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Novell jobs slashed by stepmother Attachmate
'We are grateful' to our ex-employees
Novell's new owners Attachmate have swung the axe far and wide, with massive staff cuts right across the organisation.
According to sources, casualties include some 800 back office staff and all local country managers, including Sean McCarry in the UK and Ireland. At a more senior level, Novell SVP of global sales Javier Colado and EMEA channel boss Dan Veitkus have also left.
"There was a complete rationalisation of the business. As it was integrated with Attachmate, there just wasn't enough space for all the figureheads," claimed a source close to the firm.
The back office rationalisation was due to role duplication, with the majority coming from the US but some also impacted in Dublin – the EMEA back office hub, company insiders told The Register.
The $2.2bn acquisition of Novell was unveiled last November amid plans to operate the firm as two business units: Novell and SUSE, integrating them with Attachmate and NetIQ.
The deal was rubber-stamped at the end of April, Novell employed around 4,500 staff worldwide at the time. The security and ID products were then folded into the NetIQ operation as the legacy collaboration and networking lines remained under the Novell banner.
The firm refused an interview but in a prepared statement sent to The Register, Jeff Hawn, chairman and CEO of The Attachmate Group, said: "Acquisitions of great magnitude such as ours result in some job redundancies and we have taken actions to address this.
"We are grateful for the important contributions made by the employees affected by this and we wish them the best in their future endeavors.
"The Attachmate Group is positioning itself for growth and Europe will be an important component of that growth," he added. "Currently a substantial portion of our $1bn plus annual revenues come from Europe; we have a significant presence in approximately 20 European cities." ®