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Novell, Inc. Despite building or acquiring several new kinds of products, Novell failed to find consistent success and never regained its past dominance.

The company was an independent corporate entity until it was acquired as a wholly owned subsidiary by The Attachmate Group in 2011. Attachmate was subsequently acquired in 2014 by Micro Focus International which was acquired in turn by OpenText in 2023. Novell products and technologies are now integrated within various OpenText divisions.

History

Origins as a hardware company

thumb|left|Novell's chief scientist was Drew Major, here seen later in his career

The company began as Novell Data Systems Inc. (NDSI), a computer systems company located in Orem, Utah that intended to manufacture and market small business computers, computer terminals, and other peripherals.

During the first calendar quarter of 1982, heavy costs continued to be incurred at Novell Data Systems, which resulted in management shuffles, organizational consolidations, and a significant layoff. That year which it operated as a corporate shuttle aircraft, here seen taking off from San Jose bound for Provo]]

By 1999, Novell had lost its dominant market position, and was continually being out-marketed by Microsoft as resellers dropped NetWare, 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— the field support technicians who were Novell's primary contact in the field with direct customers—as Microsoft MCSE technicians, and were encouraged to position NetWare as inferior to Windows 2000 features such as Group Policy and Microsoft's GUI, which was considered to be 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.

By 2000, some large NetWare enterprise customers, such as Chase Manhattan Bank, United Parcel Service, and the University of Southern California were in the process of migrating most or all of their NetWare systems to alternatives.

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Further reading

  • Digital Research - The 07-21-91 Summary1991-02-16, 1991-02-18, 1991-03-04 -->1991-03-20, 1991-05-23, 1991-07-24, 1991-08-02 --> (NB. Marc Perkel claimed to have inspired Novell in February 1991 to buy Digital Research and develop something he called "NovOS".)

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  • Novell: International, Japan
  • Novell Forums
  • Novell Blogs
  • Novell Wikis
  • Open Horizons&nbsp;– A co-operative EMEA body of international Novell User Groups
  • Open Horizons UK&nbsp;– An active Novell User Group for UK customers

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