Schmidt And The Refocusing Of Novell
InformationWeek
A Web of links:
All networks will become interconnected, says Novell CEO Schmidt.
InformationWeek senior managing editor/news Rob Preston talks
one-on-one with Eric Schmidt, CEO of Novell, about his company's
fortunes, electronic business, and the future of networking.
INFORMATIONWEEK: The rap against Novell has been that it appeals to
the network administrator at many companies. But senior management
isn't quite hearing the Novell story as well as they may be hearing the
Microsoft story.
SCHMIDT: I think the rap is true. Novell has historically been an
infrastructure supplier with very loyal customers. From tactical to
strategic, you have to become relevant to the CIO. It turned out that
the most important thing CIOs have is a cost-of-ownership issue. The
question that we asked was, "Can we use our technology to help solve
that problem?"
The easiest way to do that is having a directory, a ubiquitous
platform from which you can have information about what's going on in
the network. So, the key answer to this question is to make the
directory strategic.
INFORMATIONWEEK: How do you make the directory more strategic?
SCHMIDT: Customers don't think directories are the answer; they think
applications that use the directory are the answer. Our strategic value
will come from the solutions we provide for total cost of ownership and
management over a network.
INFORMATIONWEEK: How many customers use your directory?
SCHMIDT: We have a long list of customers. We have about 33 million
people using the directory. Our market share in the Fortune 500 has
been increasing over the last year because of the directory rollouts.
Large companies need directory solutions. My opinion is that the
weakest part of our strategy is on the low end, where things like
having the ubiquitous directories are not as compelling a story as they
should be. There we're using different approaches, trying to package
everything together.
INFORMATIONWEEK: If an IS manager comes to you and says, "My boss
wants technology that's going to make more money for us as opposed to
technology that's just going to sit in the network somewhere," what do
you say?
SCHMIDT: All of the E-commerce initiatives that I've seen start with
the presumption of use of the Web. Because we have the
highest-performing and most scalable Web services, the cost of
deploying an E-commerce solution on ours is lower than that of our
competitors.
INFORMATIONWEEK: How is Novell going to be positioned, either in
products or strategy, against Microsoft? Is the NT juggernaut something
you embrace or accept?
SCHMIDT: I start every day with the assumption that the juggernaut, as
you define it, is reality. In that model, it's incredibly important
that we interoperate with NT and that we extend that solution.
Microsoft may not say it, but the fact is that not everything is
perfect. There are things we can offer that make their solution
better.
INFORMATIONWEEK: What are some obstacles to the growth of electronic
business? What are the greatest drivers?
SCHMIDT: The numbers suggest that people are getting connected even if
they don't know why. So we should begin with some presumptions, and one
is that everything is going to be connected. And by that I mean from
the phone that's in your shoe to the phone that's in your watch to the
computer that's at your home to your television.
The second thing we should assume: All networks are going to get
interconnected. Literally. The corporate net, the LAN, the Internet,
the private net, the university net, the home network will all be one
big network. |
