Now that Novell has stopped bleeding and has put away some cash (nearly $1.9 billion), the company is looking to acquisitions as a growth strategy. Earlier this week it purchased SiteScape, an open source team collaboration outfit. Novell did not divulge the price, but given that analysts at The 451 Group estimate that SiteScape was on a run rate of about $10 million, it couldn’t have been very much. Novell has Now that Novell has stopped bleeding and has put away some cash (nearly $1.9 billion), the company is looking to acquisitions as a growth strategy. Earlier this week it purchased SiteScape, an open source team collaboration outfit. Novell did not divulge the price, but given that analysts at The 451 Group estimate that SiteScape was on a run rate of about $10 million, it couldn’t have been very much. Novell has had an OEM agreement since last year with SiteScape for its open source ICEcore team collaboration and Web conferencing software. The Novell Teaming + Conferencing product, which is based on ICEcore, is part of Novell’s GroupWise line.The Teaming product has only been shipping since October so there hasn’t been a ton of time to work up much of a customer base. But the company apparently found enough interest from its GroupWise customers, to which it offered some pre-release purchase discounts, to merit an outright acquisition of the company, the analysts said in a published note. Microsoft and IBM are Novell’s much larger competitors in the collaboration market. Zimbra offers collaboration products based on Linux, though as the analysts note, it faces an uncertain future if parent Yahoo combines with Microsoft. Here’s what Novell’s CEO Ron Hovsepian said about the deal. “The acquisition of SiteScape fits squarely into the corporate strategy we have laid out,” he said in a press release. “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.”Well, I’ve been bearish on Novell for some time. But Hovsepian seems to be bringing some stability and fresh energy to the company. Could it be an acquisition target? Certainly. At $6.63 a share, it has a market value of $2.33 billion but the big horde of cash on hand makes the real cost considerably cheaper. By the way, a quick way to estimate the value of a company is to take the market cap (number of shares x share price) plus debt minus cash and equivalents. That’s called the enterprise value. I welcome your comments, tips and suggestions. Reach me at bill_snyder@infoworld.com Technology Industry