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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike Hermann who wrote (28848)	11/9/1999 12:58:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Respond to of 42771

Looking at the post MSFT finding market You see that Sunw has retained most of its gains and is up today. Sunw is the obvious beneficiary of any constraints upon MSFT's server and software dominance of the internet. NOVl is only slightly behind; primarily because the revenues from its directory based products haven't kicked in significantly yet but with its head to head competition with MSFT in so many network markets it is bound to be a major beneficiary of any anti-trust outcome. Certainly the caching technology has to be the most up front winner here in expected revenues. Once anything happens to confirm the turnaround again, NOVl has some real upside prospects. I'm looking forward to earnings in a few weeks. On the digitalme and ichain front, the company has to show it understands how to develop directory based internet applications. Schmidt has to show he is doing something aggressively about getting successful products developed in these areas. Scott seems to believe Novell is unable to compete in these areas; having lost out to MSFT not only because of marketing inability but also because it doesn't know how to develop consumer products that people want and fumbles the development cycle badly. I have also argued for years that this is the crux of the problem with Novell---can they learn to produce useful network products for the end user community. If they can't then they need to merge with a company like IBM that can. It's really that simple. NOVl will be a stock play no matter what happens. Schmidt either gets the message and fixes what needs fixing or he doesn't and NOVL gets bought out. The company has so many valuable engineering resources that I am trully surprised at the forbearance of the well funded companies out there in not mounting an unfriendly takeover attempt. On the merger front, somebody is bound to take a look at converting their over valued equity into a buyout move on the old line tech companies. Gerstner certainly comes from a background with this buy-out experience. It makes so much sense for the Inktomi's of the world to go after these resource rich legacy companies. Watch out Eric!!!