said by Matt Asay :

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Novell cuts 3 percent of its workforce, plus benefits

Linux jobs in the United States are booming, up 6 percent since January, according to data from Dice.com [Linux jobs outpacing Windows; virtualization is 'hot']. This will come as small consolation to Novell employees, however, which weathered another round of layoffs at the Waltham, Mass.-based company.

According to several sources within the company, and confirmed by Novell's public-relations director, Ian Bruce, Novell last week laid off 100 to 130 people of its roughly 3,900 global employees.

While my sources indicated that the Workgroup division was particularly hard-hit, Bruce told me that the cuts came "across the company, both geographically and productwise."

Novell appears to be doing its best in caring for these employees, offering several months of severance pay, apparently based on the number of years with the company, among other factors.

For those remaining employed there, Novell announced this week that it would be suspending 401(k) matching contributions, which followed on the heels of its formal filing on Monday, to that effect, with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Novell has spent the past few years attempting to reinvent itself as a Linux company, and it has managed to string together several quarters with strong earnings in its Linux business on the back of its controversial partnership with Microsoft. The company has struggled to compete effectively with Linux-leader Red Hat.

On November 2, a Novell PR representative contacted me to arrange a conversation with CEO Ron Hovsepian about Novell's "new focus in its strategic direction."

Whether this means more or less open source is not yet clear. It is clear, however, that Novell needs to focus more on top-line revenue growth, and not merely ways to cut costs. Until Novell learns to grow business, and not simply reduce expenses, its employees are going to remain all-too-familiar with layoffs.

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said by Scott Wilson :

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Reading the Microsoft tea leaves: Is the company turtling?

Today's round of Microsoft layoffs, widely reported elsewhere, included a somewhat surprising addition: Don Dodge, the Director of Business Development for the Emerging Business Team, who blogs about it here. The Emerging Business Team is Microsoft startup-facing evangelist squad, and Dodge has been at their forefront as they have gone out to make the hard sell for Microsoft products in a community where a shoestring approach using free, open-source alternatives has become so de rigeur that a distinctly anti-Microsoft attitude has emerged.

If everyone a company is looking to interface with is running a particular flavor of technology, and speaking that language, it makes life easier to go down that same road. The more big hit startups are on the Linux highway, the more tag-alongs are going to be heading for the on-ramps there, and skipping Microsoft Lane.

So when the company lets go an individual that even its critics believe was doing a good job, it's hard not to conclude that it is diminishing the role of the unit that person spearheaded. And if that's the case, you have to wonder, is Microsoft ceding the startup market?

It's easy to read too much into individual actions or events, and sometimes it's even easier to buy in to an emerging media narrative compiling a host of events. That may be what has been happening in the past months as perceptions of failure, or even worse, of inadequate success, have been laid at Redmond's feet from a variety of sources. It's easy to read this as another point in the trend, and I am tempted to do so, although it may well be wrong. These aren't the actions of a company looking forward and being aggressive. They are the "safe" moves of people looking to avoid blame and focus on what they know. But despite the perception, they aren't safe moves for Microsoft at all, but instead a slow path toward irrelevance.

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