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SALT LAKE CITY — One Utah-based tech company may be offering a lifeline for some recently laid off employees of a another former high-tech giant.
An executive with Overstock.com said the company would like to consider bringing on some of the workers recently let go from Novell Inc.
The online company is scheduled to open a software development center in Provo early next year. The new facility will add 150 new jobs to the 1,500 the company already employs in the Beehive State, said Overstock President Jonathan Johnson.
Headquartered in Salt Lake City, Overstock was founded in 1999 and is a leading online merchandise retailer.
"We have more innovation in the pipeline than we have developers," Johnson said. "We're really looking for developers that speak Java."
Interested applicants should apply online at www.overstock.com/javajobs. He said the number of potential hires could increase as the company expands in the coming years.
Novell, the firm that was instrumental in making the Utah Valley a focus for technology and software development, has fallen on hard times. Originally founded in Provo in 1979, the company's technology contributed to the emergence of local area networks, which displaced the dominant mainframe computing model of the time.
Today, Novell focuses primarily on developing open source software for enterprise clients.
We have more innovation in the pipeline than we have developers. We're really looking for developers that speak Java.
–- Jonathan Johnson, Overstock president
Last week, Novell announced the layoffs of hundreds of employees from its Provo office, just days after the company was sold. In addition, the company said its headquarters was being moved back to Utah County from Waltham, Mass. — where it had relocated in 2004.
Houston-based Attachmate Group announced that it had completed a $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell. The proposed buyout was announced last November.
"(Provo) will become the center for the Novell business going forward," said Attachmate Group CEO Jeff Hawn.
While the company refused to offer specific numbers, an employee said approximately 800 people company-wide would lose their jobs — with most of those reductions in Provo.
As a result of the merger, Novell stock stopped trading publicly and announced that the company was selling patents to CPTN Holdings LLC — a consortium organized by Microsoft Corp. — for $450 million.
At its height in the 1990s, Novell ran 70 percent of the world's computer networks with its system management software. However, in recent years, the company's fortunes faded, and under pressure from Microsoft and other Web-based competitors, Novell tried to reinvent itself as a distributor of the free Linux operating system.
A news release stated that Attachmate planned to operate Novell as two separate business units under the Novell and SUSE brand names.
Email:jlee@ksl.com
