Novell is in trouble. As Novell CFO Dana Russell said during the recent earnings call, “Our Linux business is dependent on large deals, which may result in some fluctuations of our quarterly invoicing. This quarter, we did not sign any large deals, many of which have been historically fulfilled by Microsoft certificates.”
Novell first partnered up with Microsoft to boost its Linux business. Now, it appears Novell needs Microsoft to keep its head above water. Still, Novell delivered more of a profit than the analysts had expected, 7 cents per share instead of 6 cents per share, and its open platform sales, aka Linux, totaled $35 million, up 24 percent from a year ago.
Moving ahead, Novell plans on reducing the prices of its products and pushing out the next versions of its commercial Linux: SLES (SUSE Linux Enterprise Server) and SLED (SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop) 11. To do this, according to sources at Novell, the company does not plan on having any more layoffs.