Novell Awarded 5-Star Designation for Partner Program Excellence From CRN

WALTHAM, Mass., April 20 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Novell today announced it has earned the 5-star award designation in this year's CRN Partner Program Guide for its Novell® PartnerNet® program.   Novell PartnerNet was awarded a 5-Star recognition in the Security, Software and Storage categories in Everything Channel's 16th annual 2010 Partner Program Guide (PPG), acknowledging its commitment and strength of its programs for reseller partners, which include IT integrators, technology solution providers and consultants.

The Novell PartnerNet program takes a value-based approach in recognizing and rewarding the unique value that each partner delivers in the marketplace. Novell PartnerNet is an engine for mutual revenue growth and attainment of partnership goals through a flexible program environment that aligns resources and investment with commitment and value to drive maximum performance. Novell PartnerNet focuses on three main areas:

• Enabling partner business growth
• Investing in partner profit potential
• Accelerating partner business success

Novell PartnerNet aligns with Novell's focus on the data center, end-user computing and identity and security markets and encourages partners to specialize around their core practice areas and grow into adjacent technologies. The program offers a robust set of technical, sales and services enablement programs as well as access to industry-leading technical support from Novell. It also offers industry-leading Deal Registration rebates, access to Market Development Funds and performance-oriented rebates. For more information, visit: http://www.novell.com/partners/

Research for the 2010 Everything Channel Partner Program Guide and the 5-Star Partner Program rating was conducted by Everything Channel's research department. Everything Channel analyzed 130 vendor programs rating vendors' responses to in-depth questions about their partner programs in the five elements of sales support, partner profitability, partner ecosystem development/management, partner communication/marketing, and demand generation. To ensure fair comparisons, companies were placed in one of four categories based on company size (Enterprise, Midsize, Small and Emerging).  Questions from each section were scored individually and weighted appropriately.  The 5-Star Partner Program rating recognizes the elite subset of Partner Program Guide vendors who give solution providers the best partnering elements in their channel programs. The 5-Star rating is bestowed on programs whose overall rating is among the elite based on company size.

"We are pleased to deliver to the Channel an exclusive list of the leading vendor channel programs with details about key technologies, program opportunities, and information on the hottest new program offerings," said Kelley Damore, VP, Editorial Director, Everything Channel. "The quality of a technology vendor's partner program determines how profitable its partners will be.  For their commitment to their business partners and their efforts to build quality programs, we congratulate those recognized as this year's 5-Star Partner Program winners for helping to drive greater revenue in the channel."

The PPG list and those companies recognized as 5-star will appear in the March 29 issue of CRN magazine and online at www.Channelweb.com.

About Novell

Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers the best engineered, most interoperable Linux* platform and a portfolio of integrated IT management software that helps customers around the world reduce cost, complexity and risk. With our infrastructure software and ecosystem of partnerships, Novell harmoniously integrates mixed IT environments, allowing people and technology to work as one. For more information, visit www.novell.com.

About Everything Channel (www.everythingchannel.com, www.channelweb.com)

Everything Channel, headquartered in Framingham, MA, is a technology marketing and sales solutions company.  Through its "Complete Technology Channel Solution," Everything Channel offers the right business tools to accelerate technology sales.  From branding and recruiting to marketing and sales, Everything Channel offers technology marketers the unmatched breadth and depth of global brands and market intelligence combined with unparalleled audience loyalty and credibility serving all technology sales channels through an extensive database.  Everything Channel provides innovative field sales and marketing solutions to the sellers of technology to achieve measurable and significant results.

About United Business Media Limited

UBM (UBM.L) focuses on two principal activities: worldwide information distribution, targeting and monitoring; and, the development and monetisation of B2B communities and markets. UBM's businesses inform markets and serve professional commercial communities -- from doctors to game developers, from journalists to jewelry traders, from farmers to pharmacists -- with integrated events, online, print and business information products. Our 6,500 staff in more than 30 countries are organised into specialist teams that serve these communities, bringing buyers and sellers together, helping them to do business and their markets to work effectively and efficiently. For more information, go to www.ubm.com.

Novell is a registered trademark and PartnerNet is a registered service mark of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

SOURCE Novell, Inc.