merger in February 2011, now will operate as
separate business units under the Novell and SUSE Linux brand names and join
Attachmate and NetIQ as holdings of the Attachmate Group.
The deal
was delayed a few weeks in March 2011 due to the sale of 882 patents to a
Microsoft-led consortium of vendors during the Attachmate acquisition process.
Due diligence by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange
Commission in examining each of these patents took longer than expected.
Thirty-year-old Attachmate,
which has about 65,000 customers, is an IT host connectivity and
systems/security management integrator that has offices on six continents and
is headquartered in Seattle. It is owned by an investment group led by
Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Bravo.
Why is Attachmate interested
in going into the open-source enterprise software business?
"No. 1, this is a very
attractive market, and we underscore our commitment to it by making SUSE
[Linux] a standalone business unit," Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn told eWEEK.
"In fact, the business units are now Novell, SUSE, Attachment and Net
IQ."
"The whole combination
is good for us because there was a large overlap in the customer base between
Attachmate/Net IQ and Novell/SUSE, and no overlap at all in the technologies.
This gets us into some attractive new markets-in many cases with our existing
customers."
Hawn also pointed out that
since Attachmate is a privately held company, "we don't have to market to
Wall Street."
Publicly owned open-source
software companies are rare. Red Hat, of Cary N.C., is the best known and most
successful.
Attachmate Group software
and service products include IT operations management; open source software;
end-user computing and collaboration products; host connectivity and legacy
modernization; security, identity and compliance management; virtualization and
cloud computing.
Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
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Chris Preimesberger was named Editor-in-Chief of Features & Analysis at eWEEK in November 2011. Previously he served eWEEK as Senior Writer, covering a range of IT sectors that include data center systems, cloud computing, storage, virtualization, green IT, e-discovery and IT governance. His blog, Storage Station, is considered a go-to information source. Chris won a national Folio Award for magazine writing in November 2011 for a cover story on Salesforce.com and CEO-founder Marc Benioff, and he has served as a judge for the SIIA Codie Awards since 2005. In previous IT journalism, Chris was a founding editor of both IT Manager's Journal and DevX.com and was managing editor of Software Development magazine. His diverse resume also includes: sportswriter for the Los Angeles Daily News, covering NCAA and NBA basketball, television critic for the Palo Alto Times Tribune, and Sports Information Director at Stanford University. He has served as a correspondent for The Associated Press, covering Stanford and NCAA tournament basketball, since 1983. He has covered a number of major events, including the 1984 Democratic National Convention, a Presidential press conference at the White House in 1993, the Emmy Awards (three times), two Rose Bowls, the Fiesta Bowl, several NCAA men's and women's basketball tournaments, a Formula One Grand Prix auto race, a heavyweight boxing championship bout (Ali vs. Spinks, 1978), and the 1985 Super Bowl. A 1975 graduate of Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif., Chris has won more than a dozen regional and national awards for his work. He and his wife, Rebecca, have four children and reside in Redwood City, Calif.Follow on Twitter: editingwhiz
