Toy, Adams' sure did! This guy's message sounds great! He now needs to build a Sherman Tank team around him to assist in executing the DENIM. GO NOVL!!
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Novell pulls out the stops for new oneNet initiative
Updated 10:14 PM ET March 27, 2000
By Scott Berinato, PC Week
SALT LAKE CITY -- They're calling it oneNet, Novell Inc.'s new corporate-wide marketing plan, and it was formally launched here this morning as Novell CEO Eric Schmidt kicked off the BrainShare user conference.
A radical, six-month-long rethinking of the company's communications, oneNet represents an overhaul of Novell's marketing for all its products. In that spirit, Schmidt kept his comments brief and simple.
"We built these networks, internal and external, and then put up this huge firewall and said the people on the [internal side] were the good guys and the people on the [external side] were the bad guys," Schmidt said, expounding on the oneNet notion that all networks -- internal as well as external, private and public -- will be interconnected. "But the problem is, some of your customers are on the [external side]. This is not the right architecture."
Symbolic of his well-known desire to step out of the media spotlight, Schmidt after just 15 minutes turned things over to Michael Cappellas, CEO of partner Compaq Computer Corp., and then to the Novell team that created oneNet.
Deja vu?
Capellas relied on many of the same slides that carried him through his keynote at the Windows 2000 Conference in San Francisco last month, although he did add that "the world wants a radical simplification of the personal computer" as he plugged Novell appliances such as the Internet Caching System, which Compaq licenses.
While he spent most of his time selling Compaq, Capellas also issued a warning. Several times he noted that if the infrastructure does not radically change to meet the Internet's explosive growth, the network will collapse.
"We will wake up one day and realize we don't know how to tie it all together," Cappellas said. "Today's infrastructure will not and cannot support this growth."
The new voice of Novell
Steve Adams followed Capellas and received the loudest applause of all, to which he reacted with a tornado of new marketing messages and simple ideas for Novell users to take away. Adams, Novell's vice president of global marketing, came on stage to the beat of Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping," which includes the line, "I get knocked down, but I get up again."
"It's appropriate for a marketing guy at Novell," he joked, referring to Novell's struggle to effectively market what many observers consider superior technology. "Someone told me early on, 'You're like Einstein. You have great ideas, but I don't know what you're talking about.'"
Adams, many sources say, will become the new voice of Novell as CEO Schmidt moves further from the spotlight.
If Adams' speech is any indication, users will be hearing from a different Novell. Adams not only took swipes at competitor Microsoft Corp. but also put his company technically and market-wise "above" the software giant. "The battle to fight is in the layers above the OS," he said at one point.
Adams was brought in last July to fix Novell's marketing problems, and he kept the frank tone of an outsider as he both accepted the blame for Novell's missteps and planned aggressive new initiatives.
For example, at one point, talking about customer gripes he had heard, he said, "We as vendors are at fault for complexity. We create churn in your business. Product cycles used to be three years, then 15 months, and now every six to eight months we're shoving products at you -- as fast as we can."
Adams kept it simple, fast-paced and loud with a rat-a-tat of out-there metaphors.
Explaining oneNet to the audience, he used a hot tub as a metaphor. When you see a hot tub on display, he said, you associate that with a good experience.
"Flip that sucker upside down and you have PVC pipes, you have air vents and water lines," Adams said. "That's what we do. You go to a showroom and the Jacuzzies are upside down, I bet you don't buy one." Adams told the audience he will flip the hot tub back over to sell it "to your bosses," but Novell remains underneath.
From there, he launched into another metaphor for the oneNet initiative DENIM, or Directory Enabled Network Infrastructure Model.
"DENIM launches today," declared Adams, who was wearing jeans. "It will be the fabric of the 'Net. Denim is a good metaphor because it has never gone out of style, and it crosses all boundaries."
More specifically, Adams noted, DENIM simply outlines the attributes that all Novell products will possess. They will be persistent services, applicable to any network, internal or external, based on open standards and cross-platform.
The software Novell develops under this framework will fit into one of three categories: Network Management, where most of the so-called "ZEN" applications reside; Network Content, which will include storage and publishing products like the caching appliance; and Network Portal Services, which will include application service provider products and other integration services.
But Adams kept it at that high a level, and the audience respond well to it. He left the technical details to his partner in the revamping of Novell, Dave Shirk.
DirXML in beta
Shirk and Novell's familiar "Amigos" demonstration team were charged with backing up the new message. While they demonstrated a lot of technologies, it was unclear at what stage of development some of the products actually were in.
As expected, however, DirXML, Novell's meta-directory technology, was demonstrated and is in public beta today. Shirk and company also demonstrated Novell Migration Wizard 4.0, which allows administrators to drag and drop Windows NT domains into eDirectory to migrate from an NT-based to a Novell directory-based architecture.
Shirk, Novell's vice president of product management and marketing, also showed a technology called "Gadgets" that will appeal to ASPs because it allows them to deliver customized services to a Web client based on the profile of the person logging in.
The Amigos showed Console One management of Novell's eDirectory running on Linux and "federation," which allows eDirecotry to connect separate directory trees over the Internet using Domain Name Services. This will appeal to business-to-business commerce architects because it will allow two companies to share directory information without full cross-replication of their respective directories.
It was unclear when these products will be publicly available.
Meet the new gorilla
Clearly, the heart of the morning belonged to Adams, who addressed the inevitable question from skeptics.
"Why is it believable that Novell can do this?" he asked rhetorically at one point. His answer was that Novell always had the technology but now it will have the marketing, too. "We are in the infrastructure business, and we intend to be the same kind of marketplace gorilla as [a company like Cisco Systems Inc. ].
"It's important you realize that today is the beginning of the next phase in our history," Adams continued. "There is no one company -- despite what they tell you -- that can deliver on this. ... I want to get better at helping you to explain to your bosses what Novell does and why it's important."
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