Internet World in New York was a reality check and the news is not good.
First the show. MSFT booth packed. Lots of end users mezmerized and hanging around the MSFT booth for the word according to GAtes about everything from JAVA (what a joke) to the "future of computing". Like a packed nightclub with a hot band.
Sun Java booth also packed with developers looking at JAVA tools. Novell booth --- moderate interest, three and four people at a time at a station. Good interest in the coffee shop with the laptops. But no excitement about IntranetWare.
The show floor---Lots of People actively looking for products out on the floor. Lots of small companies in small booths. A lot of excitement, haven't seen this since DOS first became the dominant platform and applications came out of the woodwork with users chasing them.
However everyone demoing with NT and MSFT's web server and no one demoing with Novell's IntranetWare.
That's the bad news folks. ITs real bad news.
For example, someone on this thread was talking about Cisco being a close partner of Novell. I asked Cisco about an application of theirs for real time video over an intranet (These are not server apps but client apps!) and which intranet to use. Their answer was NT. They even claimed that IntranetWare couldn't do IP multicasting. The equivalent of saying its got a technical problem that prevents our using it! Same with ORacle (which even had NT highlighted in red in the name of one of its products), same with HP, same with everyone. Its like when they had to say they were DOS compatible.
Ask anyone, which web server does your product run with, and the answer is NT.
Microsoft has done it again folks. If you are a company demoing an application running on a client connected to an intranet, invariably you demoed the intranet server as NT running MSFT IICS.
The message I got is that if you are developing an Internet/intranet product you have to have your people out there beating the bushes for what will be required in the next version. You have to have your engineering team geared up to put absolute must enhancements into new versions as quickly as you can get them debugged and out the door!
So what do you write for....well the dominant platform is NT and IIS is free... and MSFT's browser is free... and people are idiots and they buy what is popular...the safe bet is....NT. NT. NT. NT....
Is there anything that can save Novell? Yes
I went to the HP booth with an Intel guy. He wanted to show me a turnkey intranet/firewall/internet box. Wheel it in, plug it in to your existing network and your company is on the net. Turnkey solution cost 10K. Comes with a Intel Pentium, NT, and IIS.
I present this guy with my standard test. I want to use an HTML page to access an Oracle DB on my web server. Advice, NT is too slow to handle the DB server on the same 10K box as the web server!!! get another box for the DB!!!
I take the same problem to the Novell booth. They show me a lower powered Pentium and run the DB server and the web server on the same box. One box with IntranetWare and you don't need another box, you don't need multiple servers. The thing flew. It outperformed NT by a mile.
There are many other practical technical points that make IntranetWare a superior product. But Novell has to get the enhancements into these products and out the door ASAP. Example: They need to give Groupware work flow across the net capabilities. They need to talk loudly about their technical superiority. They need to get IntranetWare into everybodies booth as a supported web server.
Second source of hope comes from a strange place---Corel. Little Corel is demoing Wordperfect as a JAVA applet. It works, its fast and it is the future. Every application running on a PC today that is of the suite type, will be an applet. That makes the web server and its speed and performance critical. That opens the door for superior engineering.
Last caveat. Novell must get people to talk up their products. They should be out there going to every company and offering to work with them to get a Novell web server in those booths. I had a Caere product manager tell me that he uses Netscape and favors Novell NOS's but cannot afford to demo on other than NT. If Novell took the Caere automatic paper form to HTML with input fields product and demoed it because it waas an exciting app, that too would be good.The excitement is in new products based on the client/browser. Novell marketing should be out there combing the floor for dynamite apps to demo with IntranetWare. Developers need to be given IntranetWare in Kayak form with dynamite speed and with dynamite web server performance.
I think the next quarter is critical for Novell. If we don't see corporate marketing emerge at Novell in a dynamic way very very soon then the ball game is over. Too many companies are falling into line behind NT in this internet/intranet market. There are only so many sales in the big corporate market to the existing customer base. You know the pitch---just add IntranetWare and you have web access. The real market however is ---I want to do everything in my company with an internet/intranet at the center. Where are the tools, where are the apps, what is the server I need.
Where are you MR. Marengi and where is your corporate marketing group and wheredo your people have their heads? |
