Channel-Lands: Thankful for Billion-Dollar Deals

For most of us in the Channel-Lands, it was a short week. The Thanksgiving holiday usually means two-and-a-half days of work, most of which is consumed with preparations for the annual festival of food, family and football. Ah, precisely the reason our forefathers ventured to this great continent. But the technology world didn’t stop spinning just because the menu included cranberry sauce and mashed sweet potatoes. Channel-Lands was still very active with the acquisition of Novell, Oracle winning a major lawsuit, and significant alliance between wireless carriers.

Novell's Fate Sealed by Attachmate                                                                                                                                                                                     The potential sale of one-time market leader Novell was been rumored for some time, which many industry observers speculating a venture capital group would buy the software company. Instead, security and systems solution company Attachmate picked up most of Novell for $2.2 billion.

The deal shocked many application developers and solution providers since undisclosed Novell assets were sold for $450 million to a consortium controlled in large part by Microsoft. That lead to wild speculation that Microsoft would assume ownership of SUSE Linux, the operating system Novell spent years fighting the SCO Group for ownership rights. Both Microsoft and Novell have since confirmed that the Linux assets were not part of the deal.

The melding of Novell into Attachmate will create a new security powerhouse. Attachmate, a specialist in terminal emulation and modernization of legacy systems, also owns security specialist NetIQ, which could benefit from Novell’s extensive identity management for enterprise environments and cloud platforms.

Attachmate now has a greater presence in the virtualization market with the addition of Novell’s ZENworks products.

Attachmate plans to operate Novell as two business units – Novell and SUSE – and incorporate other projects into existing divisions. Attachmate CEO Jeff Hawn expects the Novell businesses to generate about $1 billion in a year’s time. Novell’s last reported annual revenues was about $862 million.

No word as yet how this will shake out for Novell’s channel network. Attachmate is a channel-friendly company, and the acquisition should extend its reach into the reseller community.

Oracle Sells Jury on $1.3 B Judgement Against SAP                                                                                                                                              What Larry Ellison wants, Larry Ellison gets – and this time it was within a court of law. Oracle successfully argued rival SAP owed it $1.3 billion in lost business resulting from SAP’s theft of intellectual property.

The case was closely watched for its theatrics as much as its business implications.

SAP never denied its subsidiary, TomorrowNow, had pilfered troves of Oracle data. However, SAP claimed damages should be limited to $40 million since it was unsuccessful in capitalizing on the information. Oracle, on the other hand, claimed it was due in excess of $2 billion.

The award is significant given vendors are now turning to the courts to battle rivals. Microsoft, Apple, Google, Motorola, Samsung and other vendors are engaged in lawsuits over patent infringements and intellectual property violations. While legal observers say the award is excessive, they concur that it points to a willingness by the courts to favor protection of intellectual property.

Oracle may have won the legal battle against SAP, but it failed to drag its other rival, Hewlett-Packard, into the quagmire. Oracle sought to have new HP CEO and former SAP executive Leo Apotheker testify in the trial. But Apotheker was nowhere to be found. HP would only say he was traveling outside the U.S., and he was immaterial to the case. Now that the trial is over, Apotheker has surfaced. Drama over.

AT&T, Sprint Team Up on Wireless Service                                                                                                                                                           Natural resources like oil, fresh water and air are finite. Wireless spectrum is as well, and there’s only so much to go around to the various carriers. The folks at Phone Plus magazine reported earlier this week that rivals AT&T and Sprint are engaging in a spectrum swap to help each other expand service in noncompetitive markets.

AT&T says the deal will improve its coverage in San Francisco, Dallas and New Orleans. Spring will get spectrum access in New Orleans, Cleveland, Charolette and Tampa, to name a few cities.

The proposed deal is before the Federal Communications Commission for review. From a Channel-Lands perspective, the alliance shows the importance of having networks to enable the increasingly mobile IT user.  

Start Marking Your Conference Calendar                                                                                                                                                                          Open up your Outlook calendar, fire up Google Apps or just get your paper planner: It’s time to map channel conferences for 2011. The VAR Guy did us all a favor by publishing a list of 75 channel events in 2011 . We’re always hearing across the Channel-Lands there are too many events; even The VAR Guy admits he didn’t get all of them on the list and will need to update in December. Nevertheless, channel events are a necessity for networking, learning about products and technology, and interacting with vendor representatives. This is a must read list.

Well, that’s all the week’s news from Channel-Lands where all the technology works, all the deals are profitable and all of the companies are above average. If you want to follow me on Facebook or Twitter, feel free to connect. Share your suggestions and news with me at lmwalsh@the2112group.com.