Univel

Novell was the leader in network operating system software, with its product NetWare, while Unix System Laboratories was an AT&T majority-owned entity responsible for the development and maintenance of one of the main branches of the Unix operating system, the UNIX System V Release 4 source code product. The idea to combine forces originated during 1991, with USL chief Roel Pieper believing that the advent of 32-bit applications and workgroup computing gave Unix its best chance yet to gain widespread acceptance. Pieper brought the idea to Novell chief Ray Noorda, as Novell's executives were already looking for a way to gain entry into enterprise computing. In particular, Novell executive vice president Kanwal Rekhi played a significant role in the formation and launching of Univel.

Initial word that Novell and USL were planning a joint venture came in October 1991 with a memorandum of understanding between the two. Univel was then formed in December 1991, with public announcement of the formation being made on December 12, 1991. Novell had a 55 percent share of the new entity. The president of Univel was Joel Applebaum, who had previously been a vice president at Unix System Laboratories. Univel had some $30 million in initial financing.

The headquarters for Univel was in Novell's offices in San Jose, California, where much of the sales and marketing effort also took place. The main engineering office was in Sandy, Utah, where development work for the NetWare for Unix client was done among other components (there were also Univel liaison staff located at Novell's main Provo offices). Finally, there was also a small group in USL's offices in Summit, New Jersey assigned to the Univel effort, whose roles included ISV support engineering.

For Unix System Laboratories, Univel was its first foray into the binary, shrink-wrapped software product market. While the initiative initially focused on Intel x86-based systems, there were also ideas within Univel to later support the Sun SPARC and MIPS architectures, and possibly the in-the-works Advanced RISC Computing architecture as well.