IBM and Lucent Technologies' veteran Jeffrey Jaffe has been named as Novell's next chief technology officer following an eight-month search.

Jaffe will be responsible for technology direction and lead Novell's product business units, reporting to recently appointed president and chief operating officer Ron Hovsepian.

Jaffe joins Novell having spent five years with Lucent, where he was president of Bell Labs Research and Advanced Technologies. Prior to Lucent, Jaffe held a variety of positions during a 20-year tenure at IBM, including head of IBM's security, directory and networking software business. Directory was recently ordained one of Novell's core business areas, following a restructuring decision.

Hovsepian said Jaffe's "superior intellect and business acumen" will increase the strength of Novell's management team and serve customers and shareholders well.

Previous CTO Alan Nugent left Novell in March to take up a position at Computer Associates International (CA), as vice president and general manager of CA's Unicenter business. Nugent is working under Jaffe's former IBM colleague John Swainson who joined CA as chief executive in late 2004.®

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