June 26, 2009, 6:32 am
Novell was recently rumored to be shopping itself around for a buyer. The new rumors? That it’s doing some shopping of its own. In this, Novell isn’t alone, with Dell also looking to pick up companies that can expand its product lines, as both look to grow despite CIOs’ decreasing willingness to spend. Open source may factor into both companies’ M&A strategies.
As reported in Daily News & Analysis, Novell CFO Dana Russell has said the company is “interested in making acquisition in the high-growth businesses like identity security and compliance management software, data centre tools and open source software.” With over $1 billion in the bank, Novell is in a prime position to buy companies on the cheap.
However, Novell should avoid its SiteScape error, viz., buying into a trendy but not yet profitable market. Identity security and compliance management are probably safe, because they’re precisely the sort of “boring” markets that CIOs will pay money for in a recession…
