OStatic

Reports came in from the blogsphere earlier this morning concerning layoffs at Novell. The news immediately follows Sun Microsystems' announcement that it is laying off about 18 percent of its employees, which leaves only Red Hat as the major public open source company not to announce layoffs. Matt Asay got the skinny from Novell officials, and apparently the layoffs affect fewer than 100 people. (This post was updated after earlier reports that the layoffs affected many more people.)

Matt Asay notes a milestone today: Red Hat is just about to surpass Sun Microsystems in market capitalization. At the moment, Sun's market capitalization is $2.69 billion and Red Hat's is $2.61. If the trends in share prices for these two companies continue, Red Hat's market cap will soar right past Sun's. Does this make any sense?

As the final days of 2008 drew to a close and predictions about open source in 2009 began to spread around the web, I predicted that this year will bring many more mergers and acquisitions among commercial open source companies. I based this primarily on extremely low valuations. So far I haven't been proven right, but researchers at The 451 Group are backing the concept up. Interestingly, two of the public open source companies that I mentioned as possible acquisition targets--Red Hat and Sun--are seen as potential acquirers in The 451 Group report. Here are some thoughts on their report and some notable data from them.

I have to nod in agreement as The VAR Guy laments the complete absence of any open source companies--large or small--as the 2009 National Retail Federation Convention gets underway in New York.? He makes the point that this is a massive mistake for open source companies and their channel partners, which is true. Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service? is an example of the kind of service that should be put right in front of retailers' faces, and SUSE Linux already runs in Wal-Mart, Office Depot and many other chains. Red Hat ISVs create applications for retailers left and right. But did either of these companies show up at the convention? No, and this points to an open source problem: tunnel vision.

From the Bleak Predictions Department, ChannelInsider has a slideshow up of 12 tech companies that may not survive 2009. The list of companies comes from solution providers that ChannelInsider surveyed, and includes some surprisingly big and powerful players. It also includes two leading, public open source companies. Who made the list?

As PC World is reporting, Red Hat is planning to host a Second Life-like online conference focused on its JBoss Java-based middleware products. It's no surprise to see Red Hat serving up this kind of free, online event, especially since the company has confirmed that its JBoss business is growing twice as fast its Linux business, delivering $10 in consulting fees for every $1 in subscription revenue. Here's how to register for the event, and what to expect.

Matt Asay has a good analysis up today about Goldman Sach's report predicting that things are about to get much worse for the tech industry. The worst of the IT spending slowdown likely remains in front of us as we start the clock on slashed 2009 budgets, says the report. We forecast 0% revenue growth for our group, below consensus at 5%, and 1% earnings growth, below Street at 2%. In addition, Goldman Sachs is predicting that revenues will stream primarily to large, established software vendors: Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, Symantec, and CA. I agree with Matt, though, that open source and SaaS (software as a service) players still stand to do well.