Resurgent Novell takes on MS
A major win with Dell may be announced shortly -- and that's just a start.
By Mary Jo Foley, Sm@rt Reseller
Microsoft Corp. may be stepping up its targeting of Novell Inc.'s top resellers, but Novell isn't resting on its laurels.
"We can't rest on what we did last year," says Bill Wall, worldwide director of field and channel marketing for Novell. "But when a major industry player like Microsoft makes a push for our partners, it validates our channel concept."
Just a year ago, Novell had basically dropped off Microsoft's competitive radar screen, Novell's own executives begrudgingly admitted. But once the company shipped NetWare 5.0 and subsequent application and tool products on time, if not early, the "N" in NOISE (Novell, Oracle, IBM, Sun and Everyone Else) was back with a vengance.
In early November, Microsoft invited a number of Novell's top-level Platinum resellers on an all-expenses-paid two-day recruitment junket to Seattle. And Microsoft isn't stopping there, say resellers. Microsoft is offering its own resellers strategies for selling against Novell on a password-protected Extranet site called "Novell Competitive Information."
Fighting back
Novell officials continue to accentuate the positive, at least publicly, claiming the specialized network operating system NetWare does not compete head-on with general-purpose operating system NT. Nontheless, in the past year, Novell hired 300 new direct sales consultants to help the company better sell and support its enterprise products.
In addition, Novell is working to counteract Microsoft's marketing machine. Within the next few weeks, for example, Novell is expected to announce a major win for NetWare inside of Dell Computer Corp., say sources, a direct response to Microsoft's announcement this fall that Dell was dumping NetWare in favor of NT 4.0.
On the channel side, Novell is beefing up, as well. In the past three months alone, Novell added 900 new partners, ranging from Small Business to Platinum resellers. The company is looking at a year-to-year growth rate of about 24 percent in terms of the total number of Novell resellers, says Wall. At the end of October, Novell was claiming just over 15,000 resellers in North America only.
In January, Novell plans to roll out more technical training for its partners, as well as more sales training, too, says Wall.
"Our resellers want more technical training before products release. That's why we introduced the Boot Camps," says Wall. "Now our sales people need better training. Through PowerSell, we are doing this through all our programs, which we are currently validating and revalidating with our resellers."
Novell will push this these new programs out to the field in late January, he says.
Keeping resellers happy
Most of Novell's resellers seem to be happy with Novell and its programs, making Microsoft's recruitment attempts only limitedly successful.
"Under [CEO Eric] Schmidt, Novell's done a good job in positioning themselves as a secure, enterprise-wide, directory-based network operating system," says Greg Uehling, executive vice president of network integration firm Devise Associates Inc., New York, N.Y. "Novell now understands the directory is really what makes them shine."
Uehling--a Novell Platinum reseller and Microsoft Certified Solution Provider who attended Microsoft's two-day recruitment event--says he "wants to make sure we get the same respect from Microsoft as we've gotten from Novell." While "Microsoft isn't shaking in their boots [because of NetWare 5.0], they seem to understand they need us," he says. "They didn't pay any attention to us in the past, but they are doing so now."
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