Hello Salah,
> Hi Scott...About SB
I appreciate your response ...
> I'm the last guy to have an intelligent answer to this highly
> technical question.
I'll try to ask a slightly different way ...
> Frankly, I don't know what caching is, my technical knowledge is
> very limited, and there are several people in the thread who are
> much more knowledgeable than me who can respond to this question
> (Paul, BP, Jack, Fred, Joe, Dave, and several others).
Caching is the new market that Novell is leading in that will springboard us into the forefront again! ;-)
> However, my main point about SB is that it is the fastest growing
> segment of the market. I'm guessing that this segment is growing at
> 40% to 60% yearly, while the enterprise segment is growing at 10%
> to 15% yearly.
So this reinforces the arguement that there is a tremendous amount of money to be made in the SB market.
> In any case, with NW sales declining from ~300M in Q3-95, to ~250M
> in Q4-96, to 150M-170M presently, because MSFT is taking over the
> low end, something needs to be done at the low end to get Novell
> back on track.
I guess that my question was directed at the issue of trying to compete head-to-head with Microsoft to sell into this segment, vs. selling complimentary products to these customers ... products that compliment and enhance their Windows purchases.
> I do believe this is the main concern in the thread, without strong
> products for the low end, the chances for a turnaround are very
> slim.
I think that people often focus on us selling Novell products into these customers *instead of* Microsoft products. Recently numerous customers have asked us to drop the "us vs. them" attitude and to focus on fixing the things that Microsoft just can't seem to do right. We, as Novell, have never sold networking products into "pure Novell" accounts. There is no such thing. The customer always had to have desktop operating systems from Apple, IBM, Microsoft, or others.
I believe that even recently Eric Schmidt has reinforced the new attitude of selling products that make Microsoft networks work. And the customer feedback has been very good.
I believe that to penetrate the SB market we do not have to sell the *entire* sale. We need to be a key part of the sale. We want to be one of the components. We want to "love them to death" ...
> Don't forget that MSFT is not sitting idly waiting for Novell to
> regain their market share, MSFT is forging ahead to dominate this
> market totally, here is what MSFT is doing:
I agree completely ... they are an amazing machine!
> *******************************
> BTW, I'm very pleased that you and Paul made peace, I enjoy and
> appreciate both your posts.
I too like this list to be a productive source of information and also appreciate both your posts!
> Regards
>
> Salah
Scott C. Lemon |
