Vanity Fair’s article looks inside the Executive E-mails and Cannibalistic Culture That Felled a Tech Giant…

Analyzing one of American corporate history’s greatest mysteries—the lost decade of Microsoft—two-time George Polk Award winner (and V.F.’s newest contributing editor) Kurt Eichenwald traces the “astonishinglyfoolish management  decisions” at the company that “could serve as a business-school case study on the pitfalls of success.” Relying on dozens of interviews and internal corporate records—including e-mails between executives at the company’s highest ranks—Eichenwald offers an unprecedented view of life inside Microsoft during the reign of its current chief executive, Steve Ballmer, in the August issue. Today, a single Apple product—the iPhone—generates more revenue than all of Microsoft’s wares combined.

Eichenwald’s conversations reveal that a management system known as “stack ranking”—a program that forces every unit to declare a certain percentage of employees as top performers, good performers, average, and poor—effectively crippled Microsoft’s ability to innovate. “Every current and former Microsoft employee I interviewed—every one—cited stack ranking as the most destructive process inside of Microsoft, something that drove out untold numbers of employees,” Eichenwald writes. “If you were on a team of 10 people, you walked in the first day knowing that, no matter how good everyone was, 2 people were going to get a great review, 7 were going to get mediocre reviews, and 1 was going to get a terrible review,” says a former software developer. “It leads to employees focusing on competing with each other rather than competing with other companies.”

When Eichenwald asks Brian Cody, a former Microsoft engineer, whether a review of him was ever based on the quality of his work, Cody says, “It was always much less about how I could become a better engineer and much more about my need to improve my visibility among other managers.” Ed McCahill, who worked at Microsoft as a marketing manager for 16 years, says, “You look at the Windows Phone and you can’t help but wonder, How did Microsoft squander the lead they had with the Windows CE devices? They had a great lead, they were years ahead. And they completely blew it. And they completely blew it because of the bureaucracy.”

According to Eichenwald, Microsoft had a prototype e-reader ready to go in 1998, but when the technology group presented it to Bill Gates he promptly gave it a thumbs-down, saying it wasn’t right for Microsoft. “He didn’t like the user interface, because it didn’t look like Windows,” a programmer involved in the project recalls.

“The group working on the initiative was removed from a reporting line to Gates and folded into the major-product group dedicated to software for Office,” Eichenwald reports. “Immediately, the technology unit was reclassified from one charged with dreaming up and producing new ideas to one required to report profits and losses right away.” “Our entire plan had to be moved forward three to four years from 2003–04, and we had to ship a product in 1999,” says Steve Stone, a founder of the technology group. “We couldn’t be focused anymore on developing technology that was effective for consumers. Instead, all of a sudden we had to look at this and say, ‘How are we going to use this to make money?’”

A former official in Microsoft’s Office division tells Eichenwald that the death of the e-reader effort was not simply the consequence of a desire for immediate profits. The real problem for his colleagues was the touch screen: “Office is designed to inputting with a keyboard, not a stylus or a finger,” the official says. “There were all kinds of personal prejudices at work.” According to Microsoft executives, the company’s loyalty to Windows and Office repeatedly kept them from jumping on emerging technologies. “Windows was the god—everything had to work with Windows,” Stone tells Eichenwald. “Ideas about mobile computing with a user experience that was cleaner than with a P.C. were deemed unimportant by a few powerful people in that division, and they managed to kill the effort.”

When one of the young developers of MSN Messenger noticed college kids giving status updates on AOL’s AIM, he saw what Microsoft’s product lacked. “That was the beginning of the trend toward Facebook, people having somewhere to put their thoughts, a continuous stream of consciousness,” he tells Eichenwald. “The main purpose of AIM wasn’t to chat, but to give you the chance to log in at any time and check out what your friends were doing.” When he pointed out to his boss that Messenger lacked a short-message feature, the older man dismissed his concerns; he couldn’t see why young people would care about putting up a few words. “He didn’t get it,” the developer says. “And because he didn’t know or didn’t believe how young people were using messenger programs, we didn’t do anything.”

“I see Microsoft as technology’s answer to Sears,” said Kurt Massey, a former senior marketing manager. “In the 40s, 50s, and 60s, Sears had it nailed. It was top-notch, but now it’s just a barren wasteland. And that’s Microsoft. The company just isn’t cool anymore.”

