Why VMware should buy Novell (or at least just SUSE)

From the ‘Pure Speculation‘ files:

Lots of rumors floating around this week that Novell is set to broken up and/or acquired. While I don’t know exactly what is going on behind closed boardroom doors – we do know that Novell’s Board of Directors has been tasked with evaluating all options for increasing shareholder value.

That said, among the multiple vendors that could be bidding for Novell is VMware. In my view, it is VMware that would benefit greatly from certain Novell assets, in particular SUSE Linux.

For the better part of the last two years, VMware has been on a software acquisition curve, acquiring SpringSource and Zimbra among others. Adding in Novell’s SUSE Linux would underpin both of those buys as well as bolster VMware’s core virtualization offerings.

Linux vendor Red Hat often claims that it is one of only two vendors that can offer a complete virtualization solutions from operating system on up (the other being Microsoft). With SUSE in-house, VMware could potentially change the playing field.