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XenSource Acquisition: Novell to play spark the hyperdisrutive game?

Linux-Mag reports about speculations of Novell will end up buying XenSource and Altiris.I think acquisition is only a small part of the hyper-disruptive year that 2007 has been touted to be. Microsoft's rather controversial entry into the open source game will surely prompt Novell to take some action to start doing some work on it to finally get something out of that "blood in the water".

If Microsoft has a patent covering Xen-like virtualization tucked away somewhere in their intellectual property vault then Novell could use that to plant doubt in customers minds about upgrading to RHEL 5.

Novell paid handsomely for that patent indemnification -- both in cash and community PR -- you have to assume they're going to put it to use and acquiring XenSource would put them in a position to leverage it.


Redhat's sales are not daunted by Oracle's own Enterprise Linux's announcement. Neither is Novell gaining much ground. Sometimes Novell tends to look a lot like Sun. They have good products but just can't sell well.

XenSource's acquisition might have some value to Novell's suite but I think it is still too early to say if it will be a profitable one. I could be merely a speculation, to spark off the scare so others start looking at XenSource OR maybe people want to look at XenSource again since it lost a bit of steam (I mean marketing steam) at the expense of other upcoming virtualization vendors like Virtual Iron et al. It should make "strategic sense" and not merely "geographic sense" as Matt Assay put it in InfoWorld.

Honestly I am worried about Novell's future. They have taken up a some bold move when they moved in with Microsoft. But still I don't know. Is it a mercy buying (although still in speculative phase which might never materialize for all we know) or plain strategic intent? We don't know. But I don't think this acquisition will affect VMware or Citrix in any way.

So in the end not really a hyperdisruptive move(if taken). And what about the user/client community, do they really care?

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