Novell started up in Utah and made a name for itself in the 1980s with its once dominant NetWare network operating system, but in recent years has struggled financially as it attempted to establish leadership in markets from open source software to workload management.The company earlier this month introduced an . 

Novell, which had since moved to Massachusetts, had strung together eight straight quarters of year-over-year revenue declines at the time the acquisition was announced. 

As for Attachmate, the company was known early on for its terminal emulation software and more recently has expanded into management software, with buyouts of companies such as NetIQ and OnDemand Software.

Merge with Bob on

in Network World's Data Center section.