Here, some more "tidbits" on our fav' company:
Nothing most people don't already know, but I think it's good for the Novell folk on this thread to keep reading it <s>.
PS: Jim Walker (yes, I saw your post - thanks for the time). Does
Novell sponser Brigham Young U. .edu accounts? Just kidding, Jim <g>.
Thanks for the reply.
======================================================================3:42 PM ET 12/02/96
Novell banking on intranet systems
By Judith Crosson
DENVER, Dec 2 (Reuter) - Novell Inc, the giant software
company that has been shedding assets and shuffling top
management, is banking on the growth of corporate-wide intranet
systems to boost earnings.
Novell's fierce rivalry with Microsoft Corp once
prompted it to take on the software giant in a variety of areas
including word processing software.
But now the Orem, Utah-based firm is puzzling over how it
can defend the market for networking software, which has been
its flagship business product since the company's inception.
Chris Le Tocq of Dataquest said investors will have to keep
a keen eye on Novell's new products, such as its Novell
Directory Services.
In the fourth quarter, sales for new products such as
IntranetWare showed strong gains over the third quarter, but
analysts want to see if this becomes a trend.
John McCarthy, director of research at Forrester Research,
said the question about IntranetWare sales is whether customers
will be interested in the new products on a companywide basis
-- which would produce the kind of revenues the market wants to
see.
All of the problems have kept alive rumors that Novell
could be a takeover target. But for the time being at least,
the company has squelched that talk and the distraction it has
caused, saying last week that it sees its future course as an
independent entity.
Last week Novell reported fourth quarter earnings of $0.17
a share, compared with $0.16 a share in the year-ago
period. Revenues fell to $346 million from $481 million,
underscoring the benefits of cost cutting and getting rid of
poor performers.
"They've turned the corner financially," a key first step
in holding on to customers, McCarthy said. "Customers get
reallly nervous when you lose money," he said.
But McCarthy and other analysts say it is too early to
predict the future for Novell.
It has been a rocky road in the past few years. When former
Chief Executive Officer Bob Frankenberg, who left in late
summer, came on board, his first task was to figure out what to
do about poor performance at WordPerfect, a major software
company that analysts said should never have been acquired by
Novell.
Gruntal & Co analyst David Takata said Novell's problems
with WordPerfect diverted management's attention at a time when
the company should have been getting on the Internet bandwagon.
Novell sold WordPerfect to Canadian software company Corel
Corp and the sigh of relief could be heard on Wall
Street. But time was lost. Novell's biggest headache now is
finding a way to easily link customers on its network software
with the Internet.
Novell's software technology, which once created the market
for enabling computers to talk to each other on a network, is
based on a proprietary system and pre-dates Internet standards.
Novell's biggest challenge is how to continue to perpetuate
its dominance in computer networking software while at the same
time letting customers easily link into the Internet and the
open technologies that surround it.
In addition to this challenge, Novell also faces stiff
competition from rivals like Microsoft, which has for years
been seeking to unseat it as the top supplier of networking
products.
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Joe... |
