What does the future hold for Novell?

The resignation of Wolfgang Keuntje, the CEO of T-Online, Europe`s largest Internet service provider, only five months since the group`s floatation, dominated the international world of IT and telecommunications last week, in what was a very quiet seven days.

This follows the revelation that Red Hat had a good look at SCO very recently, with a view of acquiring that company.

Paul Booth, columnist, ITWeb

At home, the flood of local results stole most of the headlines.

• we saw very good year-end numbers from the AST Group (revenue and earnings well up but margins squeezed);
• good year-end figures from Siltek (revenue percentage up much more than the bottom line percentage);
• satisfactory full-year figures from Compu-Clearing (earning per share only up 8% compared to most other ratios up 20% to 40%) and Paragon Business Comms (revenue and income both slightly up);
• disappointing figures from Comparex (disposal of Comparex Networks Europe makes bottom line look good);
• extremely disappointing full-year numbers from Crux Technologies (although revenue up some 20%, operating profit and income well down, but just in the black);
• full-year losses from Paradigm (all remaining IT investments written down) and PQ Africa (second six months very poor);
• a worse than expected full-year loss from CCH; and
• the suspension of Brainware`s shares.

[Local]

Other local news included:

• the appointment of Ed Gassner as MD of Enterprise Solutions at CCH;
• Unihold`s announcement that it intends to list its off-shore holdings on the London Stock Exchange;
• the closure of Business Technology and Technology Dealer publications; and
• the Department of Communication`s announcement that there could be three new competitors to Telkom when its monopoly expires in 2002.
• Additionally, there is an enormous amount of confusion and immense concern surrounding the activities involving Cape Empowerment Trust, Conlog and Paradigm (INTeLLa deal), that even the "experts" don`t seem to be able to rationalise. So extreme caution seems to be the name of the game at present with anything involving these companies.

• we heard more rumours re the fate of Novell, this time with Red Hat being the suggested predator. This follows the revelation that Red Hat had a good look at SCO very recently, with a view of acquiring that company. This was rejected by Red Hat, and SCO has subsequently done a deal with Caldera, one of Red Hat`s major competitors.

[International]

Other international news included:

• the appointments of Jonathan Fram as CEO of eVoice, Ross Perot Jr as president and CEO of Perot Systems, and Paul Ricci as CEO of ScanSoft;
• the resignations of Gaston Bastiaens, CEO of Lernout & Haupsie, Ian Chester, MD of Financial Objects, Jonathan Fram, president of Net2Phone, Wolfgang Keuntje, CEO of T-Online International AG, Mike Pehl, president of Razorfish and Robert Strandberg, president and CEO of PSC;
• planned job losses at Chinadotcom, Mapics and Seagate Technology; and
• SCO`s announcement that it is changing its name to Tarantella Inc.

We saw excellent figures from Framfab AB, Mosaid Technologies, NCT Group (back in the black), NVIDIA, OmniVision Technologies, SemTech, Sycamore Networks (back in the black) and Uticom.

Losses came from Adcore AB, American Software, BricsNet NV, Caldera Systems, Cell Network AB, CFM Technologies, Crayfish, Crossroads Systems, Cyberonics, Descartes Systems Group, Digital Power, Directrix, eConnect, ecorp, eGlobe, EuroTel Bratislava, Excalibur Technologies, Financial Objects, FirePond, GateField, GigaMedia, Intasys, JD Edwards, LaBarge, Logility, MC Informatics, Merant, Merisel, Merkantildata ASA, Netlife AG, Nexland, Peerless Systems, Pumatech, QAD, Solace (Australian arm of Global Technology), TelSys, Utimaco Safeway AG, VA Linux, VDC Comms, Vertex Interactive, Wireless Xcessories Group and WorldWide Web NetworX.

Good numbers were recorded by C&D Technologies, Cycomm International (back in the black), Finisar, Hutchison Whampoa, IQE, NETsilicon, Olicom (back in the black), Prologic Management Systems (back in the black), REMEC (back in the black), SecureNet, Ultimate Electronics and XETA Technologies.

Satisfactory results were posted by Inso (back in the black) and Unique Broadband Systems.

Mediocre returns came from ASAT Holdings, Intuit, Leitch Technology, Murdock Comms (but back in the black), Sigma Designs and Torex.

Very poor results came from ACE*COMM and Software Spectrum.

Other financial news included profit warnings from Cysive, Hikari Tsushin, Mapics (restructure charge), Rage Software and Visual Networks; and share split announcements from SBS Technologies and SemTech. There was a good IPO from ServiceWare Technologies (e-services); and a very successful IPO from O2Micro (components). Additionally, Verizon Wireless, the number one wireless comms provider in the US and a unit of Verizon that was formed by the merger of the wireless interests of Bell Atlantic, GTE and Vodafone Airtouch, has filed for an IPO valued at $5 billion.

Locally

Accord (-36.1%)
CIH (+200%)
Crux (-23.5%)
Cyberhost (-42.9%)
Explorer (+20%)
Labat (+25%)
MMW (+33.3%)
PTH (-25%)
Sethold (-21.1%)

Internationally

American Management (-33.2%)
Clarus (+28.9%)
ConMat Technologies (-29.7%)
Continuus Software (-34.5%)
ICM Computer Group (+40.9%)
Lightning Rod (+30.4%)
Read-Rite (+27.8%)
Visual Data (+35.5%)
Viant (-32.2%)
Xicor (+28.1%)
Ziff-Davis (+39.8%)

This week sees the continuation of the spate of local result announcements, with numbers expected from Mustek and Prism.