Citing unnamed sources, the Post says a "strategic buyer" will shell out cash to acquire the SUSE Linux business that Novell paid $210m for in November 2003. That Linux business has just finally made it to break-even, according to Novell, and will by our estimates generate maybe $145m in revenues in fiscal 2010. (Novell brought in $108.2m in Linux platform sales in the first nine months of fiscal 2010 ended in July).
Another private equity firm is rumored to be taking the rest of the company, including the NetWare operating system, Novell's security and access products, and its systems management tools. It is unclear what will happen to the hybrid Open Enterprise Server, which runs NetWare services on the SUSE Linux kernel, but it seems likely that if such a deal came to pass, the second company would license SUSE Linux and pay royalties to the first so as to continue to sell and support OES. It is unclear where products such as the new Cloud Manager, announced this week to manage private and soon public cloudy infrastructure, would end up.
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