Hello Lawrence,
> Can somebody help me out? I could have sworn Schmidt intially said
> that MOAB was going to be released by the first of the year and
> that product wasn't going to be delayed. Then I could have
> sworn someone at the exec suite said Moab was going to be released
> in the 1st quater of 1998. Today, The DJNews Retrieval service has
> an article that quotes Schmidt talking about MOAB, but the article
> states it will be out in June.
Software is an interesting business. In all of the software companies that I have worked for, getting a product out the door is a difficult, sometimes painful, process. If you look a the current situation, Moab Beta 1 has shipped. We are getting ready for Beta 2.
As each Beta version goes out the door, we get two types of streams of input. One stream that we get is feedback from *anyone* that decides to give feedback on bugs, features, installation, operations, etc. The second stream is from specific beta sites, that are probably key accounts and customers, that provide us feedback on the overall quality and useability of the product.
Through this process we are able to "fine tune" the development effort, reprioritize features and functions, and see how the "vision" and planning works in the real world. This is where the fun begins.
You might not know, but the development effort for this product has been going on over a series of years. So the initial planning occurred years ago and has been modified since then. Why modify the development plans? Well, the world of technology has changed radically ... and we have to support those changes.
So as a software company, you are left with the decision of shipping a product which is complete, but might not address all the current needs ... or adjust the product during development to try and find some intersection at some future point where you address enough of the current needs, and have built a platform that can grow into the future.
This is no doubt the same reason that Microsoft has slipped NT v5.0 ... it would have been delivered lacking a lot of functionality. They have to catch up.
I think you will see our Betas of Moab continue to roll out on schedule (about once a month or so?) and the product will ship when it represents a solid offering ...
> Am I hallucinating?
Nope ... this is the software business ...
> This is such a marketing information, product schedule duck soup
> that it's hard to figure what's going on.
Yeah ... have you been following the industry? Just think about the impacts when your product relies on the promises of three other software companies delivering on time! In my past start ups we would always try to minimize dependencies on others, but that means you write everything your self!
> Are they actually setting up a smoke screen or are they just not
> telling the media what is going on? Man, if customers are getting
> this duck soup, they must be pretty confused to say the least.
If you find out why NT slipped let me know ... and also let me know about JavaOS and NCs ... ;-)
I believe this is more common that you seem to see, not that it's acceptable, but it's tought to hit moving targets that are going into new dimensions that you don't even know exist until you get there.
Core customers are already involved in the Betas and are waiting on the next Beta ...
> Does anyone have Slitz's e-mail address?
I use GroupWise with full names, but I think the Internet address would just be jslitz@novell.com ...
> Thanks
>
> Lawrence
Scott C. Lemon |
