Open Source Blog

CBR Podcast: Novell CEO on his bold new strategy

2010-02-04T12:34:32Z

I caught up with the president and CEO of Novell, Ron Hovsepian recently, to find out more about the company's recently announced Intelligent Workload Management strategy.

Of course, I also took the opportunity to ask whether he still believes that the firm's controversial agreement with Microsoft on Windows-Linux interoperability and virtualisation was in the firm's best interests, considering how the open source community reacted to the deal for the most part (angrily).

And needless to say I asked for his thoughts on the firm's latest results.

Anyway to listen to the podcast click the link below (there's an approximate timeline of the questions below if you want to skip to a particular segment):

Ron Hovsepian Novell CEO Podcast.wma

Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell.

0.22: Can you tell me what you are most proud of at Novell during your tensure as President and CEO thus far?

1.55: One of the more controversial decisions since you've been CEO was to sign that interoperability agreement with Microsoft. Knowing what you know now about the open source commmunity's reaction, was that the right move for Novell?

4.12: How pleased are you with Linux platform revenue, and is it doing enough to make up for [any declines] in Novell's more mature product categories?

5.25: You acquired PlateSpin and Managed Objects... can you explain what your recently announced Intelligent Workload Management strategy is all about?

9.15: Can you put some more detail around specific products in those four key areas: Build, Manage, Secure and Measure?

16.45: Is the sales decline in Novell's most recent quarter (Q4 revenue 09 was $216m, down from $245m in Q4 '08) purely down to the economic environment, or are there areas you have identified where you need to improve your execution?

19.00: Novell has plenty of cash in the bank; how keenly will you look at acquisitions in 2010?

20.30: The average tenure of a CEO is about 5 years; do you feel that you have plenty more you can do at Novell, to regain some of that growth?

Apple launches its latest gizmo: the eyePad

2010-02-03T17:58:35Z

With thanks to Nick Kuijpers on Flickr.

Can the iPad double as a phone?

2010-01-29T16:52:32Z

Sandra was chuffed to find that she could make calls on her new iPad...

Picture source: zo diggity on Flickr.

Open source BI

2010-01-18T10:23:06Z

CBR is currently researching open source business intelligence. If you have any experience of using open source business intelligence technologies, we would be grateful if you would email jason dot stamper @industryreview.com, with your views on the implementation. Was it successful, what did you use it for, would you use open source BI again? How does it compare to proprietary offerings, if you have used any of those?

Your comments will remain anonymous and neither your name nor company name will be mentioned in our article.

Thanks, the CBR team.

MySQL co-founder doubts Oracle support

2010-01-18T10:02:49Z

With an EU decision on Oracle's potential $5.6bn acquisition of Sun Microsystems expected later this month, MySQL's co-founder David Axmark has told CBR that he believes there is 'no real reason' for Oracle to support the open source database application.

"I do believe that Oracle has no real reason to support MySQL. I don't think the competition between them was enormous, but it is growing and has been growing for a number of years. I don't think it's healthy for Oracle to continue to grow it," he said.

Speaking to CBR after giving a lecture at the London Business School's Entrepreneurship Leader Series, Axmark added, however, that it is unlikely Oracle will kill off the database and that current MySQL customers should not be too badly affected by the takeover.

"I doubt they'd 'kill' anything," he said. "Will they aggressively sell to companies that Oracle can sell to? Never. Will it hurt the current MySQL customers? Probably not. There's no money to be made for them there. Upselling current MySQL customers to Oracle would be tiny money. Stopping Oracle customers from downgrading to any open source database will be lots of money."

Axmark also believes that aiming MySQL at a market where Oracle's existing database applications do not operate will mean that the two can coexist. "If I was Oracle, I would aim MySQL even more at the web sector, where Oracle doesn't really have anything. So more development, more uses and they don't really lose any revenue. I wouldn't aim it at the enterprise sector where Oracle already is," he told CBR.