*** Excellent interview with Eric Schmidt conducted by Infoworld...
New CEO Eric Schmidt discusses his
plans for Novell
By Matthew Woollacott
InfoWorld Electric
Novell's long search for a new CEO ended this week with the naming of Eric Schmidt,
currently chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems, to lead the Orem, Utah, networking
software giant.
Schmidt next month steps into the post that has been vacant since last August, when Robert
Frankenberg resigned. Schmidt will also take over the role of chairman, which has been filled
by John Young since August. Young will become vice chairman of the company.
Schmidt joined Sun in 1983 as manager of software and moved up through the ranks with
positions as director of software engineering, vice president and general manager of the
software products division, vice president of the general systems group, and president of Sun
Technology Enterprises.
Schmidt was previously a member of the research staff at the Computer Science Lab at Xerox
Palo Alto Research Center and had also worked at Bell Laboratories.
He spoke at length on Wednesday with InfoWorld about his plans for advancing Novell in an
age of open networking standards and amid feverish competition in what had long been
Novell's exclusive domain: the local area network.
InfoWorld: Why did you want the job?
Schmidt: Good question. Novell as you know is the world's largest network software
company. It's very financially stable, and they have 60 million customers using the software.
They sold 250,000 servers last quarter. That's a pretty good starting point. It's my personal
view that networking is where all the interesting activity in the industry is going to occur in the
next five to 10 years, so why not start with the leading company in that area. It makes sense to
me.
The company has gone through a strategic and implementation transition moving from
proprietary protocols to open protocols based on IP, which is my religion, so it all sounds good
to me. It makes sense if you think about it from the standpoint of what I want to work on.
Here's an opportunity to work with people who are 100 percent committed to the same thing
I'm committed to.
InfoWorld: Which of Novell's technologies are crucial to its success?
Schmidt: Of the ones I'm aware of -- all. The company has four main product lines: There's
the IntranetWare product line, which is actually NetWare with a lot of open stuff added in;
GroupWise, which is a hot collaborative product; ManageWise is the systems and network
management product; and you have the directory services, which span everything. And I think
the correct positioning of the company is to sell all four at once.
In other words, if what you do is you say that you are going to sell NetWare to this company,
and NDS [Novell Directory Services] to that company, you don't get any network leverage.
You need to sell an integrated vision around that, and that requires, I suspect, some education
and focus, training and evangelism.
InfoWorld: How are you going to evangelize Novell's message?
Schmidt: I've spent the last few years primarily evangelizing technology. My going-in position
is that I will take my current talk, which is about the network and how it's going to evolve, and
I'll insert Novell products as necessary into the talk.
My going-in position is that networks are the interesting play, and Novell will play a key part in
the emerging online services of one sort or another: finding things, securing things, various
server-based technologies, push technologies, etc.
InfoWorld: Analysts have said that IPX used to be a wonderful thing for Novell, but it's now
perceived as a legacy system. Isn't there a danger with Novell that it's perceived as yesterday's
technology?
Schmidt: What you're doing is playing what I would view as an old tape. What you're saying is
correct, which is IPX was wonderful. But now the world has moved largely to IP and open
protocols. So has Novell.
InfoWorld: But as you say, now everybody is using open protocols. Hasn't Novell lost its
competitive edge?
Schmidt: To the contrary. What we need to do in the context of open protocols is articulate
why ours are better. Now I've spent all those years at Sun saying, "Sure, we're open, but our
implementation is better." So what I will hopefully be able to do when I get in here is say,
"Look, given that everybody is using similar protocols, let me tell you why our solution is
better."
Let me give you an example with Windows NT. In many ways Novell is a benefactor of NT's
success. If you take a look at NT and spend any time at all on the NT question, it's not very
secure, it's not very manageable, it's not very reliable, and domains are a disaster -- to be quite
blunt. And guess what, Novell, through a combination products, solves every one of those
problems perfectly.
NDS is the strategic product here. You go into the company and say, "Look, would you like to
have this system that no human can administer, or do you want something that actually works?"
We have lots of customer testimonials, lots of design wins, and it really scales -- and these
things are hard. And customers in my experience say, "Yes." I mean, Sun did a deal to license
NDS precisely for that reason. So we at Sun spoke with our wallets some time ago.
InfoWorld: But NDS running on NT isn't due out until the end of the year, which is the same
time frame as Microsoft's Active Directory.
Schmidt: Have you been tracking Microsoft's commitments versus reality recently? That's a
good task.
My point here is that Microsoft is certainly going to enter this space. I am a natural
collaborator, so I'm going to try as hard as I can to collaborate with everyone in the industry,
including Microsoft, to make this vision a reality.
Microsoft is everywhere, so you're always going to compete to some degree. I've been in that
role for a long time at Sun, and it's no different coming to Novell. You work with Microsoft,
you find ways where you help them, and they collaborate. And there are areas where you
compete and you don't collaborate. They're a very smart company, they're well-managed, they
understand this.
InfoWorld: You've said that you're going to continue in the same direction that Novell has
been headed in, but you've also talked about new technologies. Which of these are going to be
crucial for Novell in the short term?
Schmidt: The one I'm most excited about is Border Services, but I think there's going to be an
explosion of proxy cache and secure firewalls. [See < a
href="/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?970314.wnovell.htm">"Novell on cusp of unveiling its extranet
strategy."]
InfoWorld: What about push technology?
Schmidt: It's still very early. The standards aren't set yet, but I like the push model a lot
because I like the model of [making] information useful. So that's an example of something I'll
be pushing within the company, pardon the pun.
InfoWorld: Reportedly, there has also been friction between the California and Utah
operations of Novell. Where are you going to be based, and how are you going to overcome
the conflicts?
Schmidt: In any big company there are going to be tensions between different operating units.
The company has done a series of operational changes prior to my showing up, designed to
[create] a common technology and marketing direction. There will always be some differences
however. And frankly we've had those issues within Sun, and we've worked them out. I
suspect we'll be able to work them out without any trouble [at Novell].
As far as where am I going to be based, it appears to be on airplanes. If you look at it, there's
a big operation in San Jose, [Calif.], there's a big operation in Provo, [Utah], another big
operation in Orem, [Utah]. They appear to have different skill sets -- all important. I wouldn't
make a change on any of that. It looks good to me. There's a benefit to having groups outside
Silicon Valley as well as inside. The idea would be to get the best of both as opposed to the
worst of both.
InfoWorld: Can you explain any more about which locations have which specialties?
Schmidt: Let me let the Novell folks articulate that over time. I couldn't give you a precise
answer to that.
InfoWorld: When do you start your new job?
Schmidt: April 7.
InfoWorld: Will you be at BrainShare next week?
Schmidt: They've been kind enough to invite me. I'll be there as a guest, and maybe I'll make a
cameo appearance, but it's really [Novell's acting president and COO Joe Marengi's] show,
and I'm really supportive of what he's trying to do.
InfoWorld: You were a facilitator in your job as CTO at Sun, in terms of getting some more
strident people in Sun to work with Microsoft both on the licensing of Java and working to
make sure customers can integrate NT into Sun's environments. Do you see that continuing at
Sun after you leave?
Schmidt: Absolutely. I think you're giving me too much credit, but thank you. The Sun strategy
with regard to Microsoft is to work with them as a customer with respect to Java, and to
interoperate with NT so that customers who have NT with Sun [platforms] will be happy. And
I fully support that, and I can tell you that [Sun Chairman and CEO Scott McNealy] is not only
very supportive of that but he's investing even more in both areas. |
