Frankenberg's resignation is being called a mutual agreement between him and the board. The company is searching for a new CEO; board member John Young, former president and CEO of Hewlett-Packard Co., has been appointed chairman; and Joseph Marengi, Nov
ell executive vice president, has been named president. Along with this management shift, the company plans to take a more aggressive approach in the Internet/Intranet market. As can be expected, rumors immediately came out that Netscape Communications C
orp. was considering acquiring Novell, a claim that both companies officially deny. Contact Novell Inc., 800-453-1267, 801-222-6000, or fax 800-668-5329; http://www.novell.com.
At the Commercial Parallel Processing Conference in Chicago, Sybase Inc. (Emeryville, Calif.) announced its Data Mall initiative, a joint partnership with IBM to help customers develop and manage scalable enterprise data warehouse applications thr
ough integrated, interactive data marts. To this end, Sybase also unveiled the Enterprise Data Mall Architecture, a scalable architecture that combines the concept of VLDB data warehousing (using Sybase MPP shared-nothing parallelism) with multiple, inte
ractive data marts (using Sybase IQ Interactive), all running on the IBM RS/6000 SP. Contact Sybase Inc., 800-879-2273, 510-922-3500, or fax 510-922-9441; http://www.sybase.com.
Frankenberg Leaves the Stage
Struggling networking and applications software provider Novell Inc. (Orem, Utah) has taken another blow with the resignation of CEO Robert Frankenberg, who was appointed to the position two and a half years ago. Novell has been trying to regain i
ts hold on the LAN market - at the expense of missing out on much of the Internet/Intranet revolution. Frankenberg came on board to help clean up after the departure of previous Novell CEO and founder Ray Noorda, who acquired WordPerfect and UnixWare onl
y to sell them at a tremendous loss.
Java Gets an Infusion
Venture capital firm Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers (Menlo Park, Calif.) announced a $100 million Java Fund designed to help small Java technology-oriented startup companies in the Internet, Intranet, networking, and communications industries.
Corporate partners in the fund act as co-minority investors and limited partners; they include IBM, Netscape, Oracle, and Sun - notice that Microsoft is not on the list. Contact Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, 415-233-2750 or fax 415-233-0300; ht
tp://www.
kpcb.com.
Netting a Spider
Spider Technologies Inc. (Menlo Park, Calif.) announced that it is changing its name to NetDynamics Inc. The company's NetDynamics product, released earlier this year, is a visual development tool for building Web-database applications. NetDynamic
s President and CEO Zack Rinat gets my official Pun of the Month award for calling the dramatic impact of the Internet and Intranet on businesses a "Webvolution." Contact NetDynamics Inc., 415-969-6665 or fax 415-969-6883; http://www.netdynamics.com.<
/I>
PeopleSoft Gets Peppered
PeopleSoft Inc. (Pleasanton, Calif.) and Red Pepper Software Corp. (San Mateo, Calif.) completed a definitive agreement to merge the two companies. Red Pepper, a provider of manufacturing and supply chain optimization products, will continu
e to operate as an independent business unit of PeopleSoft. The merger is intended to strengthen PeopleSoft's offerings in the manufacturing and supply chain management market. The transaction is being called a "pooling of interests," in which PeopleSoft
will issue 2.975 million shares of common stock to acquire all of the outstanding shares and stock options of Red Pepper. The merger doesn't come as too much of a surprise, because PeopleSoft had already entered into a technology licensing and distribut
ion agreement with Red Pepper in June 1995. Contact PeopleSoft Inc., 510-946-9460 or fax 510-946-9461; http://www.peoplesoft.com.
Offering More than Just Software
Computer Associates International Inc. (Islandia, N.Y.) placed its Internet eggs in a new basket with the creation of its Internet business division, NetHaven. The new division, whose charter is to help organizations conduct electronic commerce ov
er the Web, brings together components of CA's technology (including the Web Database Wizard, CA-OpenIngres/ICE, CA-Unicenter/ICE, and Jasmine) and a variety of services for Internet and Intranet solutions. NetHaven also offers a set of scalable content
hosting applications to help companies establish their presence on the Web. Contact Computer Associates International Inc., 800-225-5224, 516-342-5224, or fax 516-342-5734; http://www.cai.com.
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