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

To: Joe Antol who wrote (18926)	12/4/1997 9:53:00 PM
From: BP Ritchie	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Hi Joe! ... you hardly got warmed up on this one! > And furthermore <G> .... Does anybody know where Elmo Gregory went to? He was a most valued person also. He seems to have just gotten totally fed up. < I miss his input too! His last post was Oct 27, to me about the YE report. I hope that he is OK, and just got fed up. I was tempted to respond to Adrian's note ... but, he doesn't deserve to be on the receiving end of what I might say. There are a ton of great people at Novell ... and even some great marketing talent too, but their 'organization' and 'culture' seems to prevent them from getting anything worthwhile accomplished ... my expectations were raised over the summer ... and especially when John Slitz arrived and the 'status quo' marketing budgets (more $ than usual, but same old ideas?) were not approved ... I thought that someone was finally taking responsibility at a Corporate level for all of the company marketing & sales ... then COMDEX 'Connecting Points' demo went pretty good ... and now we're back to 'stealth mode' all over again ... the only recent info relating to potential revenue is the Eric Schmidt CNBC interview on 11/26 and that was pretty poor in terms of the impression it created. I sure hope the reason for the 'stealth mode' (we'll find out later I think) turns out to be that they're actually negoatiating a merger/buyout or some kind of 'partnership' with a company that can actually sell their software. Only a few months ago they were getting ready to spend a pile of money on advertising ... I'm not too sure that it was going to be very effective ... then they stopped that activity & re-organized (again) instead ... just got done with that few weeks ago ... hopefully we'll hear something from them soon.

To: Joe Antol who wrote (18926)	12/4/1997 11:04:00 PM
From: Elmo Gregory	Respond to of 42771

Hi Joe and BP: I am alive and well (physically) and relaxing in Borrego Springs, CA for a couple of months. Thanks for asking. I haven't posted anything for awhile because there was nothing I could contribute that hasn't already been said. However, I do check the posts occasionally to see if anything new has developed. I have come to the realization that it is impossible to analyze Novell in any respect. There are several reasons why I believe this: a) Novell's management misleads the public and investors through misinformation or lack of information, b) Novell does not publish verifiable or decipherable financial data and this makes it impossible to estimate what sales were or will be, c) random events cancel out any positive news Novell may offer, d) and the Microsoft propaganda machine is unstoppable. But these things have been said by many before me in one form or another. Yes, I guess fed up is probably a good description of how I feel about my experience with Novell. Yet I have discarded good judgment several times (when I could have sold and broke even) but held on anyway in hopes of making a respectable profit. So, here I sit on 12,000 shares hoping for yet another chance to cash out. Now I must wait for the next take-out rumor or anticipated positive earnings report to make my exit. Regards, Elmo

To: Joe Antol who wrote (18926)	12/5/1997 4:25:00 AM
From: Don Earl	Respond to of 42771

Hi Joe, OK. I guess after spending 8 months in the life boat with everyone it was kind of feeling like a moral issue, and watching a 15% drop in three days made me feel like I was rubbing salt in the wounds when I looked back on some of my comments. I still think there is a possibility Novell could turn this thing around, but I don't think the chances are as good now as they were 6 months ago (or 6 months from now). If the movers and shakers at Novell would place both feet against their shoulders and give a mighty push, they just might get their heads loose to where they could see daylight. FWIW that last bunch of puts I picked up are showing a 50% profit (on paper) in less than a week. The 7 1/2s?.....well, we'll see. My APM I can't quite figure out. It earned over $4 per share last year and just dropped below $15 (book value over $9). Go figure. I'm tempted to turn off the computer and take a nap for 6 months and see what happens. Tomorrow should be interesting. I wonder if Wall Street still thinks that people without jobs can afford computers. Good luck. Regards, Don

To: Joe Antol who wrote (18926)	12/5/1997 10:34:00 AM
From: Jerry Heidtke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Joe, >Don. No, no, no! What makes you think this is bugging ME? >You'd be bugging Jerry, ... I'm assuming you're referring to me. Actually, nothing Don said bugs me in the least. I think I've stated my opinions about Novell's "marketing" before. It stinks, and has for a long time. If they really are going to be successful selling products into the new "network services" paradigm, their mindshare efforts among corporate product evaluators is going to have to increase by several orders of magnitude. Just this week, I had the pleasure of talking to someone who was evaluating proxy caching solutions for a Fortune 100 company's worldwide intranet. The company is a Novell MLA. The person was lamenting about how expensive and limited the solutions from Cisco, Netscape, Microsoft, etc. were. He had never heard of BorderManager, had never considered that Novell might have a product that would meet his needs more completely and at lower cost than anyone else. Needless to say, the person is now looking at BorderManager. One thing that Novell needs to do is to put on dog and pony shows for corporate technology managers every few months. Not a seminar at a hotel, but at the customer's site. Bring in the power point presentations, introduce the VP of something (doesn't matter what), do an interactive satellite broadcast, wave your hands around expressively, whatever. Talk about the network services paradigm, Novell's products and product plans, partnerships and alliances, etc. Then, when the customer is ready to start looking at something like proxy caching, or DNS/DHCP integrated address management, or high-availability server clustering, or web-enabled messaging, or cost effective network and systems management, or directory services, or whatever, the pointy-haired managers can tell the geeks who actually figure out what products will be used to "look at that stuff from Novell, I've heard it's pretty good." Novell has the right products and the right technology. The products actually sell themselves, for the most part. A major problem is that the decision makers don't have a clue what products are available, and are either too busy or too lazy to find out on their own. Novell has to get their message to these people in the right way. Jerry