“They used to point their finger at IBM and laugh,” said Bill Hill, a former Microsoft manager. “Now they’ve become the thing they despised.”

More:

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2012/07/microsoft-downfall-emails-steve-ballmer

I’m off to London next week to do Microsoft’s 4 day course on Implementing Forefront Identity Manager 2010 (M50382), intended they say for Systems Engineers, Developers, Architects, and Project Leaders who need to gain a good understanding of how Forefront Identity Manager 2010 can be applied to manage identity information across a number of directories or databases. We will learn how to:

• Understand FIM concepts and components.
• Identify appropriate FIM scenarios.
• Manage users, groups, and passwords using FIM.
• Synchronize identity data across systems, such as Active Directory and HR.
• Understand the issues involved in loading data (initial load, backup, and disaster recovery).
• Configure security for different levels of user.
• Manage password self-service reset and synchronization.
• Automate run cycles.
• Handle sets, simple workflows, and management policy rules (MPRs)

I’m doing the training with QA at their apparently state of the art purpose built training centre near Tower Bridge. I negotiated a good rate for the course and accomodation at The Tower A Guoman Hotel next to Tower Bridge, a 4-star hotel with apparently lovely London and The River Thames. So I should be comfy! I’ll catch the train as I simply can’t stand trying to negotiate the London traffic in a car.

FIM is effectively Microsoft’s equivalent of Novell Identity Manager, with which I am already familiar. So the plan is to do some self-study/revision over Xmas and sit the exam in January.

To top up the knowledge from the course materials I’ve also purchased what appears to be just about the only book available on FIM – “Microsoft Forefront Identity Manager 2010 R2 Handbook” by Kent Nordstrom. It’s had positive reviews so should give me a slightly different slant on the subject.

This is to prepare me to pass Exam 70-158 which will gaine me the cert Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS): Forefront Identity Manager 2010, Configuration. It should be interesting and will add a string to my bow when it comes to Identity Management work.

Leeds City Council’s ICT department is stepping up its efforts to help save the council money in the medium to long term. This will include the introduction of new IT asset management software and potential further development of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) options for employees and council members.

A series of decisions are due to be made over the coming months as part of ICT Invest to Save and Cost Avoidance initiatives, which are intended to deliver services more efficiently and save money in the long term. In terms of these overall efficiencies, this year Leeds has to find £55m of savings on top of £90m last year and further significant savings are expected to be made over the next four years.

The council has already made a strategic commitment to Microsoft’s technology platform and is now considering whether Microsoft’s System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) will deliver a sufficiently robust asset management capability in addition to undertaking software patching and software distribution.

Dave Maidment, head of ICT strategy and commissioning, explained: “It’s about consolidation of applications and services, and this is just one example of where a single software solution can potentially solve a number of operational challenges and save money.”

On its BYOD plans, Leeds will shortly be examining how council employees and members may be able to adopt a “Bring Your Own Computer” approach, extending the council’s BYOD current efforts beyond smartphones to laptops and tablets. Over 6,000 council employees are currently supplied with corporately owned mobile phones, 800 of which are using smartphones running on Windows and Android operating systems.

In addition, over 200 BYOD devices in the shape of personal smartphones and tablet devices are being securely managed by the MobileIron MDM product.

MobileIron is being deployed to manage the corporate smartphone estate as well, says Maidment: “It’s another example of where we are looking to use a single solution, in this case to manage corporate and personal devices. As more people elect to use their own devices, the council saves money.”

Another key plank of Leeds’ ICT approach is connectivity. The council is currently assisting with the due diligence phase on the Yorkshire & Humberside Partnership Management Board’s plans for Public Services Network connectivity, with Virgin Media Business as its selected supplier.

This regional PSN initiative has been led and driven by Leeds. The Board approved Virgin’s appointment last month and has now instructed Yorkshire & Humberside PSN’s project office to commence due diligence with a plan for the contract to be completed by October 2012.

Leeds is also starting to look at cloud service options both as a consumer and potentially as a provider and is already running some key applications out of the cloud. As Maidment explained: “When contracts come towards expiry and applications need to be replaced, the cloud is now a clear option if best value can be demonstrated. However we need to be mindful of the connectivity, security and integration challenges. This will get better as the market matures.”

