Novell BrainShare, SUSE Linux: Why So Quiet?

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Alas, the annual Novell user and partner conference generated exactly one Novell press release, no SUSE press releases, one partner release from MessageSolution, one media story in the Salt Lake City Tribune and one on ZDnet.

Worth Noting

Among the key takeaways:

At a time when news spreads instantly and socially, Novell was mostly silent. Even #BrainShare2013 on Twitter was mostly quiet.

Why?

Some Clues

Perhaps Flynn’s interview with ZDnet reveals the answer. In it, he described how Novell — acquired by Attachmate in 2011 — has focused on its existing customers. By April 2013, Novell will start pitching new customers, Flynn told ZDnet.

Read between the lines: Instead of hyping Novell’s attempted comeback, Flynn seems committed to quality products and responsible rollouts.

Still, Novell could have announced a whole lot more via news wires, blogs and social media. The VAR Guy bets most readers have never even heard of Novell Filr, a file access and sharing platform that seeks to compete with Box. BrainShare could have been a great stage to tell the media much more. Heck, Novell’s own news blog has not been updated since January 18.

Meanwhile, SUSE has also been pretty quiet lately. But the Linux provider will have a chance to generate its own buzz much later this year at SUSECon 2013 (Nov. 12-15, Orlando, Fla.).

Crank Up the Volume

Start banging the media drum Novell and SUSE. Sure, The VAR Guy knows your NetWare, UnixWare, AppWare and WordPerfect legacy. But a new generation of bloggers has never heard of the company. Those up-and-comers could share Novell’s story without getting into all the baggage of the 1990s. But it’s up to Novell to engage that media.