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

To: Costa Kapantais who wrote (30190)	2/8/2000 10:35:00 AM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

Yiasou Costa! I am often amused to see articles refer to Novell as "dodging MSFT" or how it will compete (or in this case NOT compete) directly with MSFT products. Seems more and more reporters are taking this approach - as if MSFT is the company to beat in the Directory space - something they are probably without question the "newest kid on the block". There's something I remember an older very successful businessman once said to me: "When you are the choice of the consumer in your market, you don't compete with other companies, they compete against you for your customers." What he's taking about isn't about ego but rather a state of mind - when you are the leader, other's are working to gain an edge on you while you compete with yourself to maintain that edge. Sure you observe what others are doing, maintain information on their products (and services) - factor that into whatever you are doing. When you are the leader, you are so because of something you are doing correctly (hopefully it's not for the lack of competition, which in that case, throws this idea out the window - pun intended). Just goes to an old war adage, "If you are reacting to battles and confrontations, you are not dictating the outcome of the war, you are merely on the defensive." Novell is the clear leader in directory services and they need to maintain a healthy perspective on MSFT's AD and other products while moving their product consistantly ahead (as they have done for the past 7 years or so). They need to maintain their efforts of the past decade - moving their product significantly ahead one release at a time. Once they begin to react (meaning they alter the functionality or features of NDS as a response to a competitor and not a strategic decision driven by customer needs), they begin to cede their leadership role in a psychological sense. I haven't seen this happen yet - In another perspective, competition is a wonderous thing. It can make companies think in different terms, changing the mindset that has driven a product successfully for so many years. Competition also creates a need to mimic or offer similar services so as to not be differentiated merely by features alone (whether these features actually move the product forward or are merely superficial or window dressing). MSFT has shown it can play a defensive role for many years (FUD campaigns?) while it works to develop a competing product and then release it with much fanfare. What has buoyed them in the past is that their products have often been "just as good" as their competition but not significantly better or more useful - just that consumers are presented with these products pre-packaged on their shiny new PCs. So people either don't know there's a competing product which could be better/more useful or don't want to spend the extra $$$ to get it (convenience). In the Directory space, a product can not be "just as good" or almost as good. It has to deliver. It's ok for Word to crash and for a secretary to lose a letter, quite another thing for Active Directory to become corrupt and the entire organization grind to a halt! Last night I watched a room full of people get a lesson in REALITY - several students failed to complete a lab exercise successfully rendering 2 NT servers inoperable. They were shocked when they were told to re-install the software (which set them back about 2 days worth of labs since you need to re-do earlier ones to catch up). They complained and moaned about it for some time and one man wondered why the school did not provide for a way that students could work exercises without this event occuring!! Was this what he was going to do at his job when the server crashed beyond repair? Re-install the software and lose the company's information?!?!?! I told him, "Welcome to the real world, only in the real world we do nightly backups of everything just in case." I don't believe this person slept well last night - I see an email from him waiting in my INBOX :) Regards, Peter J Strifas