Novell’s Acquired – What’s the Future Hold?

This past Monday, one of the oldest software companies in existence was acquired by Attachmate, a company owned by an investment group consisting of Francisco Partners, Golden Gate Capital and Thoma Cressey Bravo. Despite the investor names, the company is not based in California, but rather Seattle, Washington. What other big company can you think of that has its headquarters based in Washington?

Microsoft, of course, and that’s just the beginning of related facts here. An acquisition of Novell seemed inevitable, but thanks to a Microsoft financially-backed initiative – namely, a way to get its hands on some useful patents – Attachmate went ahead and purchased Novell for $6.10 per share, a 9% premium. The company plans to split Novell into two parts, one of which will be SUSE-focused.

We’re very, very early in this acquisition to even try at speculating at what’s to come, but some Linux fans are concerned as to the future. Novell owns a staggering number of Unix-related patents, and with Microsoft part of this deal, it’s hard to guess what it’s going to have access to. I don’t see the future of Unix or Linux in trouble, because legally, I don’t think Microsoft can do much. But I’m not a legal genius, either. 

The future of SUSE does concern me, however. I am not sure just how large of a cash cow SUSE is in the enterprise market, but as it was one of Novell’s biggest assets, it’s hard to say if Attachmate is going to have the same loving affection for it a year or two down the road. SUSE is one of my favorite distros, so I’d hate to ever see it go away.

Hopefully it will not take too long before we learn a lot more about this deal, and see who owns which patents.

According to a regulatory filing, CPTN will get 882 Novell patents: “Also on November 21, 2010, Novell entered into a Patent Purchase Agreement…with CPTN Holdings LLC, a Delaware limited liability company and consortium of technology companies organized by Microsoft Corporation. The Patent Purchase Agreement provides that, upon the terms and subject to the conditions set forth in the Patent Purchase Agreement, Novell will sell to CPTN all of Novell’s right, title and interest in 882 patents…for $450 million in cash.”