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

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (19212)	12/29/1997 2:41:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Hello Paul, > I guess we are about to have a conflict again No ... I actually think that we are thinking along the same lines more than you believe. > You said, "I believe that even recently Eric Schmidt has reinforced > the new attitude of selling products that make Microsoft networks > work. And the customer feedback has been very good. I believe that > to penetrate the SB market we do not have to sell the entire > sale. We need to be a key part of the sale. We want to be one of > the components. We want to "love them to death" ..." > > Well the problem with this is very simple. It is not a strategy for > the small business market, where only one network OS may exist. I agree and disagree. These businesses might still buy a Cisco router ... and other vendors components. It is important (I believe) to think of NetWare more like the Cisco router than the NT Server. I do believe that simply bundling a bunch of technologies together and offering this as a SB solution is not going to be effective. Microsoft has started to effectively "close the window" of opportunity in many ways ... including by offering a very attractive "back office" suite that allows a business to purchase their desktop OS and server OS in one complete suite. I do not immediately understand how to build an attractive solution to go head-to-head with Microsoft ... nor do I think this is necessarily wise. I believe that sometimes when you are losing a particular game, you need to find a way to change the rules, or change the game. This is what Netscape has done (so far) in their approach. I believe that IBM is also doing this with Java and Sun also recognizes this fact. You need to "out abstract" Microsoft ... something that I think cna be done, however it takes time. > In the mixed OS environment of the enterprise the add-on > philosophy will work, and if you come up with the right one two > punch (Bordermanager Cache and Novonyx), it might work in the web > server arena. But it ain't going to work i nthe small business > market. Agreed. In the small business I believe that the only solution will be to recreate the way that small businesses purchase and use software, and to involve the ISPs. > There the 3.X customer or the new server customer is going to buy > one OS because they want to run applications. That OS will be NT. Agreed. It will be difficult to dislodge MSFT from this current trend with current products and technologies. > If it is possible for Novell to sell these customers something > other than an OS, then I would love to know what the product is. I think that BorderManager, and the more advanced concepts of outsourced network and software management are the trends that need to be exploited. Moving from the idea of a file server to a "network" server can provide a business many of the benefits that they currently get in other areas. Software and applications, developed around Java and CORBA, leased or rented from their ISP, and kept up to date and managed by the ISP, are trends that I think will occur. > ============================ > Incidentally before you "love MSFT" to death you might look at what > happened to the company that did PC Tools for Win 3.1, the company > that did disk compression, etc. etc. There is no such thing as a > complimentary product in a market that MSFT intends to dominate. > Many of the PC Tools features for 3.1 ended up in Win95. Yep ... this is one of my strongest beliefs. Things that are options will grow to be included. I currently believe that the DOJ is way off base by trying to imply that browser technologies do not belong in the OS. That's like saying that cars should not have cell phones as standard equipment, or that Intel should not include graphics related functions in their microprocessors. I worked with the folks at Central Point closely for quite a while and agree that they did not continue to move their ideas forward. You have to know that any good idea will be consumed by anyone that can capitalize on it. You have to keep running ... I agree that this is a very difficult problem to solve. I just don't believe that bundling a bunch of stuff will do it. I don't believe in the head-to-head sell against MSFT ... you have to compliment and improve. The SB market, I believe, can not be won by playing the same game forever ... we have to introduce new concepts in how you can build a SB solution. Scott C. Lemon