Novell looking at acquisitions

Contrary to J P Morgan analyst John DiFucci’s assumption that Novell was considering selling part of its assets or the entire company, the Utah-based Linux software firm is actually looking at buyouts in the three areas it is currently operating in.

Dana Russell, senior vice president and chief financial officer (CFO) of Novell, said his company would be interested in making acquisition in the high-growth businesses like identity security and compliance management software, data centre tools and open source software.

The reason Novell could go for inorganic growth in the identity security and compliance segment of its business, he said, is that the market is currently very fragmented. Russell said taking over a company operating in that space would give Novell an edge over other players in terms of market share.

“In identity security and compliance management segment we have done very well. It’s an area that is highly distributed. No one has a dominating position in the market place but it is now consolidating. That’s the area, the company would like to grow in,” he said. Russell said growing inorganically in data centre tooling business would help Novell expand its customer-base rapidly. “We might buy that asset (data centre tools firm),” he said.

The finance head of Novell clarified that his company had no plans to dispose off any of its assets as reported in certain sections in the media.