Novell Announces Executive Appointments to Focus on Cross-Platform Solution Strategy and Growing Linux Business

15 December 2008

Novell today announced new executive appointments to strengthen the company's focus on cross-platform solutions and the rapidly growing market opportunities for SUSE Linux Enterprise. Effective immediately, Roger Levy, previously general manager and senior vice president of Novell's Open Platform Solutions (OPS) group, will move to the new role of senior vice president, strategic development, responsible for cross business unit strategy and offerings for the data center, end-user computing, and identity and security management markets. Markus Rex, currently on leave from Novell as CTO to the Linux Foundation, will return to Novell full-time and take over as acting general manager and senior vice president of Novell's OPS business unit. Both Levy and Rex will report to Novell executive vice president, products and CTO Jeff Jaffe.

"Novell has just closed a successful financial year, and we believe we are well positioned for 2009," said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO. "These executive appointments will help us capitalize on the high growth opportunities we see in the key markets we serve, better align our cross platform product development strategy with the requirements of our customers and partners, and ensure we maximize cross-sell and up-sell opportunities across our entire product portfolio."

Levy joined Novell in March of 2006 as senior vice president and general manager for the OPS business unit where he was responsible for the development of all products that make up Novell's open source and open platform technologies, including SUSE Linux Enterprise and related Open Source offerings.

Rex has a long history of strategy and product management and development in the Linux and open source arena. He joined Novell in 2004 with Novell's acquisition of SUSE Linux AG and has served as general manager for SUSE Linux and CTO for the Open Platform Solutions group. He joined SUSE Linux AG in 1999 and served as head of development and later as vice president of research and development. Most recently, Mr. Rex was on loan from Novell,serving as CTO of the Linux Foundation, a nonprofit consortium dedicated to fostering the growth of Linux.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

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