Novell's Schmidt relinquishes CEO title to head of newly acquired company

Novell announced Monday that it would acquire Cambridge Technology Partners, an IT services and e-commerce company. Cambridge Technology's President Jack Messman will assume the title of CEO of Novell, which has been held by Eric Schmidt for four years.

Schmidt will remain chairman of Novell and Volera, a wholly owned subsidiary of Novell. Schmidt, who is credited with repositioning the company, will also assume the role of Novell's chief strategist.

Under the terms of agreement, Novell will exchange 0.6 shares of Novell stock for each share of Cambridge Technologies stock, in a deal valued at $266 million. Cambridge will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Novell.

Novell says that consulting services are crucial to each deployment of its NDS eDirectory and Net Services products, which include iChain, Novell Portal Services and subscription-based on-demand software services. Novell is struggling to reposition itself from a vendor of legacy operating systems and groupware packages to a company that provides services and software to support the Internet economy.

Cambridge Technology Partners was founded in 1991 and has 3,400 employees with offices in 19 countries. It is led by Jack Messman, a member of Novell's board of directors. Cambridge provides strategic and management consulting as well as systems integration services to customers.

Novell is also rumored to be acquiring a company named Novetrix, say sources. Novetrix manufactures software that lets Novell's NetWare and GroupWise operate in a Citrix MetaFrame-type terminal-server environment. Novetrix' DeFrame is Novell Directory Services enabled.

Contact Senior Editor Deni Connor

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