I received a comment from Richard Whitehead, Director of Datacenter Solutions at Novell in response to my thoughts on the Novell – MO acquisition announcement.

While I’m appreciative of Richard joining the conversation, I feel the answers are a bit in line with the typical “post M&A” honeymoon responses you see in the press and typical micro-portals that are built to reassure customers that “all will be OK”. We’ve all seen it before.

Here’s Richard’s comment in my original post and some of my commentary. Thanks again Richard – don’t be a stranger! Get Abbas and Frank out there spreading the gospel!

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Hi Doug,

Thanks for taking the time to put up a thoughtful post on the Managed Objects acquisition by Novell. I’d like to take a moment to address the great points in your blog.

What’s the bigger strategy and vision?

Novell’s vision and strategy is to Make IT Work As One. The acquisition will extend Novell’s portfolio of data center solutions by adding tools to provide a unified view of all information and workloads. As a result, both IT and business managers will have improved visibility into how their information systems deliver business services across physical and virtual environments, so managers can make better decisions, ensure availability and quality of service while lowering the total cost of data center management – thus allowing IT to work as one.

**DLM*** Ok, sounds nice. Now, how will you help clients really work as “one”? My opinion here is that this is everything that surrounds the typical vendor portfolio. It’s people, organizational structure, silos, change and transformation, consulting, services, mentoring and MOST importantly how to operationalize the portfolio so IT will THINK, OPERATE and RESPOND DIFFERENTLY than they would without the portfolio (or other vendor’s portfolio).

Is this really a CMDB play with BSM as a nice to have?

We don’t look at BSM as a “nice to have,” it’s a critical part of the strategy behind the acquisition. We feel Novell’s existing workload management and virtualization solutions will especially benefit by adding flexible service modeling, advanced analytics and a unique Web 2.0-based virtualization element. Customers can now extract IT configuration and workload information in near real time, put it into a powerful CMDB, model how the IT configuration provides business services and then generate visualizations and “dashboards” that show how IT directly aligns to business services.

**DLM** I think what many of us in the industry are scratching our heads on is that you’re missing core enabling portfolio products that would bring the full power of the MO solution and architecture to life. This is why I ask if this is really an acquisition for the CMDB solution near term.

Will MO become a Novell oriented solution?

Managed Objects will be integrated with Novell’s system and resource management business. Over time and after the MO acquisition closes the MO brand will be transitioned into the Novell brand.

**DLM** This was more about how the investment dollars will likely focus on supporting the Novell strategy and vision more than the integrations with other vendors.

Will the Novell name keep exclude MO from some clients and opportunities?

Not entirely sure if we understand this question, but I think you’re asking if we’ll support existing customers. Absolutely. We intend to support and grow existing MO customers and we’ve already visited most of them to bring them up to speed on the acquisition, and reassure them of our continued support. We will be opportunistic in pursuing new opportunities as they arise.

**DLM** My point here was that many don’t think of Novell initially as someone to invite to the table for an RFP in the IT management and monitoring, ITIL or BSM space. When I think of Novell, I immediately think of Netware, SUSE and ZENworks. I suppose this is all sales and marketing and spinning up the new Novell. Maybe a sexy new “2.0” name change is in order like Compuware has done? 🙂

Will this help or hinder their green field competition against the big4??

Almost all of the major BSM players are Novell’s partners today, and that won’t change. We believe our solution is complementary and provides rich added value to customers in the data center. In fact, Managed Objects has always integrated with IT management products from the flagship BSM vendors including IBM, Tivoli, HP, CA and BMC. This open and agnostic approach is critical to us.

**DLM** This question ties into the previous one, will Novell be in the final two for a big CMDB or BSM opportunity in the future against the ones you’d expect to be there?

Will they be relegated to only compete with the tier 2 business service management providers (Quest Software, Compuware, ASG, etc)?

Managed Objects has a mature technology platform deployed at hundreds of Global 2000 customers, and now that platform is available to Novell’s customers and prospects. As mentioned in the earlier question, we believe this joint solution will complement and extend customer capabilities.

**DLM**This was my speculation that if the previous were true, Novell and MO would be forced to compete in the “tier 2” BSM marketplace.

How will Novell fill out some of the key gaps in its portfolio to fully enable an end-to-end solution that can leverage MO’s architecture and data collection capabilities? (systems, network, application, service, transaction, user experience, etc.) I see a big need here, starting with basic systems, network and application management (open source opportunities?).

Around 2 years ago, Novell announced the “Blueprint for Better Management”. In March this year, we completed the acquisition of PlateSpin which added key capabilities. The acquisition of MO shows execution and commitment to this blueprint. More details can be found at http://www.novell.com/managedobjects

**DLM** Many in the industry think you’ve got a loooong way to go here. I look forward to watching the portfolio round out and new partnerships evolve. Check out OpenNMS, RiverMuse, ScienceLogic, Nimsoft, ZenOSS, Quest Software as potential partners or further M&A targets to shore up the fundamentals.

Will MO sales and engineering team experience be diluted by other product quotas and priorities? BSM takes a unique sales team and ideally a very consultative approach to sell the value proposition and overall lifecycle. With more products to sell, how will this impact the overall BSM message?

We will provide more details on a joint product roadmap when the acquisition closes. There are no plans to discontinue any MO products, and they’ll be integrated with and enhance Novell’s systems management solutions. There are no plans to open source any of the Managed Objects products, and current product release cycles will not be disrupted.

As for how the overall BSM message will change, we see an enhancement. The integration of virtualization into the BSM fabric by way of Novell*s virtualization management lifecycle products will provide a tie into workflow management, identity management and collaboration tools.

Anything I haven’t covered here can probably be found on our acquisition resource page located at http://www.managedobjects.com/novell.

**DLM** Well, the priorities, quotas, commissions, etc. will all eventually change. The guy that was selling SUSE or ZENworks will eventually need to sell the MO portfolio. This is often VERY disruptive to the business and the typical client knows when they no longer get the “A TEAM” on-site anymore. I hope you focus on what it takes to sell, deliver and operationalize Business Service Management!