Users to Novell CEO: Focus on Products
from: nwfusion.com
Orem, Utah - Upon joining Novell, Inc. as its CEO in April, Eric Schmidt pledged to make the company an intranet/Internet industry leader within one year. But you would be hard pressed to find anyone outside the company who believes he has driven Novell even halfway to that goal.
Some customers and business partners said they sense a renewed enthusiasm and commitment to better service under Schmidt's leadership. However, many analysts and customers are withholding praise until Schmidt gets the company to deliver what really matters to Novell's bottom line: products that give customers good reason to turn down Windows NT.
Schmidt has spent much of the past six months at industry trade shows talking up Novell's 'Net services campaign, which revolves around cross-platform technologies such as Novell Directory Services. He's also taken to the road at a frantic pace to touch base with as many major customers as possible.
But customers are still skeptical because they have heard so much lip service from Novell executives in the past. ''I really don't care what he has to say. I just want him to show me the products,'' said Scott Sattler, senior network analyst with Cargill, Inc. in Minneapolis, which operates more than 700 Novell servers worldwide.
Cargill is looking to roll out 200 more servers but seriously is considering NT Server because Novell has failed to deliver a native TCP/IP version of its operating system, Sattler said. ''[Novell is] playing the Internet game, but they still don't have a good, cutting-edge operating system to help them get there,'' he said.
Schmidt has spent much of the past six months at industry trade shows talking up Novells Net services campaign, which re-volves around cross-platform technologies such as Novell Directory Services (NDS).
He also has taken to the road at a frantic pace to touch base with as many major customers as possible. But customers still are skeptical because they have heard so much lip service from Novell executives in the past.
Schmidt was unavailable for comment, but a spokesman said the CEO is keenly focused on keeping product promises. First, however, Schmidt has tried to get the company's finances in order. He has flattened the corporate structure by weeding out 40% of middle management, laying off 20% of the workforce and clearing the channel of excess inventory.
These moves have registered short-term hits to Novell's bottom line. The company last week reported a net loss of $122 million and revenue of $90 million for its third quarter. But the moves also put Novell in a position for better long-term gains, said Mary McCaffrey, a financial analyst with Alex. Brown and Sons, Inc. in New York.
''But the only true judgement of Schmidt's efforts will be the products that get rolled out under his guidance, she said. Using that gauge, Schmidt gets points for getting BorderManager, Novell's new suite of proxy-caching, firewall and virtual private networking services, out the door on time. That product officially hits the streets today. ''They're on the right track with this one because it lets you evolve what you have in IntranetWare and NDS into a new way of computing using the Internet,'' said Phil Easter, technology strategist with Greyhound Lines, Inc. in Dallas.
What about NDS?
But Schmidt loses points on an equally strategic product - a version of NDS
that runs natively on NT - that was supposed to be available by the end of this
month. The product release has slipped, and now the software will not be
available until fall. The delay is due to the addition of new management features
that were not planned for the initial release, Novell officials said.
''There is no reason that Novell shouldn't have shipped this product a year ago,'' said Neil MacDonald, an analyst with Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Group, Inc. He noted that Banyan Systems, Inc. shipped its StreetTalk directory service on NT over a year ago.
The true test of Schmidt's product delivery prowess will come if he can get the company to ship Moab, the next release of the operating system that swaps out Novell's proprietary IPX transport protocol in favor of industry-standard IP. Novell has been promising native IP support for two years; the ship date most recently was pushed back to early 1998.
Customers seem confident that Schmidt can get Novell to deliver this time around. ''He's taken a hard line on the switch to TCP/IP as a native protocol, and I think that's one of the most significant direction changes,'' said David Druker, a senior systems analyst at the University of Utah Hospitals & Clinics in Salt Lake City.
''When he went in and told the R&D group that they were no longer going to work with IPX, he forced Novell to join the rest of the world. That's a start,'' said Robert Sather, director of MIS at the Mayo Chemical Co. in Smyrna, Ga.
As for future products, Schmidt has to do a better job articulating how customers - especially the 50% to 60% still running NetWare 3.X - will be able to migrate to and use new network services. ''It's a big stretch to think of NetWare 3.11 file and print services moving toward object-oriented applications and network services that manage IP, security and Web access,'' said Jon Oltsik, an analyst with Forrester Research, Inc. in Cambridge, Mass. |
