What is the future of Novell?

Novell develops some very good technology -- sitting in the Analyst Summit at BrainShare as I write this is testament to what they've done and where they want to go with virtualization, identity management, usability and a host of other initiatives. Plus, anecdotes about the ability to support very large GroupWise environments with very few FTE staff members abound, and downtime is often very low in GroupWise deployments.

That said, Novell continues to lose market share to rivals Microsoft and IBM in particular, but also to others. Why? Many have cited Novell's marketing efforts, others focus on Novell's heavy focus on administration and less on user interface design.

What's your take, particularly if you've migrated away from GroupWise to some other messaging or collaboration platform? Is it that IT departments are simply forced to migrate because senior, non-IT managers like Outlook and force a move to Exchange? Is there concern about the long term direction of Novell?

I'd love to get your feedback.