“Advances in Web 2.0 technologies are driving new opportunities for unified communications (UC) and team collaboration,” said Mark Levitt, program vice president for Collaborative Computing and the Enterprise Workplace at IDC. “Enterprise and SMB customers are looking for solutions that combine real-time messaging, conferencing and IP voice calling along with online workspaces, social networking, blogs, and wikis to improve team and enterprise productivity and innovation. Solutions that combine team collaboration and UC like those offered by the combined Novell-SiteScape, which are based around open source for rapid innovation and open standards for interoperability and platform flexibility, represent the next major step forward for business collaboration.”

Founded in 1995, SiteScape provides collaborative solutions for communication and management for distributed teams across a wide range of business and government customers. SiteScape's integrated Web-based solutions support knowledge management, project management, communities of practice, telework, business and government continuity, and many other workflow-driven functions. Long a leader in enterprise e-mail with GroupWise®, Novell partnered with SiteScape in 2007 to add to its collaboration portfolio with Novell® Teaming + Conferencing, a team workspace and real-time conferencing solution centered on the ICEcore open source technology. Consistent with Novell's commitment to interoperabilty, Novell Teaming + Conferencing runs on both Linux* and Windows*, and works with Lotus Notes* and Microsoft Exchange*, in addition to GroupWise. These team workspaces, accessible securely by team members both inside and outside the company, incorporate multiple integrated collaboration tools, including blogs, wikis, instant message, chat, voice over IP and web conferencing, providing the powerful core of a unified communications and collaboration solution. By now acquiring SiteScape, Novell strengthens its commitment to the technology, gains the flexibility to create the solutions customers and partners need, and increases its capacity to deliver even more innovation and interoperability around open collaboration.

“As SiteScape's largest European partner, we see exciting benefits coming out of this merger – to our business and to our customers,” said Axel Amelung, managing director of comm.world collaboration, a solution provider serving mid-sized to enterprise-level customers in the chemical, telecom and construction industries. “Our major SiteScape customers are serious about leveraging Web 2.0 and enterprise social networking technologies to the fullest to boost productivity and innovation coming out of their teams. Combining SiteScape's leading technology with Novell's commitment and long-time focus on collaboration will yield even more business-focused innovations. The merger will also lend Novell's enterprise-class reputation and partner programs to help support our sales and service operations.”

“The acquisition of SiteScape fits squarely into the corporate strategy we have laid out,” said Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell. “It extends our leadership in promoting open source in the enterprise market and is a key technology addition in an area where we see great growth potential. Most importantly, it allows us to move aggressively to give customers a new, open option for collaboration, helping them escape vendor lock-in and offering easy integration across platforms, whether Linux or Windows.”

“Joining Novell helps us expand our technology much more broadly than we've been able to do to date,” said Andy Fox, chief technology officer at SiteScape. “Novell and SiteScape have already been strong partners, both in the ICEcore project and in taking products to market. With the merger, SiteScape customers gain a strong new partner supporting their deployments, enhancing the technology, and helping them meet their rapidly evolving collaboration needs.”

Financial terms of the deal are not being disclosed.