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

To: EPS who wrote (29272)	12/9/1999 3:32:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

A little off-topic, but it looks like LINUX fever has caught Canada BIG TIME. Take a look at Perle Systems (T.PL) and more importantly, Corel (T.COR). Corel recently announced a Linux OS distribution and Perle just announced a Linux port of their network device I/O software. Their stocks have gone HYPER! Too bad for Novell that they sold out their position in Corel since its price is currently hovering around $55Cdn. Take a look at the recent articles... "Linux Fever infects Canada" canoe.ca canoe.ca I think Microsoft's desktop OS is clearly on-track to lose its eventual strangle hold monopoly of the market. This craze is going crazy. Toy

To: EPS who wrote (29272)	12/9/1999 3:46:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hello Victor, > Great Post Scott, many thanks! I'm glad it was helpful ... > Let me continue to pick on your brain and technical expertise in > order to get some real understanding of the viability behind all > these announcements that we post here.. Ok ... I'll try to help ... > Let me concentrate on ICS now: > > what are the business prospects of selling INTEL caching systems > when the backbone of the Internet is heavily populated with SUN or > more generally UNIX servers? Ahh ... good question, although the comparison isn't quite right. If you look at the underlying architecture of the Internet, you need to be looking at the Cisco Routers ... not the SUN boxes. The backbone of the Internet is made up of a lot of Cisco gear ... these are the core "packet" routers that are being put into place. A proxy/cache, IMHO, is the next evolutionary step of the Internet, providing the ability to "route" whole objects ... object routers. So the real comparison is between the proprietary hardware of Cisco providing packet routing, and these new caches which provide a higher layer of "object" routing. Obviously since they run on Intel hardware there is a price advantage, support advantage, and commodity advantage. The SUN and UNIX servers that you refer to are being used for other services, such as web servers etc. > I understand that it takes money and time to port the thing: but if > caching is expected to be such a big business and NOVLs code has > some advantage- from what I know solid advantage- wouldn;t it be > wise to put a lot of resources in order to make this thing better > and compatible with the servers used by the major Internet players? It's interesting, but I believe that the advantage that ICS has is the fact that it is running on NetWare (which provides a major performance advantage due to the design of the core OS) and it is now being offered as an appliance that can be installed at an ISP or co-lo facility ... just like you would install a Cisco router. A Cisco router actually runs a very similar kernel which Cisco calls the IOS. If ICS was "ported" to run on top of another OS, then you might not see the performance ... just like if you tried to port the Cisco routing OS and code onto another OS. SUN and Inktomi are partnering to provide these proxy/cache "servers" to Digital Island, but at a huge fixed cost (they announced 5000 boxes!) due to the need to have huge horsepower to run the inefficient code on UNIX. I believe that people who administrate these types of boxes are going to start to become more aware of the alternatives like ICS. The only benefit that the SUN/Inktomi solution offers, IMHO, is that it is an open development platform for other applications to be built on top of the proxy/cache platform. The only reason that I was pushing for the Linux port would be to try and reach a whole different "crowd" of users, admins, etc. It would be a way for Novell to offer products to a different "Internet" community of people. Plus, with many of the Caldera employees being ex-Novell employees, they would really understand both worlds and could probably build a very nice, high-performance product. > and if money and time are an issue, and if the market conditions > are so favorable, why is it that NOVL does not launch a tracking > stock around these technologies...(and let young hungry managers > aggressively promote them and sell them..?) I don't know about money and time, but I do have to say that I think that ICS is somewhat an "unknown" entity in the Internet space (for now) due to the ties to the Novell name ... Novell is still not known as a real Internet player ... > I have not seen any discussion on this thread around this > subject..What is the strategy for the OEMs: who are they trying to > sell these appliances to? I'm sure that they are currently selling into corporate customers ... and mostly Novell customers for now. But I would think that they are selling to their existing customer base also ... people who might have already standardized on Dell servers (for example) that now want a proxy/cache ... > I was really surprised by the low amount of revenue generated by > ICS last quarter.. I noted with envy the amount of moneys collected > by INKT yesterday..Now things are becoming clearer.. Yep ... Inktomi charges a premium ... and they get it. They have the name and the marketing power ... ICS is going to try and make it up in quantity, I believe, and it's taking some time to ramp up ... > Which brings me to AKAMAI..what is AKAMAI going to do with ICS if > NOVLs technology only works with INTEL machines. Who else are they > going to partner with? So ICS will work with any workstations or servers ... it's just that it runs on an Intel platform. And now that it's being offered as an "appliance" most of the ISPs and customers look at it like a Cisco router type of device ... Someone like Akamai is going to use the products which provide the functionality that they want, that offer control and managability that they can support. They might actually end up using a wide range of types of hardware ...and some of those could be ICS boxes. It's going to depend on what features and functions they want and need. Now with the QuickTime stream caching that the ICS team has developed there might be numerous companies looking at ICS. ICS now handles normal web pages, GIFs, JPGs, files, etc. and is moving into the streaming media space ... > PS It is a well established pattern for a great number of insiders > including the marketing guys to sell all their options at the > time they exercise. They don't hold this thing for one minute!! But I thought that Stuart Nelson was on the engineering management side of the house ... > They sell at 12, they sell @ 16, 25 whatever..they go immediately > to cash..In the YAHOO insider information I noted that SLitz has > more shares than Nelson (zero holdings as you noted). Interesting! So what's strange to me is that a resource in the company that is in a key position has sold out all of his options ... and currently has zero holdings. I don't like it when executives don't seem to have "skin" in the game ... > But the selling is consistent and persistent by nearly all of them > except Eric Schmidt (why do you think those guys would be selling > so much if they believe that prospects are so good for NOVL as we > seem to believe in this thread? are the good prospects of the > company and the prospects of these insiders on separate tracks????) So that's what I was wondering ... why did he sell them all? Is he in line to receive another huge grant of options? Did he need a bunch of IRS issues (gains? losses?) for this years taxes? Scott C. Lemon