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

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (31760)	5/19/2000 10:36:00 PM
From: zwolff	Respond to of 42771

Great Post Morgan <EOM>

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (31760)	5/20/2000 12:09:00 AM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42771

Drake, I was just reading all the negative posts sequentially over this evening from Captain and I was building up a response on why anyone would think NOVL was going much lower. Then your post came along and I have to say, I COULDN'T HAVE SAID IT ANY BETTER. NOVL is not a bankrupted company. NOVL is a company in transition to the e-Business economy. Even in the worst case, Novell technology has huge capital value to many others in the industry. They have no debt and approx. $1Billion in cash. They still have a loyal following of many fortune 500 companies that will not make rash decisions to leave a suite of technologies that have served them fine. NOVL has made a big revenue projection mistake AND I still believe were the recipients of a flukey alignment of factors that hit their Q sales. YES, Novell desperately needs to correct their lack of marketing aggression and creativity. I do believe there still is too much conservatism in many areas of Novell (I have seen it there for years), BUT, this company has fallen victim to a severe over-reaction to the recent news. I am very convinced that this stock will rebound to some extent within the next 6 months. I also have confidence that Novell has the right technologies and their organization has learned a lot from this major stock plunge to position them to get them over the fence to their new business focus of Internet, e-Business, and ASP markets. I will repeat Drakes statement: NOVL at this price is CHEAP! Anyone who tells you otherwise is either a bitter Long, a stupid Short, or just a trend sucker. I think NOVL is one of those classic examples of "Buy when the situation looks its worst" investment success tactics. At least these are my humble opinions. Thanks Drake! You took the words out of my mouth. You and I have had our heated debates, but I have always respected your posts for intellectual thought. Cheers! Toy

To: Sir Francis Drake who wrote (31760)	5/20/2000 3:29:00 PM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

<<but NOVL needs to get out of Utah, they need to relocate to some place like Silicon Valley where they are exposed to fresh blood and better quality of enterpreneurial management>> They have a facility in San Jose - in fact, Eric keeps his office there and flies into Utah. I'm not sure if that's an issue here since he's not "on campus" to keep a keen eye on the middle management but then again, a good COO will do that for the CEO right? There's even more reliance on technical knowledge outside the US (India for example) for some critical components of NetWare (from my understanding and that's not a put-down of those in Utah at all, just to say that Novell is working every advantage others in the industry are). I would love to see Novell hire a non-Utah based (perhaps NY or LA based) marketing strategy company and develop a "branding" campaign. Once people realize what Novell products can do (in terms of solutions) they will want to try them out. Link this marketing push with a program for companies to contact Novell and meet local resellers/consultants and training centers and I think you'll see growing revenues within 2 quarters. It's not just the glitz but a way to leverage that spending into real business. If Novell doesn't figure that part out, all the advertising in the world will not change their position. So what Novell needs is an active program whereby Novell, resellers and the Education people are all working together to cover all the needs of NEW customers drawn in by a carefully planned marketing strategy. Lower the barrier for entry and more people will come to Novell "solutions". The "existing loyal Novell base" is a good foundation but let's grow the pie. [Someone explained this concept to me recently and I love it. Instead of concentrating on grow "your piece" of the pie, you maintain (and grow) your share but help to grow the entire pie as well - this way you end up with more right?] Well, I agree - Novell is not dead by a long shot. It's not even on life support. I consider Novell's current position as that experienced by Oracle about 2 years ago. They got their "internet" message out and the sky was the limit because their product could deliver. Novell has the products to deliver the right "internet solutions" - they just have to get that message out. So basically we're sitting on a rocket waiting for someone to light the fuse IMHO. Regards, Peter J Strifas