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

To: PJ Strifas who wrote (28996)	11/17/1999 1:21:00 AM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 42771

Schmidt-urday Night Live Novell CEO gets upstaged by ex-Saturday Night Live stars Dana Carvey and Kevin Nealon, but still manages to slip in a product announcement. By Scott Berinato, PC Week November 16, 1999 5:01 PM PT LAS VEGAS - In between comedy skits by Saturday Night Live alumni Kevin Nealon and Dana Carvey, Novell Inc. CEO Eric Schmidt managed to announce a new product at his keynote address here. Schmidt announced the arrival of NDS eDirectory, a new version of its directory services that runs on NT, NetWare or Solaris. Previously called the "Fusion" project, the goal of eDirectory is to make directory services an appliance that fits into any network with little regard for the underlying operating system. "And it has the beautiful property that it is now shipping," Schmidt said, alluding to Microsoft's Active Directory, which won't be available until February 2000. eDirectory's pricing will be set within two weeks, Schmidt said. But the keynote strayed far from the news, opening with Kevin Nealon as news anchor. One of his news bits cited a poll of the three most suggested remedies for the Microsoft (Nasdaq:MSFT) monopoly. "One, write 1,000 times 'I am sorry' in Java. Two, use a PalmPilot for a week ... as a suppository. Three, explain Windows 98 to Mike Tyson." News anchor Nealon brought Carvey's H. Ross Perot on stage to talk tech. Problems with the teleprompter made this bit as undecipherable as one of "Perot's" quotes: "Kevin, you can't put a porcupine in a barn and light it on fire and expect to make licorice." A makeover for Novell Novell (Nasdaq:NOVL) appeared to be remaking its image in front of the audience, and it wouldn't be a surprise to see a major shift in marketing, since the company recently let go of 60 marketing employees-one percent of its workforce. Even Schmidt tried his hand at some dry wit. Talking of the sometimes absurd Internet business model, Schmidt told the crowd Novell was considering some new businesses. "I run a company that is profitable and that's a problem in this new economy," he said. "So what we're proposing is Virtual Pets.com. We'll give you the virtual pet for free and make you pay for the food. And if you don't feed it, we'll kill it." Anticipating some sour reactions, Schmidt quickly added, "That's a joke. " Novell upstaged In between bits --three in all -- that saw both comedians trot out all their old Saturday Night Live characters, like the Church Lady, Hans und Franz and Wayne of Wayne's World, Schmidt covered most of Novell's product line in a broad, conceptual format. He talked about caching, the directory, digitalme client technology, and the role of personal identities in the future of the Web and Web-based commerce. "Relationship management is the core thing that needs to be done," Schmidt said. "Think of how many e-mail accounts and passwords you have. And the user names and passwords of [different commerce sites] you have to have because one user name doesn't work at another site. Can't computers help here?" Schmidt also demonstrated two directories securely sharing user names and passwords and other directory objects, a move that would greatly enhance the setup and tear down of business to business e-commerce relationships. But the stars of the show were clearly Nealon and Carvey, no matter how much they struggled with reading some of their lines or trying to slip in the odd Novell pitch here and there. They played pretty well to the crowd, all those (as Hans called them in his Austrian accent) "girlie nerdy techy losers at Comdex." zdnet.com