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

To: Don Earl who wrote (21334)	3/22/1998 1:37:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42771

Don, I guess when it comes to IBM, you and I just don't see eye-to-eye. IBM technically has similar products to Novell but some of them just are not serious competitors. We already talked about OS/2 WARP not even being a factor as a NOS compared to the marketshares of NetWare or NT. Don't want to get into that discussion again. OS/2 is DEAD! IBM does have an internet Firewall product (and it is very robust) but it does not yet have some of the advanced Proxy Caching and Reverse Proxy Caching features of BorderManager(BM), it is not as high performance as BM, and it runs on a more complex to support UNIX platform and not on the Intel platform. To be fair, BM is missing a few of IBM's features - most noteable is the lack of SOCKS support and accounting. On the Management front, IBM's acquisition of Tivoli gives it very good strength there, but as I discussed in a previous post, it does not really compete with ManageWise(MW). Tivoli is an Enterprise or Universe level manager and competes with products like CA UniCenter and HP OpenView. MW is considered to be a World level manager (smaller scale). In fact, last year Novell struck an agreement with CA to plug MW into CA's Unicenter manager. Also, the seat price for these two classes of products are completely different. By the way, until recently, Tivoli had NO support for Novell centric environments. The product's roots came from a UNIX platform. After purchasing Tivoli, IBM had a first priority to extend support into the NT server support. From what I understand, the Novell platform is now what they are working on. The area where IBM and Novell have had the strongest battle in was in the GroupWare line (Lotus vs GroupWise). And contrary to Paul's statistics, IDC statistics that I have heard are the Notes seats are in first followed by GroupWise then Exchange (although I am sure Exchange is closing the gap). IBM and Novell clearly go head-to-head here, but, IBM and Microsoft seem to be playing the "Cold Shoulder" strategy on GroupWise - make it look like the only two serious competitors are Notes and Exchange. Being the lemmings that the media are, the media has for the most part fallen for this "Cold Shoulder" strategy. The media can so easily be lead by the nose in the computer industry that its annoying as a reader - but thats another story. The article that was announced a couple days ago whereby IBM is debating weather to continue to develop Domino on the NetWare platform was put in very good perspective. IBM has to seriously think twice about dropping platform support for NetWare. There is still a very large base of Novell centric accounts and this base tends to be very loyal to Novell (as long as Novell's recent serge in popularity continues this support will remain). By dropping platform support, IBM could very well be giving many of these clients the excuse they need not to follow the Notes Groupware solution and instead commit to Groupwise (why a Novell centric account would not consider GroupWise makes little sense in the first place). Although IBM's dropping of NetWare support would be bad news for the NetWare platform, it would be good news for the GroupWise platform. I predict that IBM (being a conservative company that has been trying to build stronger ties to Novell recently) will decide to continue support of the NetWare platform. In Fact, this article might even have been a trial balloon by IBM to see what kind of negative responses it would get from its clientele. A very smart move in my opinion. So Don those are the reasons for my difference of opinion on your "IBM's push into Novell's marketshare" strategy. On an aside Don, I get the impression from almost all your postings that you are a real Bear on NOVL. With all your NOVL gloom and doom, I get the impression that the NOVL stock has either burned you BAD in the past or many of the rest of us have our heads in the clouds about NOVL's potential. I do understand that NOVL still has many obsticles to jump but I have known NOVL since 1986 and I tell you, I haven't seen NOVL's future as rosy as this in 3 years. There is some good things about NOVL too. Just an editorial observation. Please, don't get me wrong Don, I truly do enjoy reading your postings because it does force me to think about the angle, but when I open your postings I already know it won't be positive. Even Paul has surprised me with a couple semi-positive posting on NOVL. ToySoldier