In 1995, Firmage wrote an excellent white paper for Novell called "The Smart Global Network," which he described as "the merger of LANs, WANs and the Internet into a single system managed by NDS." Very similar to today's "One net."
People I'm interviewing for my paper on Novell's marketing troubles stated that Novell feared that customers would interpret the Smart Global Network as something proprietary and different from the Internet and therefore decided to abandon the whole strategy. One lesson for Novell today is to firmly associate DENIM and One net with e-business or Internet business. Another lesson: stay the course!
Also interesting: Novell paid Marketing guru Doc Searles of recent "Clue Train" fame to develop a strategy presentation in 1996. Sources tell me that Searles came to the conclusion that Novell needed to positon itself as a "Net Services" company, but his ideas never got the support in the company they needed to influence other marketing.
I believe that Novell should have done more with the NetWare brand and the very successful "NetWare Yes" campaign that was a high water point in its marketing. NetWare is such a perfect name for a whole family of Net Services software. Why not just sell, "NetWare network operating systems, NetWare UNIX operating systems, NetWare email, NetWare Desktop Management, NetWare Directory Services, etc...." Announce the next revision of the entire family once each year at BrainShare. Spend the rest of the year marketing solutions to customers and end users.
Novell apparently got off this track because people associated NetWare with proprietary protocols and an isolated file and print platform. Hindsight is golden, but my thesis is that this was Novell's crucial mistake. They had a great brand and should have evolved/expanded it to signify a whole, unified family of Net Services products that supports One Net and works on multiple platforms.
I believe this missed opportunity contributed to the split personality that has since afflicted Novell, with NetWare on one side and "the other stuff" on the other. It led to the devaluing of one of high tech's greatest brands (perversely, Novell was the unwitting leader in this devaluation process) and a steadily more confusing goobledygook of product names and categories. |
