Novell today announced a new initiative to increase revenue and profitability for solution providers and consulting partners who specialise in selling Novell® technologies. Among other benefits, Novell will offer enhanced partner education, joint marketing opportunities, and free technical support for those partners demonstrating expertise in selling and supporting Novell software.

“A thriving solution provider and consulting ecosystem selling and servicing Novell software is critical to us and a significant investment focus of the company,” said Ron Hovsepian, Novell president and CEO. “We've made real progress in expanding our partner ecosystem this last year, with important agreements with Capgemini, Dell, IBM, Lenovo, Microsoft, SAP and more. We're putting even more focus on our solution provider and consulting partners as we move into 2008. We're going to make it easier and more profitable for these partners to deliver Novell-based solutions, and we'll encourage customers to have their IT needs met by our partners, rather than directly from Novell.”

Novell's PartnerNet® programme, a fully integrated platform for establishing, managing, promoting and measuring the company's indirect routes to market, encompasses Novell's technology, training and solution provider partners. Over the last year, Novell has invested significantly to ensure it has the right partner sales and delivery capacity to support its key growth markets. Following the introduction of functional specialisations last fall, Novell's solution provider community is now almost fully certified in one or more of four PartnerNet categories: Linux, Identity & Security Management, Systems & Resource Management and Workgroup. Today's initiative will further help Novell solution provider and consulting partners increase their revenue and profit growth when working with Novell.

· Top-level PartnerNet members will be assigned a Novell partner executive who will be focused on, and compensated for, the partner's success.

· Novell is creating a market development fund to invest in market development activities with PartnerNet specialist partners.

· Novell will encourage customers to work with partners by increasing the minimum spending level customers must meet to qualify for a direct license agreement with Novell.

· Novell will partner and share domain expertise with consultants and systems integrators, who will serve as the primary route to customers for consulting and integration services around Novell technologies.

· Novell is creating additional incentives for partner profitability in 2008, particularly for those partners who join the Novell PartnerNet program at the Silver, Gold and Platinum levels. These will be rolled out over the course of the year.

PartnerNet membership will also provide additional value to specialised partners and reward their value and sales results. For example:

· Partners who reach one or more technology specialisation levels within PartnerNet will have access to free and unlimited technical support from Novell.

· Novell has implemented a new process for specialised partners to register sales and influenced sales, receive sales leads, and monitor, measure and manage their Novell business in real time.

· PartnerNet solution provider and consulting partners who specialise will receive more focused sales and technical training resources.

Novell today announced a new initiative to increase revenue and profitability for solution providers and consulting partners who specialise in selling Novell® technologies. Among other benefits, Novell will offer enhanced partner education, joint marketing opportunities, and free technical support for those partners demonstrating expertise in selling and supporting Novell software.