After taking possession of Novell, Attachmate's first reaction was to gut the place.

According to published reports "hundreds" of surprised employees in Provo, Utah, where Attachmate means to return the company's headquarters back from Massachusetts, were laid off Monday.

One report put the number at 700-800 people and said sales, HR, legal and corporate operations were particularly hard hit.

Attachmate didn't say how many were let go but product lines are reportedly also being trimmed.

Staffers on the open source Miguel de Icaza-led Mono Project, the cross-platform version of Microsoft's C#, Common Language Runtime and.NET framework, were let go

Workers outside the US are also reportedly on Attachmate's hit list.

Senior management is gone including CEO Ron Hovsepian, CFO Dana Russell, CMO John Dragoon, open platforms general manager Markus Rex and global sales chief Javier Colado.

Suse is moving back to Nuremberg, Germany, where it came from, under newly created president Nils Brauckmann, who used to be Attachmate's VP of sales and marketing in EMEA.

Germany is reportedly supposed to decide about "prioritizing and resourcing" Mono, according to a statement from Attachmate quoted by InternetNews.com.