Novell back in the ring with healthy quarter

The networking giant upped profits marginally to $65 million on revenues of $384 million, down 20 per cent on the equivalent quarter a year ago when Novell could count on income from its WordPerfect applications division and UnixWare operating system. Both have since been sold, to Corel and SCO respectively.

The Utah firm said the positive numbers were mostly down to healthy sales of the products it is now relying on: NetWare 4 and the recently introduced IntranetWare toolkit for building corporate intranets. Also strong was GroupWise 5, which had best-ever revenues of $31 million.

Novell said it expects both revenue and earnings to increase in fiscal 1997 over 1996. President Joe Marengi said the firm will speed up product development with new releases of NetWare and IntranetWare every nine to 12 months, and every six months in the case of GroupWise. Under the reign of former CEO and president Bob Frankenberg, Novell had been criticised for tardy product releases.