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

To: BP Ritchie who wrote (19102)	12/14/1997 8:33:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Hello BP, > Found some interesting insights about 'net' business opportunities. Very good article! > URL1, inteviews with 'scary-smart' tech investors, their outlook: > pathfinder.com I really like this one ... some good comments, however I does indicate some lack of understanding of the technology ... > Elijah: Yes, the equation has turned around. The Internet isn't > happening because people are buying PCs. People are buying PCs > because of the Net. I like this statement a lot! Very accurate ... > John, what trends in Internet stocks should we be paying attention > to? > > Doerr: We were talking about PCs earlier. I wanted to make a point > about a larger trend I call TCs, or thin clients, which is > profoundly affecting how people are using connected computers. This is actually an important distinction ... he does not refer to value in NCs ... it's TCs. So it's not the Network Computer, but the Thin Client software that has been written correctly to take advantage of all platforms that exist ... or might exist. > "Thin client" sounds like someone with a health-club membership. > What does it mean? > > Doerr: Thin clients are network applications that let your PC talk > to your server. It means that all you do to make your PC work is > use your Web browser. You don't have to install any other > software. So instead of having a big hairball of software on a huge > PC, people are using the Web browsers as the interface for all > kinds of applications. I'd put my daughter's college funds in this > trend. So this puts more emphasis on middle-ware and back-end services ... not the desktops. This is the trend that Bill Gates fears the most ... apps that can be run anywhere with no ties to Windows! > But this wonderful TC industry won't really take off until the > online world runs a little faster, will it? Ah ... yes ... ;-) > McNamee: If you go back ten years, there wasn't enough hardware > horsepower to run the software applications people were using. Now > the thing that there isn't enough of is bandwidth. I would suggest that there is more bandwidth than we think ... we just don't use it efficiently. Just as PairGain can squeeze more bandwidth out of a twisted-pair, Hierarchical Caching squeezes more bandwith out of exisiting connections. > Doerr: So now we've got 600- or 700-horsepower motors in all of our > cars. Instead of running them around the race track, we're taking > them out on little one-lane dirt roads. The highway--the > bandwidth--is not there. In my opinion there are pretty good highways, but no one has been demonstrated the benefits of car-pooling! ;-) > BPR comment ... remember what Eric Schmidt said during the summer? > > >>>> The next 'killer app' is going to be bandwidth. <<< Yep! > McNamee: The people who are building the Internet have a gigantic > business opportunity. The obvious leader is Cisco Systems, which is > the dominant player in networking. But they got lazy. They are still working to perfect IP packet routing when the new science is Content Routing! (But I will still hold my Cisco stock ...) > Sun Microsystems is down a ton. I'm sorry, but this company is not > going out of business. The stock is unbelievably cheap. You cannot > build the Internet without Sun servers. Wrong. Please go visit mindcraft.com ... big caches don't need big Sun servers ... ;-) > Meeker: If you believe in the growth in the Internet, you have to > own Cisco. I agree ... and do. > BPR Comment ... A 'commodity 486 PC' with Novell Software could > change the name from Cisco to Novell in this statement! If, Novell > could figure out how to make sure that EVERYONE knew about it. I agree ... and I'm trying! ;-) There was one other part that you didn't include in your post, which seemed to indicate that these guys think that the guys with the biggest pipes win. But to get more bandwidth you can keep building bigger pipes ... or you can be more intelligent with what you put through the pipes so that you increase efficiency. That's what Novell is doing. Scott C. Lemon