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

To: zwolff who wrote (30900)	4/2/2000 9:03:00 PM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

Novell is working quite a bit on Instant Messaging. Right now they are "partnered" up with the largest online service provider (an 800lbs gorilla if you will) but I have some reservations about this. Most notably the company in question here is INFAMOUS for tracking clickstream information, user participation and more. They don't actually map it back to each individual user but they can if they wanted to. This has been a major stumbling block for Corporate America utilizing this interesting "service" for communications. With InstantMe, Novell is getting a quick "introduction" into this marketplace and later this year, they will introduce software that will allow companies to host their own instant messaging sessions (without their partner playing traffic cop). Until then, Novell doesn't have a complete Instant messaging solution that I could recommend. As for IP telephony, I did not see any presentations on this topic but I did catch an NDS Futures presentation that touched on NEST (Novell Embedded Systems Technology). They described managing cable settop boxes and services via eDirectory. The speaker also alluded to settop boxes being just one example - he also discussed cell phones and "devices" in general. I would keep my eyes open for NEST but that's just my opinion here :) Novell has had IP Telephony software for some time. Wonder if someone will dust it off and eDirectory-enable it :) Regards, Peter J Strifas

To: zwolff who wrote (30900)	4/3/2000 1:01:00 AM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Hello zwolff, > I think Gates does get it though. Not surprisingly there > are a number of NT appliances on the works.. Micrsoft has always been an applications company. IMHO, they are on track in understanding that you need to do more than provide infrastructure, you need to provide demonstrations of value for end-users and administrators. > Nice.. now..at what point would CSCO feel it has to do > something about all this?? I believe that Cisco has already noticed this coming. I think that I posted in an earlier post on the $800MM acquisition of SightPath. sightpath.com These guys seem to have the correct vision ... going beyond the horse power to providing the applications. So this could now possibly throw a curve ... The one huge advantage that Drew has is that he has created an appliance platform so much more efficient that anyone else, he has the processing "headroom" to support a lot of applications ... > My theory is that NOVL will be taken over by one of the > following : CSCO, NT, LU I keep thinking this direction also ... the only other might be Sun. Sun seems to have the ties - Eric - and they could use a new angle for utilizing the Intel platform, and further penetrating the Internet infrastructure. > On another post you commented on instant messaging. Yes ... I had a focus on this market for several years ... combined with "presence" it is , IMHO, the foundation for a wide range of future communications concepts. And as you posted previously, it is an ideal application to be written to a Personal Directory. > I see that now AT&T is getting into internet telephony > big time and in particular is partnering with MSFT to > probably to re-create things like e-guide. I loved the announcement! I bought IDTC last July when I recognized the value of what they were building ... a global infrastructure of telephony gateways, etc. I knew it was only a matter of time before people would recognize what they had ... the thread arguments were between AOL and AT&T ... I like it! ;-) There is a huge explosion of wireless applications which I believe are going to happen, very quickly. Cell phones with a minimum of WAP/WML are showing up everywhere ... web sites are being re-written to support these devices. We will have full white and yellow pages (and much more) in our hands ... and it's only going to get better! > The question is what is NOVL doing about it? I know the folks on the team that wrote eGuide, and they did a very good job with this product. At their Brainshare session they did a demonstration of a version of an eGuide front-end running on a Cassiopia(?) PDA running WinCE. They actually created an extremely flexible architecture which could be capitalized immediately by a lot of developers. I didn't think to ask Novell for the SDK, but will contact them now ... ;-) Scott C. Lemon