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/18/leeds_city_council_byod_plans/

SALT LAKE CITY — Jurors in the billion-dollar Novell-Microsoft antitrust case are apparently wrestling with a number of questions, including what a “hung jury” means.

The seven-woman, seven-man jury was expected to continue deliberations Friday. Jurors have asked the court for several clarifications since receiving the case Wednesday morning. Twice it asked about the term hung jury, possibly signaling that might be on their minds as they weigh two months of complex testimony and hundreds of documents.

Attorneys for both sides wrapped up their cases Tuesday with closing arguments in U.S. District Court.

Novell alleges Microsoft violated antitrust laws during the development of Windows 95, putting the Provo-based company’s newly acquired WordPerfect word processing software at a competitive disadvantage and allowing Microsoft to gain a monopoly in the computer operating systems market.

Microsoft contends Novell bought a dying company in WordPerfect and was slow to recognize the emergence of Windows. It argued that delays in development of Novell’s spread sheet application slowed the release of its software for Windows 95.

Novell seeks as much as $1.3 billion in compensation. Microsoft says the Provo-based company deserves nothing…

http://www.deseretnews.com/article/705395917/Jurors-in-Novell-Microsoft-case-ask-court-about-meaning-of-hung-jury.html

SALT LAKE CITY — Jurors deliberating Wednesday in a Utah company’s $1 billion federal antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft Corp. appeared confused, sending at least five questions to the judge, one of which couldn’t be answered.

Novell Inc. sued Microsoft in 2004, claiming the Redmond, Wash.-based technology giant duped it into developing a version of its WordPerfect writing program for Windows 95 only to pull the plug so Microsoft could gain market share with its own word program.

Jurors started deliberating at about 8:45 a.m. Wednesday and didn’t go home until about 7:45 p.m., the Salt Lake Tribune reported. They’ll resume their discussions Thursday…

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/15/novell-microsoft-suit-jury_n_1150657.html

THE JURY is still deliberating to reach a verdict in an antitrust lawsuit filed by Novell against Microsoft, with a decision possibly due later today.

The lawsuit centres on allegations by Novell that Microsoft acted anti-competitively by asking it to develop a version of its word processor Wordperfect for the Windows 95 operating system and then making it impossible for Novell to meet that request to boost the market share of Microsoft Word.

Until the mid 1990s Novell’s Wordperfect application was the dominant word processor, so it’s not surprising that it is a little miffed that it lost out on the basis that Word had better integration with Windows 95. Microsoft, however, claims that Novell simply acted too late to develop a compatible version of Wordperfect and that was ultimately the cause of Novell’s loss of market share, which fell from around 50 per cent to less than 10 per cent…

http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2133053/jury-deliberates-novell-microsoft-lawsuit

Now that Attachmate owns Novell, what does the formerly obscure company plan to do with its $2.2-billion operating system and networking prize? Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at ZDNet interviewed Attachmate via e-mail CEO Jeff Hawn and this is what he told me.

Before launching into the interview, Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols noted that most of Novell’s senior executive staff won’t be hanging around. Ron Hovsepian; President and CEO; Dana Russell, CFO; John Dragoon,  CMO; and Markus Rex, SVP and General Manager of open platforms and long time SUSE leader have all left. So it is that Attachmate is starting with a clean management slate.

SJVN: What’s the plan for Novell’s offerings?

JH: Business will operate as usual at Novell. We intend to operate the company as an individual business unit, meaning that there is a direct line of sight between sales, marketing, technical and professional services, product management and engineering. Novell will operate autonomously and now has the ability to focus and dedicate resources on the needs of their customers.

Current Novell and SUSE product roadmaps will remain in place. The Attachmate Group does not end-of-life products and we do not force customers to move to/from any products – we are focused on meeting the needs of our customers and that is our first priority.

SJVN: What’s the plan for SUSE’s offering?

JH: We are bringing together the products and people associated with the Novell OPS [Open Platform Solutions] business and forming a new dedicated business unit under the SUSE brand. The fundamentals remain the same: a passionate commitment to quality engineering and excellent customer service. But, this new BU structure will enable the focus, agility and adaptability required to aggressively pursue the rapidly growing enterprise Linux market opportunity. Customers, service providers and industry partners are ready for the technical performance, business value and world-class service SUSE can offer as a focused business unit.

SJVN: Why split Novell and SUSE?

