Ask John Slitz
novell.com
Still hoping Novell can conquer the last frontier, MARKETING.
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Since John Slitz, senior vice president of Marketing at Novell Inc., offered to answer your
questions about Novell's marketing efforts and marketing programs, NetWare Connection has
received dozens of questions. This article presents some of the most interesting questions
submitted in the past two months and includes John's responses.
WORKING WITH UNIVERSITIES
Dear John Slitz,
I am a CNE and a student at the University of Houston. Currently, the university is in the
process of migrating its servers to Windows NT (although the student lab is already having a
lot of problems as a result). Almost all of the professors who teach MIS classes have a bias
against Novell, as if they are either paid by Microsoft or they just don't know the technology.
I am concerned because the professors are influencing graduates to simply choose Microsoft's
solution hands down. What is Novell doing to improve its relationships with universities?
Gary Chang
Novell is creating products that don't leave our customers with an either-or decision. For
example, NDS for NT allows you to manage two environments easier than you can manage
Windows NT alone. By allowing you to manage one User object for both environments, NDS
for NT completely eliminates the pain of designing, deploying, and managing trust
relationships between Windows NT domains.
As for relationships with universities, we have seen universities do great things with Novell
technologies. One case in point is Clemson University, which has used Novell Directory
Services (NDS) to create a single login for all of the university's environments, including
NetWare, Windows NT, UNIX, and mainframes.
Novell Education courses are also offered at most universities, and you will find Novell
products in almost every university. With a renewed interest in Novell and products such as
Zero Effort Networks (Z.E.N.works), BorderManager, and NDS for NT, I think your professors
will be excited about Novell. After all, professors like to create a vision of the future for their
students, and the direction of network computing is in the directory--something that Novell
does better than any other company.
STANDARDIZING ON ONE PLATFORM
Dear John,
At my company, we have a 250-user version of NetWare 4.1. We recently added two Windows
NT servers to run applications that support only Windows NT. We must now add one more
Windows NT server to run another such application.
Recently, upper management stated that they want to run only Windows NT on the network to
simplify network management (manage only one network operating system) and reduce training
costs (learn about only one network operating system). I believe we should leverage our current
NetWare investment and upgrade to NetWare 5 when it is released.
I have explained that NetWare offers superior file and print services and that recent solutions
such as NDS for NT allow you to manage Windows NT servers through NDS. However, upper
management still wants to move to Windows NT. Can you offer any other reasons we should
keep NetWare?
William Ryan
You are right about Novell providing solutions for managing Windows NT. To upper
management, standardizing on one platform seems to reduce network management and
training costs. What upper management may fail to realize, however, is that the platform to
standardize on is NDS, which allows you to manage multiple environments as if they were
one. In fact, with NDS, managing two environments is easier than managing Windows NT
alone.
ConsoleOne in NetWare 5 takes this management concept one step further. Built on industry
standards, ConsoleOne is a management framework that is 100 percent Java and leverages
NDS. All of Novell's management products will soon be Java-based snap-in modules for
ConsoleOne, so that you will have one management interface which will reduce the costs
associated with network management and training. And since ConsoleOne is 100 percent
Java, you will be able to manage your company's network from either the NetWare 5 server
console or from a workstation. Check out ConsoleOne, and then let upper management know
what's new at Novell.
AVOIDING BATTLES WITH VENDORS
Dear John Slitz,
Novell seems to avoid public battles with other vendors. For example, Novell's World-Wide
Web site publishes articles that correct some of Microsoft's marketing propaganda, but I have
not found this information in mainstream computer publications or newspapers. Also, several
large companies that switched to Windows NT are going back to NetWare, but no one is
publicizing these case studies.
Darryl Ludba
Novell is trying to take a more proactive stance in how we market our products. The best
marketing that we can do is to deliver products. Novell will make a statement to the world
during 1998 in how many products we will ship. Novell will ship more products this year than
any other year in our history. And these products are focused products that leverage NDS to
address key issues such as managing networking environments, managing desktops and
applications, and managing connections to the Internet. Novell doesn't need to battle other
vendors, Novell just needs to integrate with these vendors' products.
EVALUATING THE COST OF PRODUCTS
Dear John Slitz,
The cost of Novell's products seems to be somewhat high. Does Novell intend to make the cost
of its products--particularly its add-on products--more competitive?
Richard Ailstock
First, our products deliver greater savings to the customer than our competitors' products. We
have consistently shown that our products cost less to manage than Microsoft's and other
vendors' products. Of course, our products are also proving themselves to be more reliable
and stable for conducting day-to-day business.
In addition, some of our products actually cost less to purchase while delivering more value
in the box than our competitors' products. One classic case is Novell's GroupWise versus
Microsoft's Exchange: On the surface, GroupWise appears to be more expensive than
Exchange. However, if you add up the cost of purchasing all of Exchange's pieces, Exchange
costs 15 to 30 percent more than GroupWise (without a document management product).
As you can see, Novell delivers total and true cost savings to the customer.
CONCLUSION
We continue to receive numerous questions for John Slitz and his marketing team. Please keep
these questions coming! John Slitz will continue to answer questions about Novell's overall
marketing strategy, and the appropriate marketing manager will answer your questions about
specific marketing programs. For example, Bryan Clark, manager of Novell's CNE Net program,
will answer your questions about how Novell supports CNEs.
If you want to submit a question to John Slitz and his marketing team, visit NetWare
Connection's web site (http://www.novell.com/nwc). You can also send an e-mail message to
nwc-editors@novell.com, or you can send a fax to 1-801-228-4576.
NetWare Connection, June 1998, pp.24-25 |
