Layoffs begin at Novell's Utah base

Attachmate, fresh from completing the deal to acquire Novell, has begun a process of laying off staff from Novell's Provo, Utah, campus. According to reports, around 700 to 800 employees are being laid off. Jeff Hawn, CEO of Attachmate, said in a statement that "inevitably with these kinds of complex acquisitions there will be some workforce reductions. These changes will affect employees internationally, not just in Utah." Sources say the layoffs include several dozen US-based SUSE staff involved in product management, support and ISV collaboration.

Redundancies have not been announced yet for European sites, such as Nuremberg, where SUSE has a substantial number of employees, including developers. The Nuremberg SUSE unit is to be the headquarters for the Linux business unit under new President and General Manager Nils Brauckmann, who was previously Attachmate's Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Hawn is said to have told Novell employees that he expects Brauckmann to focus on unleashing the potential of SUSE on the market in "ways that matter to the community and customers." In an interview from December, Hawn said that he wanted to "make SUSE the highest performing business with the strongest openSUSE community that we can", noting that SUSE was a "healthy, growing dynamic business."

(djwm)