Waltham, Massachusetts-based Novell has appointed Thomas Francese, who was previously vice president, software group, EMEA at IBM, to try and grow its business in EMEA, which was particularly weak for Novell in its second and third quarters.
In early August Novell announced plans to restructure its EMEA operations, cutting between 120 and 150 positions by the end of its current financial year, which ends October 31, 2005. That followed a revenue drop of 11% in EMEA in Novell’s second quarter, ended April 31, 2005.
Novell’s president of worldwide field operations, Ron Hovsepian, said at the announcement of those second quarter results that he had spent the first 90 days in his job trying to work out how to improve productivity, particularly in Europe.
While the third quarter showed some improvement, revenue in EMEA was still down 7% when the impact of a number of acquisitions were factored out, and the company’s CFO, Joe Tibbetts, said the company would announce further restructuring in its current fourth quarter.
Mr Francese will report directly to Mr Hovsepian, who assumed the responsibility for EMEA in May after Novell’s former president for the region, Richard Seibt, resigned. Mr Seibt had joined the company via its acquisition of SUSE Linux, where he was CEO.
