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

To: ToySoldier who wrote (21198)	3/17/1998 5:27:00 PM
From: Spartex	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Thanks for the insights ToySoldier, My one suggestion is for NOVL to form more powerful alliances with other powerful companies (e.g., ORCL, IBM, SUNW, and CPQ). That speaks as well as anything else IMO. We'll see if they wow us at BrainShare! Regards, Quad-K

To: ToySoldier who wrote (21198)	3/17/1998 7:18:00 PM
From: Don Earl	Respond to of 42771

Hi Toy Soldier, Actually, I've gone into so much boring detail on the subject about 10,000 posts back that it's kind of hard to get the motivation to start all over again. The type of marketing you're talking about will never touch the small business segment. That's where the growth has to come from and that's where they have been loosing market share. The only way to reach that segment is through mass marketing with a well thought out campaign that is consistent. To my knowledge Novell has never has a consistent campaign. It's try it for a few weeks and if there is no instant gratification, drop it. Advertising in the trade rags is basically paying danegeld but it's a part of doing business. If you want nice write ups you have to buy advertising. That still won't reach the small business segment. The companies that are installing 25 or less seats are not computer wizards that subscribe to trade magazines or the Wall Street Journal. They are small business owners that aren't sure what they are doing and want the reassurance of buying something they have heard of before. Those people need to see an ad in the business section of the local news paper, Sports Illustrated, TV Guide, Playboy, whatever. They also need to see something on TV that catches their attention, is intelligent and would make them feel confident that buying Novell products is a good choice and makes sense. That kind of marketing takes a minimum of six months to start showing meaningful results. As a rule of thumb a company entering a new market will spend approximately 15-20% of sales for the first 6 months to a year on marketing. After that, about 10% would be considered routine maintenance. The do it yourself, roll your own stuff Novell does is a waste of money. They also need experienced, professional people to handle their sales presentations. Sending folks that understand the technology but don't know how to talk to people and push buy buttons, does more harm than good. Any salesperson with half a brain could learn enough about the products to put on a good pitch within a few weeks. The problem is that the best salespeople are totally lacking in anything that resembles true humility, don't spend their time doing busy work just in case the boss walks by, and would probably rub just about everyone at Novell the wrong way just for grins. The folks at Novell would rather cut off their nose to spite their face than admit that they need that kind of person in their organization, or that they need outside help with marketing. In the real world there is only predator and prey. There are no other choices. Novell is an organization made up of sheep. Regards, Don

To: ToySoldier who wrote (21198)	3/17/1998 10:07:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

What strategy should they take!!! -1- Educate their engineering force. Have them listen to Scott McNealy's testimony at the Senate Judiciary hearings. Tell them straight out that their mindshare problems are not due to deficient products but to the fact that a monopoly makes the rules. -2- Abandon any thought of playing by the rules that the monopoly makes. ITs guerilla warfare. Sell around them, under them, behind them and over them when you trip them up, and don't be afraid to show what happens when you try to implement NT at the enterprise level and it fails. -3- Develop the best JAVA server and web server for corporate and small business use. Sell NT add on products in the small server market. -4- Partner even more with NSCP on web servers, IBM on JAVA, SUNW, ORCL on databases etc. etc. -5- Where you have an technical advantage that gives you a window of opportunity, such as NDS, cut the price to make it a standard BEFORE MSFT can produce a product. Where you have a performance advantage, such as with NSCP's web server, price your product to win the web server market. -6- And finally recognize that you are an engineering company and find a marketing company to merge with. =================== Will that do it for you?