Stone, who is now CEO of Burlington, Mass.-based data consolidation vendor StreamServe Inc., called the board's action "long overdue."

"I think quite honestly that justice prevails," he said. "I hope Hovsepian can turn it around fast. For the sake of the employees, it has to happen. They deserve something to happen quickly, however radical it might be. I'm pretty excited about it."

So was Wall Street: Novell's shares, which were near a 52-week low, were up 9 percent in trading for the day.

While financially solid, Novell has only been able to eke out small profits recently by cost-cutting -- sales have continued to decline. Novell has not been able to significantly increase its share of the Linux server market dominated by Red Hat Inc. and has only had partial success stemming the tide of NetWare defections.

"Novell has good technology but next to no go-to-market strategy," said Michael Goulde, an analyst at Forrester Research Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. "I think that Ron Hovsepian's a good person to possibly put that in place."