Normally I don't cover this, but there is a significant thing in there.
Income from continuing operations in the first fiscal quarter 2008 was $15 million, or $0.04 per share. This compares to a loss from continuing operations of $12 million, or $0.04 loss per share, for the first fiscal quarter 2007.What this means is that Novell just posted a quarter in the black. If I'm remembering right, this is the first one in a couple of years. My pure guess is that this represents a couple of factors:
- The loss of NetWare customers has slowed down significantly. The large majority of who is going to jump ship already has, and the remaining ship-jumpers represent a small part of the overall Novell picture. They will still cause the NetWare unit to lose money, but the loss is balanced in other areas now.
- The SLES business has increased significantly, making up for the loss in NetWare customers. Novell has made many press releases about how well SLES/SLED is doing in the market, and point to the Microsoft deal as a key part of that.
- Identity Manager, the central software that is in the Gartner Magic Quadrant, continues to do rather well.
Somehow I suspect it's more likely that Novell's deal with MS included some distantly-connected-to-MS companies funnelling money into Novell to make their deal look like a good idea for others.