You know I've thought about a re-organization of Novell using the idea of an internet division but it doesn't work in a simple fashion. I mean, the product lines aren't easily divided between groups when you seperate them in this fashion because everything flows through NDS.
I believe you need a different approach to this where you have NDS as the road in the middle with one side "internet-ready" and the otherside is proprietary or platform-specific. See, NDS is the key to connecting both worlds (public & private networks) and making them work together in a seamless fashion. This is the marketing that will sell the directory to more customers than you could imagine. And it really is all about the directory.
This way you don't divide company resources between groups or duplicate them (thus wasting time and $$). If you have everything flow through NDS, you don't necessarily need to develop an "Internet Division" but rather make your products "internet-ready" through NDS. Then the WHOLE company becomes a pure INTERNET company.
Honestly, which product in Novell's lineup is NOT an internet product? [Ok, off the top of my head you can make the case that ZENworks/ManageWise are not internet-ready products in the fashion they are used.]
Other than that? NetWare 5.0 comes with native LDAP support. Also NetWare 5.0 will have HTTP natively too so it's by default a webserver - what is a webserver other than a server that accesses files? and who does better file sharing than Novell? No one!
Now look at other products:
BorderManager is a combination of their internet caching services, proxy cache services, firewall, Remote Access, VPN server and more. It's all Internet-based stuff.
Novell Distributed Print Services (NDPS) will soon include Internet Printing Protocol so you can print to remote offices via the public internet!
GroupWise - web access to email, calendaring, tasks, document management, webpublishing, etc.
ManageWise and ZENworks manage networks via IP and Web-based management tools (coming soon). These 2 products are the only ones I've come up with that don't have a direct benefit to the internet (yet).
digitalme & i-Chain: well, those are obvious :)
Novonyx servers (Netscape products licensed to Novell): Enterprise Server, FastTrack Server, Collabra server, Messaging server (Liberty product based on this)...
I know that's just the tip of the iceberg but you get the picture I'm sure. Creating an Internet Division is great marketing but marketing alone will only drive Novell so far. There needs to be some substance in any re-organization. That means shifting the core business from NetWare to NDS. Once NDS becomes the CASH COW for Novell, everything else will flow from NDS to other products.
The idea is to take NDS and make it the ULTIMATE internet play (as Dr. Schmidt has said countless times).
Breaking out of the box and into the directory space will forge the next revolution in computing. See, we've gone from MAINFRAMES to the other extreme CLIENT/SERVER distributed computing, what we skipped over was everything in the middle. IMHO, the middle = DIRECTORIES.
Once we go back and see that directories are the key, then the new revolution (the Quiet one) will take place with NDS right in the middle of things. Let's face it, the internet does one thing REALLY great, it connects disparate systems and allows them an avenue with which to communicate. When you break it down to this level, it doesn't matter what the hardware is or the OS that's riding on that hardware. It's all about finding each other, defining the rules and communicating (sounds alike like what NDS does).
NDS is the play. And right now, it's the only in town. I get a kick that MSFT has missed yet another boat and still doesn't see it going.
Peter Strifas |