JH: SUSE was acquired by Novell some time ago, and we see tremendous potential in this technology. Our hope is to bring prominence to it by giving it individual branding as a separate business unit. By separating both Novell and SUSE, we can give each of these brands the focus they need to meet the needs of their specific customers and ensure that they are successful.

SJVN: Who will manage them? I’m presuming they’ll have separate management teams? Will SUSE be headed out of Germany again?

JH: Novell and SUSE will each be run by a President and General Manager, and both ultimately report to me. Novell will be headquartered in Provo, Utah and managed by President and General manager Bob Flynn. SUSE will be headquartered in Nuremburg, Germany and will be run by Nils Brauckmann, President and General Manager.

SJVN: What plans does Attachmate for Novell/SUSE’s open-source offerings? E.g. openSUSE and Mono.

JH: SUSE sponsorship and participation in key open-source projects is a fundamental element of the business. This commitment is driven by a desire to contribute to and collaborate with the community in a way that fosters the success of open source technologies overall and creates the greatest value for our customers. The openSUSE project is a great example of vibrant and healthy collaboration. SUSE sponsorship and participation in projects like openSUSE creates great value for the community and also for SUSE customers who benefit from the innovations and advancements we create together.

SJVN: What will Attachmate’s acquisition mean for Novell/SUSE’s partnerships with Microsoft? With its VARs?

JH: Microsoft and our partners will continue to play an important role for all of The Attachmate Group business units. There are no changes to our existing partners and channels.

SJVN: Will Novell/SUSE continue its membership with the Open Invention Network [an open-source patent protection group]? The Linux Foundation?

JH:: We will continue our membership in the Open Invention Network as well as The Linux Foundation.

So, what does all this mean? Well, for customers, partners and developers it sounds like business as usual. Still, with such a clean management slate we’re going to have to wait and see how things really come out in the next few months. For the moment, if I were working with Novell I’d be cautiously optimistic.

Read the original article here:

Attachmate reveals Novell, SUSE, & Linux Plans (ZDNet)

The Attachmate Group this week finalized its $2.2 billion buyout of network industry pioneer Novell, which begins the next phase of its evolution. Attachmate will operate Novell as two separate business units, one focused on the Novell brand and the other on the SUSE Linux brand. In addition, the privately held Attachmate Group has business units focused on the Attachmate and NetIQ brands. IDG Enterprise’s Chief Content Officer John Gallant spoke with Attachmate Chairman and CEO Jeff Hawn shortly after the Novell deal was sealed to get his thoughts on what the acquisition means for Attachmate and its new and old customers.

Why does buying Novell make sense for Attachmate? One reason is that with our existing Attachmate unit and NetIQ unit, we share in many of the same customers. So there’s a high degree of overlap with the customer base and little or no overlap with the products and solutions that we offer. But we now have more to offer them. Number two, the pattern recognition here in terms of what we’ve acquired with Novell, we’ve got a mix of very mature technologies and mature markets, along with emerging high-growth technology offerings as well, e.g., SUSE Linux, the virtualization management, data center management and the like. That is consistent with what we think we’ve done well at Attachmate and NetIQ where we also have a mix of very mature technologies and those that are more in the emerging category. We think, and our customers have told us, that we do a pretty good job of managing across that broad spectrum of mature technologies that are well established and anchored in the customers’ environments to those that are emerging. So here’s an opportunity to kind of do that again.

Tell me a little bit about the organizational structure. Why keep four separate units? Within the Attachmate Group, what you will hear about and what customers will know us as is as the Attachmate unit, the NetIQ unit, the Novell unit and the SUSE Linux unit. From an organization standpoint, that makes for a clean line of sight from the customer back through our sales and services, and all the way back to product development. That gives each of our four units the ability to keep focused on specific customer needs in their specific markets. If you look back, those are four really great brands. Attachmate and Novell have been around since the ’80s. NetIQ and SUSE have been around since the ’90s. I really wanted to make sure that customers would see those brands in the most prominent way possible.

Tell me how this changes the competitive landscape. Who does this put you up against? It’s many of the same in kind of our existing markets. It gives us more to offer, for instance, in and around the identity and access management markets of security. The exception is with our SUSE Linux unit, where we are now competing with Red Hat, and we intend to focus on those opportunities and compete very hard. As it relates to the other players, the Microsofts of the world, the Symantecs and the like, we’ve already been competing with them. We now have a much stronger position with which to compete.

