This week I’ve had some questions from people on how this “Strategic Partnership” between Novell and VMware, could be the first step to VMware buying Novell or a number of products from Novell. This got me thinking on if that could really be an interesting move for VMware.
Let’s see what Novell has, that could be of use to VMware, think cloud computing, because that is all what VMware is talking about since vSphere was released. A very interesting product Novell has is the “Identity and Security” suite of products consisting of Compliance Management, Identity and Access Management and Security Management. With an ever growing cloud environment, this becomes a very important part of proper cloud management. Add some E-Directory to the whole story and you have an authentication technology for your cloud environment that has already proven itself in very large deployments.
Now how to move applications into the cloud? VMware already has VMware Converter which is quite a good product, but the feature rich PlateSpin products surely would be a great addition. What about adding some ZenWorks features to ThinApp?
As the title of this posting says, it’s a rumor, I can’t confirm anything but it looks there is something going on.
Ahhh. I didn't think it take long for folks to put 2+2 together to make 5! Not a week goes by without VendorA partnering with VendorB, that by the next week folks are thinking, well hey, maybe vendorA will buy vendorB. Personally, I don't see VMware buying this. They have made a lot of progress by being guest-operating system agnostic. Whilst its nice to see them standardise their own virtual appliance on SLES – crikey, any standardisation would be good on that front – I think they would be shooting themselves in the foot. Still its an interesting take on the question of “will VMware be the next Novell”. Answer – YES! We bought them. At the risk of touting my wares on other peoples blogs – I wrote about this on TechTarget recently – http://searchvirtualdatacentre.techtarget.co.uk…
I don't see any reasonable benefit for buying Novell.
Have you been reading my tweets :)
Extremely long shot.
Novell is on a downward trend with respect to an aging product portfolio, cashflow, Linux market share, IDM and the VM management stuff. While I would concede that the Linux and IDM stuff might be useful, I can't see VMWare having the stomach to sort out the Novells legacy business. Additionally there's also overlap in the product portfolio – VMware bought Zimbra collaboration (would compete agianst Groupwise), vCenter compete's with the Platespin stuff, and the Xen hypervisor in the distro competes head on with vSphere.
Also Novell has just under $1bn in cash in the bank forcing vmware to bid OVER that. Vmware's last few strategic buys (Springsource, Zimbra) were way south of that number in the 100's of millions range.
So add all of those things up and I think you'll find it might be just too rich with too little upside for VMware.
Novell did a greate job with linux . look at OES2 ..what a magic it does to secure linux with directory services and identity management.File /STORAGE and print servicess is one of the greatest implimented in any OS.
Novell also given Citrix Partners free access to it's PlateSpin Recon product. (18 Feb 2010) – after that announcement there were rumours that Citrix was buying Novell!