主题：关于Linux的推广——普通用户篇 -- 万斤

At the time Novell held 75% of the office LAN market and its server operating system, NetWare was miles ahead of competitors. At that time instead of really pressing home its advantage and marketing Netware aggressively, it bought DR-DOS and tried to take on Microsoft for the desktop market, clearly a complete failure.

From 2003 through 2005 Novell released many products across its portfolio, with the intention of arresting falling market share and to move away from dependencies on other Novell products, but the launches were not as successful as Novell had hoped for. In an effort to cut costs, Novell announced a round of layoffs in late 2005. While revenue from its Linux business continued to grow, the growth was not fast enough to contain the fall in NetWare revenue. This meant that while the company’s revenue was not falling rapidly, it was not growing either. Lack of clear direction or effective management meant that Novell took longer than expected to complete its restructuring.

In June 2006, chief executive Jack Messman and chief finance officer Joseph Tibbetts were fired, with Ronald Hovsepian, Novell’s president and chief operating officer, appointed chief executive, and Dana Russell, vice-president of finance and corporate controller, appointed interim CFO.