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

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (25658)	2/26/1999 1:48:00 AM
From: Phil Jacobson	Respond to of 42771

Paul, Your story is very similar to experiences I've had in a prior (short) life working with people in the video game biz. The animation has gotten so complex people forget they're making a game. I still like classic Asteroids and Bomberman because the games do a good job being games and don't try to be a movie. And each can operate pretty well with about 64K of memory. It's all about using technology as a tool to get to an end, but to some the tool is the end. In my last job I carried a guy around with me to all the techno meetings and introduced him as my "technology guy". He even had that as his title on his business card. Every marketer should get one when cutting a deal, they're really quite useful to have around. I see tons of value have great respect for engineers; why do they have a hard time seeing the value of good marketing? It's a mystery. Re: NOVL, again, Eric was asked what the biggest challenge is going forward. And he basically said it's his means of creating awareness and a marketing message. You have to admit that there aren't too many CEOs with the guts to admit something as profound as that. I think he'll work it as hard as he can but work within the confines of what he has. Novell's a big company and it takes a long time to fix a cultural issue of this magnitude. They've brought in a lot of people already to handle key functional groups. My sense is Eric will do the same here. But what makes this especially difficult is that unlike the problems they solved by getting Chris Stone and Mike Sheridan, ultimately this is a pure cultural issue, not a leadership issue. Good marketing requires everyone to "get it" not just the person at the top. If the masses don't have their ears and brains tuned in the message will be totally lost since its primarily the masses that get the message into the marketplace. The work of any new marketing people Eric might bring in will be totally wasted if people aren't totally tuned in and ready to get the same message out. So, maybe Eric's right to let the partners do the job for now. Then, take the messages that work and integrate them back into Novell. Oh well, I better sell those May 20s. But keep the long position for a long time. Phil