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

To: ToySoldier who wrote (21766)	4/22/1998 1:39:00 PM
From: Spartex	Respond to of 42771

An article (April 20) from "Computing Canada" that interviews Schmidt during his recent visit to Canada. Novell's boss lays out his 18-month blueprint by Greg Enright ÿ MONTREAL - More partnerships, better marketing and smaller product releases are what Novell users can expect in the months and years ahead, according to the company's CEO Eric Schmidt. During an exclusive interview with Computing Canada, Schmidt acknowledged that most NetWare users are concerned that their executives don't know very much about Novell and its technology. An improved marketing campaign could be the answer to gaining more mindshare, and therefore clients, he said. "Just about every customer says, 'Your products are better than your competition, but we don't know who you are.' There is no single answer to that question. We had an advertising campaign called 'Rock the Net' which didn't seem to be very good, so we replaced that by a much more focused campaign. It's just beginning and we're doing it in each of our countries." Schmidt added that his company has no intention of grabbing as much mindshare as Microsoft and its Windows NT offering. "That's not a reasonable objective. I think it is a reasonable objective to have products that are strategic and available. I think it takes a while." Schmidt also reiterated the common refrain of "working with Microsoft," heard frequently at the company's recently held BrainShare '98 conference in Salt Lake City, Utah. "This is not a death-fight between Microsoft and Novell. Our products are unique, they're special, and they're 10 times better in certain attributes." Schmidt predicted the overdue Windows NT 5 will not be released until June 1999, giving Novell a "huge window of opportunity that we intend to exploit." When Novell's competing NetWare 5 hits the streets, presumably during the third quarter of this year, Schmidt said he doesn't expect customers using version 3.x and 4.x will move very quickly to it. Its presence, however, "will encourage them to deploy more NetWare 4 because they will be comfortable that we will get them to the final destination." Schmidt also said Novell is no longer going to do any big operating system releases, but instead offer more frequent, scaled-down products. "Our customers don't want to do massive operating system upgrades. They want to take their existing server and add in a new service to it. So we're going to change our business model to be more modular ... The problem with operating systems is that they're getting so complicated that they have all sorts of interactions that are difficult to predict, which is part of the Unix and NT problem." The CEO also talked of Novell forging more partnerships now that the company has restructured and become sufficiently stable during the year Schmidt has been at the helm. "The partnerships (we want to make) are the 10 or 20 or 30 key partners that will make our technology completely relevant to the mission of the enterprise." Novell will also be buying minority stakes of less than 20 per cent in companies, Schmidt said, adding that the large number of potential partnerships is "good in that we're relevant, people are talking to us, we're not isolated anymore," but that Novell also has something to learn in this area. "You can (upset) people if you don't act on it. I'm worried that we'll drop the ball on some important partnership. We have to learn as a company how to make [these partnerships] happen."