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

To: EPS who wrote (22728)	6/17/1998 8:15:00 AM
From: memery	Respond to of 42771

Network World Service and Support Survey: Novell grabs groupware lead nwfusion.com The differences between groupware vendors' ratings for overall service and support weren't significant, but Novell, Inc. was the clear leader with an overall satisfaction rating of 81, derived from primary users' assessments of specific support attributes. Chief competitors Lotus Development Corp. and Microsoft Corp. tied with a rating of 78. Novell topped the groupware rankings in virtually all individual categories, including the key areas of cost of service and support, bug fixes and patches, and telephone support. The vendor particularly excelled in the area of product reliability, with a score of 89, compared to 85 for Lotus and 84 for Microsoft. The results show that all three groupware vendors need to improve their on-site support. Microsoft earned a mere 70, which also was the lowest single rating recorded in the 1998 Network World Service and Support Survey. Lotus and Novell each scored a 76. Customers also would like vendors to solve their groupware problems more quickly. Novell's mediocre rating of 79 was the highest for time to resolve problems, while Lotus earned an unimpressive 74. Cabelas, Inc., a Sidney, Neb., mail-order house for hunting and fishing gear, uses Novell's GroupWise 5.1 e-mail for its 2,000 employees. Lyle Borcher, the company's MIS director, has nothing but good things to say about Novell's support. Although he doesn't have a lot of problems with GroupWise, Borcher says Novell supports the product as well as it does IntranetWare. Deloitte Consulting's Runolfson says Novell's higher ratings show that in spite of being smaller than Microsoft or the combined IBM/Lotus, the vendor is winning mind share among customers. ''Providing good customer service can be a cost-effective method for increasing or maintaining your customer base,'' Runolfson says. ''When IT decision makers find out that Novell is not the biggest company but that it provides good quality service, maybe they are going to lean in its direction.''