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?
