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

To: Don Earl who wrote (18383)	11/6/1997 3:44:00 PM
From: AJ Lake	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Don: Re: marketing. You are correct IMHO. I have long admired Novell's principled approach to marketing, i.e. let the product sell itself. Unfortunately, "brand management" is an all too real necessity. I do not believe NOVL would be compromising its principles by simply letting the world know it exists. No hard-sell, no Ballmeresque BS, just get the name and the logo out there into the mass market. I dare say that most people don't know squat about what Oracle, Sun, and Cisco do. Then one day they're introduced to the respective technologies, and the names that were repeatedly flashed across the TV screen during all those weekend sporting events, heretofore ignored, suddenly have instant cache. "Oh sure, I've heard of them." At that very moment, these companies simultaneously have no competition and a whole ton of credibility. Half the sale is already made. This works for commodities (Nike, Compaq, Tide, Instead). Why wouldn't it work even better for specialty producers like Novell. As it is now; "yeah, I've heard of Novell. They compete with Microsoft" (i.e. will be buried soon, so forget about it). Why do people always hear about Microsoft first and repeatedly? The same reason they hear about Nike first and repeatedly. These companies buy into each new generation with brand management. Maybe NOVL should've hired somebody from P&G instead of Sun. I ramble when I'm angry... Sorry. Regards, AJ

To: Don Earl who wrote (18383)	11/7/1997 12:44:00 PM
From: BP Ritchie	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Yep! ... Novell's approach to the software business is amazing! The majority of potential customers for their products don't even know that they exist (the products)! Most of the customers find out what Novell's product line is all about from their Microsoft sales rep ... usually protrayed as a 'just a legacy file/print server' that is no longer adequate in 'an increasingly NT centric world' ... I wonder why Novell continues to allow this to happen? If they keep up the same 'Marketing' some day in the future the customers won't even know that the company exists either ... I wonder how long that will take? For example ... a few days ago I saw a post on this thread that basically said a 'consumer trade' magazine (Windows Magazine) actually wrote that Novell's IntraNetware for Small Business was no longer being sold ... even if the statement is basically true, I don't think that is what Novell intends. I don't think they intended to withdraw the product from the market ... but it seems like their lack of marketing or just plain sales inattention has convinced at least some people that they have withdrawn this product! This problem should be relatively easy to remedy ... I thought they would have it done by now, they must be working on it ... unless they are preparing to sell the company instead! I guess the lack of marketing effort is one of the reasons that the buyout rumours surface so often ... if they aren't investing in marketing to sell products, they must be working on some kind of merger or partnership with some company that already has the ability to market their products ... seems reasonable, but it sure is taking a long time to happen. Too many 're-boots' of the corporate strategy over the past few years ... I hope they manage to make something worthwhile happen now that the 'new' management has had a few quarters to clean out all of the poor results from previous abandoned plans. If not I can think of a few other companies that do know how to get about $30 per share value out of Novell's assets ... maybe one of them will try to make it happen this year? The interesting times aren't over yet ... although I thought that most of these issues would come to a head last month, they still seem to be 'cooking' ... but it feels like the investors and employees are being 'prepared' for some kind of scenario that we wouldn't have accepted a few months ago ... maybe soon we'll get to see what's being 'cooked up'?