Novell CEO takes the high road
Novell's Tom Schmidt shares his views on everything from Microsoft to Linux and Java.
By Mary Jo Foley & Ed Sperling, Sm@rt Reseller
March 23, 1999 7:21 AM PT
In a high-tech world where backbiting is the norm, Novell Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt is continuing to take the high road.
While Schmidt doesn't fancy himself a peacemaker or Utah, Novell's (Nasdaq:NOVL) home state, as the next Switzerland, he does seem to be genuine in his desire to call a truce to the operating system wars.
"The OS war was a great last battle, and the generals always want to be in the last battle. But I want to be in the next battle," Schmidt told Sm@rt Reseller in a wide-ranging interview during Novell's annual BrainShare developer conference in Salt Lake City this week.
For Schmidt, the next battle is the directory space, where, in Novell's view scaleable directory services become the key backbone for applications and services going forward. Nor surprisingly, archrival Microsoft Corp. doesn't share Novell's view of the world, and is continuing to push its various operating systems as the crux of future product development.
Schmidt says he's come to terms with Novell's relationship with Microsoft. He says he continues to meet on a regular basis with Microsoft CEO Bill Gates, but declines to provide details on the timing or substance of their discussions. He says that Novell executives and product managers at all levels meet regularly with their Microsoft colleagues.
Two choices: Hating or loving
"There are two Microsoft strategies you can take: hating or loving," explains Schmidt. "We're trying to position ourselves in a position distinct from Microsoft. We see Microsoft's customers as current or future customers of ours. We meet with Microsoft at every level. They give us early software to test. We give them early software to test."
As proof, Schmidt says Novell early on provided Microsoft with a copy of its Novell Directory Services (NDS) version 8.0 directory and prebriefed the company on all of Novell's BrainShare announcements so there would be "no surprises."
"The press wants to see Novell vs. Microsoft, [Sun Microsystems Inc. CEO Scott] McNealy vs. Gates. It's this kind of one will win, one will lose thing. That's not the way the real world works. It's all about interoperability and heterogeneity," Schmidt says.
While some Novell product managers have expressed--mostly privately, but sometimes publicly--dismay with Microsoft's very public marketing campaigns aimed squarely at Novell products like NDS For NT, as well as at Novell's coveted Platinum-level resellers, Schmidt pooh-poohed these skirmishes.
"We fully intend to support their [Microsoft's] future products and think our products will run fine on Windows 2000," he says.
Linux: How big is that donut?
Microsoft is hardly the only company about which Schmidt thinks. The Linux players are on his radar screen, as evidenced by Novell's recent investment in Red Hat Software Inc. and its partnerships with Caldera Inc. The company is seriously evaluating which of its future platform- and application-level products it should move to Linux, he says.
For now, Schmidt says he doesn't see Linux as a rival to NetWare. "Our market is specialized enough that we don't compete with them. As best I can tell, Linux is being used for things that Unix used to be used for. It's especially appealing for ISPs. How much broader does the donut get?"
In the more immediate term, Schmidt is focused on how Novell can work with the three-way partnership formed by America OnLine Inc., Netscape Communications Corp. and Sun. "I have very good relationships with all of the players at these companies," he says. "And their model is sufficiently different from what Novell does to allow us to play there. AOL is about brands and communities. We're about protocols and APIs [application programming interfaces."
Another possible area where Novell may collaborate with AOL/Netscape/Sun is in Java, a technology upon which Schmidt is still very bullish.
While Novell has not gone so far as to require its developers to code all future products in Java--as some Novell partners have said was the case--Java is definitely on the front burner. Novell's forthcoming e-commerce framework will be written in Java; its DigitalMe digital persona products were done in Java; and almost all of its management tools are being developed in Java.
"Java should be used where appropriate," says Schmidt. "At the kernel and for low-level libraries, we're still C-based. Java, in our case, runs right on the metal. It doesn't have an OS behind it. That's why it's so fast."
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