Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: Scott C. Lemon who wrote (21837)	5/5/1998 9:07:00 AM
From: Spartex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Scott: I wrote a letter to the www.briefing.com people and recieved a rapid reply by Robert Green. Seems it was more a matter of Schmidt not giving the audience (money managers) what they wanted to hear more than anything else. If this is the case, then I'm not worried in the least (nor was I ever <ggg>). Nonetheless, this reply should be instructive to Dr. Eric Schmidt and others at Novell. Regards, QuadK Dear Mr. : Thank you for your recent feedback regarding the summary of the Novell H&Q conference. I am pleased to respond to your comments. First of all, the writeup summarized the presentation given by Dr. Schmidt, and was not intended to be a summary of Novell's strategy. In fact, our primary criticism is that his presentation did not clearly define a strategy for growth. This presentation focused far more on the new products for simplifying existing Novell networks and the directory services than it did on Netware 5.0. Nevertheless we are fully aware of Novell's plans to include IP protocol in Netware 5. It would have been great if Dr. Schmidt had made a story out of why new customers would buy IP-enabled Netware 5.0 versus whatever they have now, but he did not. The principal question facing Novell is: how are they going to acquire customers who are not currently Novell customers. Why does putting IP into Netware make someone buy it? There may be an answer to this, but Dr. Schmidt didn't say. Why didn't Dr. Schmidt address the question in this presentation? We don't know, but he should have, and this why we said "He doesn't get it." As for your comment: "Anyone who doesn't care about simplifying network administration is not an IS person." I am sure you are correct that IS people care about this. But, the audience at H&Q are not IS people. They are money managers. Giving a talk about how you will exploit your installed base is not the best message for this crowd, especially when Yahoo and AOL are claiming to conquer the world. After all, Digital has been selling $14 billion a year to its installed base for nearly ten years now, and Wall Street couldn't care less about DEC. The price has been around $50 (with some dips and climbs) since about 1992. As for the reference to the Barron's article by Eric Savitz, you are correct, he viewed the presentation as positive, though all he said was that there was buzzing about it. I know Mr. Savitz personally and I spoke to him about his article. I respect his opinion, but differences of opinion are what makes markets. I'm sorry if the tone of the review bothered you. Perhaps the "oh, never mind" was a bit flip. However, I was at this presentation and when you see a room that holds over 1000 people less than half full, and a third of those leave before the end, it doesn't speak well for the message. Those who left would probably agree with the tone of the review. Lastly, Briefing analysts do not write about stocks with the goal of influencing the price for self-benefit, nor are they allowed to own stocks they write about. Violation of this is cause for firing at Briefing.com. Thank you for sending in your comments. Please send in your comments at any time, they are shared with the entire analyst staff. If you like, you may use my email address directly. Sincerely, Robert V. Green Executive Vice President Briefing.com