Messman removed as Novell changes CEO

Jack Messman is out as current Novell president, Ron Hovsepian, takes the helm in a bid to improve growth

Novell’s board has decided to change chief executives again with Jack Messman making way for current president Ron Hovsepian.

Messman was responsible for Novell’s strategic moves into services and open-source, most notably through the acquisition of Suse in 2003.

A Novell statement said that a switch in leadership was intended to “accelerate the execution of our growth strategy”.

Analysts have recently been critical of Messman and the stock dropped sharply at the beginning of this month.

Novell also said its chief financial officer would leave the firm.

The changes could pave the way for a sale of the company. Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison recently said that his firm could make a move into owning a Linux distribution.