In Novell's case, "They ran a poor second to Red Hat, but they have some good partners in IBM and other vendors. It should provide some interesting synergies for Attachmate," King said.

One item of interest is Novell's five-year agreement with Microsoft, signed in 2006, in which Microsoft agreed to sell and support Novell's SUSE Linux for its own customers, as well as to not assert patent rights for any technology it may possess that would be in Novell's SUSE Linux distribution.

"This indemnification agreement is set to end next year. The first question of business would be if Attachmate continued the indemnification," King said, noting that no other major Linux vendor signed an agreement with Microsoft. "It's something that Microsoft would likely want to continue."

Not everyone agrees that SUSE will remain with Attachmate, however.

"Attachmate is far more interested in Novell's systems management and security business than in the platform business," Penn said. He noted that Attachmate plans to keep SUSE as a stand-alone business unit, which would make an easy sale possible. "Someone may step in and make a good offer," Penn said. "It may be in [Attachmate's] best interest to sell it."