Chris Stone, former president and CEO of Object Management Group, last week officially became Novell, Inc.'s senior vice president of corporate strategy and business development, with the goal of vaulting the company into the strata of the major Internet/intranet players. Computerworld Senior Editor Carol Sliwa recently caught up with him to discuss those plans.
CW: What's your mission in the new job?
Stone: I view it as a classic turnaround opportunity. Really smart people. Great product. [A company] that really needs some strategic direction in technology, products, partnerships and relationships.
The issue [has been] getting strategic focus inside the company and then expanding that so that people outside the company can actually understand what Novell wants to do.
CW: Do you have a sense of what customers want from Novell?
Stone: I've thought that Java and distributed object computing and the notion of a network, rather than an operating system, is Novell's future and that Novell was in essence waiting for something like that to happen to it. It just didn't know it.
I think most of the customers are happy with the products. What they're concerned about is that they bet their careers on Novell. They need to be comfortable that Novell is in it for the long term, and right now, many of them aren't. That's probably the toughest job right now: winning back the hearts and minds of these kinds of people.
CW: How important is Java going to be in Novell's overall strategy?
Stone: Java is probably the most important execution environment for us. We will build the future of our services all using Java APIs and Java execution. But the really interesting applications and services for Novell are on the server. We really don't care what the front end is. What we do have to figure out is how those appliances configure into a network.
We will provide a set of core services that should be available to any given network, then we will expand on that. We've got to find five or six really neat services that we can make a lot of money on.
CW: Can you give some examples?
Stone: There's a set of core services that you have to have: security, data replication, a directory service - which is what Novell is really good at - and then the more mundane things like print and file, systems administration. Those aren't something we're going to make a whole lot of money on.
[Moneymakers] may be very domain-specific: an application for a patient index system for the entire hospital network that allows any physician to look up a medical record history or link into a prescription drug program. Today, what's the model? It's all on paper.
CW: Will Novell actually write and sell these applications?
Stone: It's the make/buy decision. I think most of them we'll probably partner - either buy or license or something like that.
My mantra is: Does this make us any money?
CW: If you partner with somebody, you aren't going to make a lot of money off the applications. But the whole idea is to make people want to use Novell products because it offers these services.
Stone: He who owns the infrastructure will make money. If you own the infrastructure, you have an enormous impact on all the infrastructure people will require and build things on top of it.
We have that. Three years ago, four years ago, Novell had that model. But they couldn't figure out how to do it for the network, the Internet in general.
CW: Whom do you consider your chief competition in this regard?
Stone: Certainly Microsoft. And to be quite honest, the competition in this regard right now are all the little independent companies.
CW: List three goals to achieve by the end of the year.
Stone: Turn Novell into a intranet/Internet provider. Continue to roll out products on a very timely basis. And, in our message, a consistent single strategy that everybody sings, everybody can explain and commit to.
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