Novell's board of directors has ousted chief executive Jack Messman and chief financial officer Joseph Tibbetts.

Current chief operations officer Ron Hovsepian has been named as the new chief executive. The company has appointed an interim CFO and is looking for a permanent replacement.

Hovsepian said in a conference call that he plans to maintain the company's current course of selling its legacy closed-source software while transforming to an open source business, but will do so at an increased pace.

"We need to move forward aggressively," he said. "My priority will be to accelerate the speed and urgency of our business strategy and the transition to our Linux-based products, identity and resource management."

Novell is facing declining revenues from its Netware business while sales of its Linux and open source products have been slow to take off. The company has reported results that fell short of analyst expectations in recent quarters.

Hovesepian said that he plans to launch new sales programmes for the small and medium business segment that aim to slow down the decline in Netware sales.

In the Linux market Novell hopes to grow the number of service contracts that it sells for its free software.

The company has started to require users who download the company's Linux product from its website to register, allowing it to pitch additional products to these users at a later stage.