Novell gets new Aussie chief

Software company Novell has appointed former Oracle and Informix executive Alan Robinson to be its new managing director for Australia and New Zealand.

Robinson relieves Maarten Koster, president and general manager of Novell Asia Pacific, who has been filling in as caretaker managing director since June, following the departure of former local managing director Rob Mills.

Robinson is the fourth managing director for Novell's local operations in little over two years.

Robinson was among the first 15 local employees for Oracle Australia. His roles at the enterprise software company included southern region manager, sales director and general manager. As managing director of Informix, he grew the database vendor's staff roster from 19 to over 120 during his five-year tenure.

Robinson steps into Novell at a challenging time for the US$1.5 billion dollar software company. While the Linux products acquired via the purchase of SuSE Linux and its IT management software are selling well, global sales of its flagship identity management (eDirectory) products and its collaboration products (GroupWise) are falling at three and four per cent respectively. Services revenue fell during the September quarter by a whopping 25 per cent.