Officials also said Novell's business model is evolving into one of collaboration with other companies and the open source community that supports Linux, the computer operating system whose core is open to the public. Companies can alter it as they like and sell related products and services.
Novell officials presented the company's vision at its BrainShare 2008, an annual conference held in Salt Lake City with customers and business partners. About 5,500 people from 58 countries are attending this week at the Salt Palace Convention Center.
President and CEO Ronald Hovsepian said the company's core business remains the software that runs businesses' computer systems. But the tasks those systems are called upon to perform are rapidly evolving. Social networking - personal interactions found on sites like YouTube and Facebook - is seen as being potentially powerful in business applications within a company and in collaborations with others outside it, he added.
"We want to take advantage of the social networking because we see the power," Hovsepian said.
He and others also said the company was moving toward products that can combine customers' communications with their computer systems so things such as e-mail or instant messaging are available wherever someone might be.
"We don't really know, at least I don't, where my personal life ends and begins with my work life," Hovsepian said. "They've been commingled."
Novell's focus responds not just to industry trends, but also amounts to a new strategy after the company stumbled in its financial results. It reported a $26 million loss, or 8 cents a common share, for the fiscal year 2007 that ended Oct. 31, 2007.
Losses last year caused Novell to lay off about 200 people at its Provo office. It still employs some 1,200 people in Utah, where the company started in 1979 as a computer manufacturer and developer of disk operating systems.
Jeff Jaffe, chief technical officer for the company now headquartered in Massachusetts, rolled out the company's plan to meet its new focus on "Making IT [information technology] Work As One." The slogan reflects a survey Novell conducted that shows IT officers want interoperability. That means, for example, that IT managers want to run Microsoft programs as well as Linux, two software systems that now can be incompatible with each other.
Jaffe said the company's Fossa Project aims to meet the demands for system "agility" before or by 2012.
"We will transform the IT landscape with the introduction of the Fossa project," Jaffe predicted.
tharvey@sltrib.com
