Hello Paul,
I see that you approve of the new VP of Marketing ... so far! ;-) I agree that this seems to be a good choice!
As for your post ...
> Ever heard of a Potemkin village?
I have. I don't know the exact details, but I believe it was a series of fake villages (or facades?) put up by the Prince(?) Potemkin to impress some Queen or Empress? I think to make her think things were hunky-dory? Something like that ...
> So if I understand you correctly Scott, MSFT which puts up the
> straw house while Novell works on the massive monument, the same
> MSFT which then convinces everyone to buy into the straw house,
> while you cannot even tell us where Novell revenues are going to
> come from with regard to the massive monument, this MSFT is somehow
> going to be punished for this fraud?
Oops ... where did Microsoft come into this? No I simply trying to say that Novell *could* build some cool straw houses, however I think that sometimes a company has to take a little time to put some effort into the foundation of the future.
> I think not Scott.
>
> I don't think you even understand the basics of marketing. If there
> are two widgets out there and one does enough of the job to be
> useful and the other does something that might be useful someday,
> which do you expect the client will go for---the one that does
> something today or the one that promises to do something tomorrow?
Oh, now I'm offended. ;-( I think that because you give me no credit you often misinterpret my comments. I like to think that I've learned a little after this long! ;-)
Of course the widget that is useful today is what is bought ... until the better mousetrap (widget) comes along. I know that you do exactly that in many aspects of your life ... everyone does! A new car. A new VCR. A new food. A new restraunt. We use what we can buy today, but then 'upgrade' when the newer, better, faster, cheaper, widget comes along.
So are you saying that Novell should *not* be trying to build that new widget? I don't think so ... I actually think we are in agreement. I am trying to speed things up all that *I* can! ;-)
> NT runs applications. Citrix runs applications. Where's your JAVA
> alternative?
I also agree with you here. There is a huge installed base of Win32 applications. And "content" is king. Applications are also a form of "content". As Novell we can try and be a catalyst to assist in getting developers to build more applications in Java ... but we are not an application software company. Well, not in the traditional sense. We are more of the supporting infrastructure. Much like a BASF ... we don't make the applications you run ... we make the applications you run work better, faster, more reliable, more manageable, etc. We provide those applications a service infrastructure.
I know that folks like IBM have said Java is it. They are working hard to build the class libraries and the frameworks for "real" business applications to be built in Java. It is people like and JavaSoft and Sun that we are trying to support. When the applications are delivered I think that we will be a very good platform for them.
Scott C. Lemon |
