Platespin to be Acquired for $205 million

WALTHAM, Mass. – Novell today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire PlateSpin Ltd.

This acquisition will extend Novell’s leadership position in the next-generation data center by providing the only solution to dynamically deliver business critical services across both physical and virtual infrastructures.

PlateSpin offers extensive solutions for the management of heterogeneous workloads that encapsulate data, applications and operating systems residing on a physical or virtual host. These solutions improve the speed and quality of server consolidation, data center relocation and disaster recovery.

Novell and PlateSpin will deliver unparalleled support for mixed infrastructure environments offering products for complete workload lifecycle management and optimization for Linux, UNIX, and Windows operating systems in the physical and virtual data center. The combined solutions will deliver superior value by helping customers reduce costs, improve service levels and respond to fluctuating business requirements.

The acquisition of PlateSpin will enable the heterogeneous data center with support for leading operating systems and virtual platforms. It will also further enhance Novell’s leadership in open source virtualization by providing tools that easily enable customers to move physical workloads to Xen-based virtual machines running on SUSE Linux Enterprise as well as other virtual platforms provided by VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and others.

Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell, said, “The PlateSpin acquisition will be a cornerstone of our two-pronged enterprise Linux and IT management software strategy. With the addition of the PlateSpin product portfolio, Novell will be uniquely positioned to deliver the next generation infrastructure software that is at the core of the data center. Together, we will have the most comprehensive workload management solution that allows customers to monitor and analyze what to virtualize, provide the tools to seamlessly virtualize and unvirtualize workloads, automate the management of workloads, and provide the leading open source platform from which to run virtualized work.”

Stephen Pollack, founder and CEO of PlateSpin, said, “PlateSpin’s ability to manage workloads is unparalleled and is an essential part of making the data center truly respond to the needs of the business. Combined with ZENworks Orchestrator and virtualization from Novell, we are very excited about the synergies that this acquisition will give to customers.”

Financial Overview

Novell will acquire PlateSpin for $205 million using current cash. The acquisition is expected to close during Novell’s second fiscal quarter 2008 subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions. Novell will provide an update on the financial impact of the transaction during Novell’s first fiscal quarter 2008 earnings call scheduled for Thursday, Feb., 28, at 5 p.m. EST. PlateSpin will be integrated into Novell’s Systems and Resource Management business unit. As part of this business unit, PlateSpin will continue to develop and market its solutions to a global customer base. This will be done through the continued operation of PlateSpin’s Toronto facility as well as through a combination of PlateSpin and Novell offices and facilities around the globe.

About PlateSpin

Founded in 2003, PlateSpin Ltd. provides a unified suite of solutions to help enterprises adopt, manage and extend their use of server virtualization in the data center. PlateSpin’s patent-pending conversion and optimization technology liberates software from hardware platforms, allowing servers to be streamed over the enterprise network from any source to any destination. This freedom of movement ensures the best fit between server resource supply and application workload demands. Global 2000 companies use PlateSpin solutions to lower costs and solve today’s most pressing data center initiatives such as server consolidation, disaster recovery and hardware migration. For more information, visit www.platespin.com/novell.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers infrastructure software for the Open Enterprise. Novell is a leader in desktop to data center operating systems based on Linux and the software required to secure and manage mixed IT environments. Novell helps customers around the world minimize cost, complexity and risk, allowing them to focus on innovation and growth. For more information, visit www.novell.com. Press Coverage on the Acquisition:

eWeek: Novell Acquires PlateSpin for $205M
Barron’s: Novell To Buy PlateSpin For $205 Million In Cash