From a customer perspective, if you’re talking to a CIO or one of the top IT titles, what is it you want them to understand about Attachmate? What’s the overall vision you want them to get? Great products, great support, easy to do business with. And the point there is I do not have the complexity of also having to spend half my time crafting a story for Wall Street, and getting people excited about a vision. I can focus exclusively on taking care of that install base, and whether that’s new licenses into existing customers, whether that’s maintenance renewals, whether those are service offerings. You know, the types of things that are very important to customers and not always viewed in the same positive light by a Wall Street sell-side analyst who is trying to figure out where the penny per share of growth is going to come from. So our point to customers is we’re focused on your needs, we’re pragmatic about what we’re working on. I just need to get customers excited. We’ve got an install base that is plus or minus about 65,000 – that’s 65,000 of the largest commercial and governmental enterprises around the world. They already know us and we know them.

What are the next steps? What do you have to do in terms of product integration, in terms of marketing and visibility for the company, in terms of getting people to understand how this is all coming together? Number one, things are made simpler by the fact that there’s not overlap with the products and solutions. We’re not going to have any “end-of-life decisions” to make. What we’ve already communicated is that the product road maps and commitment to the existing solutions remains intact. And I’ll go beyond that. We’re going to strengthen what that means as it relates to support and as it relates to carrying forward the road map. Number two, because it’s the customers that we know in many of the cases already, we’re able to communicate with them more efficiently than we would be otherwise. So it’s really about widening that communication line into those customers and helping them understand what we’re offering across the four units. All that sums up to: this was an important deal, a milestone for us. And quite candidly, for the industry, in that these are four really strong brands. The challenge now is operating those four units to maximize their performance. That means taking care of the customers and taking care of our employees. You take care of those two constituencies and you tend to get results that you like.

Attachmate boss on Novell buyout: Great brands, little overlap

PROVO — In 1979, a startup firm called Novell Inc. began operations in Utah County and was instrumental in making the Utah Valley a focus for technology and software development.

The company’s technology contributed to the emergence of local area networks, which displaced the dominant mainframe computing model of that era. At one time, Novell was valued at around $8 billion, and was the world’s second-largest software company behind Microsoft.

But in the fast-paced, ever-changing world of technology, companies that fail to innovate and stay ahead of competitors will soon find themselves irrelevant, victims of the same forces that propelled them to the top.

At Novell’s peak in the ’90s, 70 percent of the world’s computer networks were run with its system management software. More recently, the company’s fortunes have faded under pressure from Microsoft and other Web-based competitors — prompting Novell to try to reinvent itself as a distributor of the free Linux operating system.

Just last week, Novell announced the layoff of hundreds of employees from its once bustling Provo campus, only days after the company was sold. The Attachmate Group, based in Houston, announced that it had completed a $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell and the company’s headquarters was being relocated back to Utah County from Waltham, Mass. — where it had moved in 2004.

While Novell would not offer specific numbers, an employee said approximately 800 people companywide would lose their jobs — with most of those reductions in Provo.

In 2000, Novell employed more than 6,000 workers worldwide, including 2,000 in Utah County. Today, the number has fallen dramatically to approximately 3,000 around the globe, though the company would not specify how many Utah workers would remain following the recent layoffs.

“Out of respect for those affected, we are not disclosing specific figures on layoffs,” said Ian Bruce, Novell director or public relations in an email. “The restructuring affected offices worldwide, not just Utah.”

Inevitably with these kinds of complex acquisitions, there will be some workforce reductions, he added.

As a result of the merger, Novell stock stopped trading publicly and the company was selling patents to Microsoft consortium CPTN Holdings LLC for $450 million.

Despite the layoffs, Attachmate and Novell are putting a positive spin on the layoffs, announcing that Novell would be coming “back to its roots and moving the headquarters back to Provo and back to Utah.”

“This will become the center for the Novell business going forward,” Bruce said.

Utah will again be the center for Novell operations, including management, marketing, engineering and research and development, Bruce said.

He acknowledged that while the job losses are “regrettable, we are confident that as part of The Attachmate Group, Novell will continue to innovate and prosper.”

A news release stated that Attachmate planned to operate Novell as two separate business units under the Novell and SUSE brand names.

