“Novell’s biggest news of the show came in a joint announcement
with Red Hat, which unveiled plans to use the Provo, Utah,
company’s NDS (Novell Directory Services) eDirectory and DirXML
technology as the basis for the Red Hat Network, an Internet
service for managing Linux networks, also announced at the
show.”
“Under the terms of the deal, Red Hat, of Durham, N.C., will use
eDirectory to give its customers centralized management and
authenticated access to services for deploying and managing Linux
systems over the Internet. Red Hat will use eDirectory with Dir XML
to connect system preferences with administration policies to give
users a more personal experience.”
“Ironically, it was the Red Hat partnership news that
sparked the most speculation about Novell’s future. During a press
conference following his keynote speech at N+I, Novell CEO Eric
Schmidt responded in vague terms to questions about a possible
takeover by Red Hat. “The beautiful thing about that question
is that I’m not allowed to answer it,” Schmidt said. Further
fueling the takeover speculation is that No vell’s stock price sank
from a 52-week high of $45 per share in February to less than $8 in
June. The stock has lately been trading at about $10 per
share.”