“We think that The Attachmate Group’s acquisition of Novell provides a unique opportunity to further deliver significant value to customers and partners worldwide through innovative solutions, quality products, and exceptional service,” Bruce said. “At this scale, we will be able to bring to bear richer solutions, more talent and expertise, a larger product portfolio, and an expanded field presence to customers and partners worldwide.”

A former top executive with Novell said that the once great software firm lost its competitive edge because it was unable to match the marketing savvy of leaders like Microsoft.

David Bradford, a senior vice president and general council for Novell from 1985 to 2000, said his company did not make the adjustments necessary to keep up with other top software firms. In 1985, every company in the world needed what Novell sold, he said.

“What the company probably should have done is to remain focused on its core success with the network operating system,” he said. “Continue to optimize that and continue to do things … in the open source market to be more successful.”

Bradford also said Novell was slow to “capture and understand better” the importance of the Internet, which was another contributor to the company’s inability to stay competitive.

Still, he said he has “high hopes” for the future of Novell in the wake of its acquisition by The Attachmate Group.

“They’ve got to find the right niches to go after to be successful and to leverage their core strengths and move into adjacent, (broad) and fast-growing markets,” Bradford said. “That’s the challenge that Novell (and) Attachmate have in the future.”

Read More:

Novell finding its way back in competitive, fast-paced tech business

Novell Inc., one of Utah’s largest technology operations, merged with software company Attachmate last Monday, leaving hundreds of Provo branch workers  suddenly jobless.

But Novell is far from unfamiliar with cutbacks of colossal proportions.

Novell cut 600 Provo-based jobs in 2005, and 200 more in 2007. And now, after a $2.2 billion acquisition, nearly 800 employees have been cut from the company.

Novell did not disclose an exact number, but the majority of the cutbacks came from sales, human resources, corporate operations and the legal department. A former Novell accountant of 13 years, Pearl Adolphson, told Fox 13 the layoffs were unexpected.

“We were not told,” Adolphson said. “We were just brought in and told our jobs were gone.”

Pat Holman, former Novell employee, said in an email, “When a company goes this fast through its life cycle, the ride is bumpy for the employees. Not only did Novell launch 20,000 careers, it also ended almost all of those careers.”

Novell employee Nick Smith, 24, from Payson, said everyone knew something was coming, but none of the employees were sure who would be let go.

“A lot of my close friends were laid off,” Smith said. “I had mixed emotions. I struggled to find excitement or joy when so many of my friends were out of jobs, but at the end of the day, I was relieved to still have mine.”

In an official statement made on April 27, CEO Jeff Hawn said, “I hope you share my enthusiasm for our combined organizations’ exciting future, as we believe this is great news.”

Hawn later said the merger, and subsequent layoffs, will be beneficial for Provo and Provo employment.

Some claim the layoffs are a manifestation of Novell’s lack of innovation. Holman agrees.

“Patents line the halls of Novell as if they were small monuments to the innovation that once was,” Holman said in an email. “The brilliant minds of the engineering staff have now been reduced to a stack of paper and intellectual property up for sale to the highest bidder.  This is not unique in the software industry, but what is unique are the people behind the plaques on the wall.”

Holman founded an alumni group for former Novell employees to network and support one another.

“It is a group of people who look out for each other, chase down leads for the unemployed and pool funds together when serious trouble arises,” Holman said.

The alumni group still meets for lunch every two years.

Novell has partnered with Microsoft since 2006, describing the partnership on its website as “collaborative,” where the “customers win.” But as a result of Novell’s layoffs, some are doubting the partnership’s reciprocity.

Twitter user Roy Schestowitz said in a tweet, “Novell taught us that no matter the circumstances, Microsoft partners always end down below. Microsoft must be laughing loudly.”

Smith said the relationship between Microsoft and Novell is still competitive.

“Novell has tried to build avenues and form somewhat of a partnership to coexist with Microsoft, but I think they’re more of a competitor or a threat to Novell than anything else,” Smith said.

Still, Smith said the layoffs were a wise business decision.

“Although sad, I think it was a smart move for Novell,” Smith said. “They needed to downsize because there was a lot of redundancy in terms of positions. The employees that stayed on will work for a better company now that it’s merged: the company is leaner and more efficient.”

When asked if he feels secure in his job, Smith said with a laugh, “I do now!”

Read More:

Job cutbacks not novel concept at Novell

Employees say hundreds laid off at Novell’s Provo office