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

To: Spartex who wrote (25666)	2/26/1999 10:21:00 AM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

The key statement in this article is growing revenues That is what give NOVL an edge in the current market. Moreover when the internet stock bubble corrects there will be plenty of companies looking for partners there. Novell's Zen technology and the 10 Zens will give it an edge with ecommerce companies. What Novell lacks is a business model for dealing with innovation. They have tried spin-offs and that just leaves them high and dry. They have tried promoting their engineers into entrepreneurial roles and found that their engineers just do better being left alone to do better engineering. Time to find another vehicle. Phil says maybe they partner with outside companies and let them run with the ball. If so they better have a specially focused support group within Novell to be sure that the technology Novell supplies is made to work for the partner as well as it would be made to work for a product group within Novell. Perhaps Schmidt should go back and study how IBM set up the original PC group and how that group under some very dynamic leadership was allowed to develop. It is probably a closer analogy to the situation at Novell with the ten Zens than Eric thinks.

To: Spartex who wrote (25666)	2/26/1999 10:53:00 AM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

Here's another good story regarding Novell and TeleCom sector.... February 08, 1999, Issue: 403 Section: Technology Directory Assistance -- Carrier Capabilities And Customer Data Will Meet At Devices Jeremiah Caron Directory services, which are finally gaining momentum in corporate networks, are ready to push into the telecom service provider market with technology enhancements due this year. The software technology, which stores user network access rights and capabilities in a single, manageable repository, lies at the heart of an increasing number of enterprise networks. Recently, network equipment manufacturers such as Cisco Systems Inc. (San Jose, Calif.), Lucent Technologies Inc. and Northern Telecom Ltd., and network software developers-including Banyan Systems Inc. (Westborough, Mass.), Netscape Communications Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.), Novell Inc. (Orem, Utah) and Microsoft Corp.-have focused on helping directory services manage devices such as switches and routers. The idea, letting operators link user information with network capabilities such as bandwidth prioritization and quality of service (QoS), has clear potential for Internet and other communications service providers. Failure to create such links will mean continued reliance on old and cumbersome systems and, in the long run, may reduce carriers' ability to exploit existing market opportunities and create new ones. Novell is at the forefront of efforts to sell directory technology to the carrier market. The company recognizes that carriers want to provision based on who the user is and how much he is paying, says Chris Stone, Novell's executive vice president of strategy and corporate development. "This gives service providers more flexibility and the ability to offer better services; that's a revenue opportunity for them." Monty Sharma, chief technology officer for the DSL-based applications services of Maritime Tel & Tel (MT&T, Halifax, Nova Scotia), also sees QoS as a retention tool. "Once customers are doing things like leasing applications from you, they can't as easily switch providers." The idea of linking customer information with network capabilities is not new to carriers, of course. That concept is at the heart of every operations support system (OSS). What's new is doing this with standardized, easily customizable software and dynamically integrating back-office billing and accounting functions with the networking devices themselves. Service providers like MT&T are offering services with the technology. Others, such as AT&T and Level 3 Communications Inc. (Omaha, Neb.), are conducting experiments. Does all this mean that carriers will shortly begin deploying directories to replace their antiquated, static OSS setups? Not likely, say all parties involved. "We're a lot further along in the enterprise space," says Craig Easley, director of product marketing for the Nortel Networks group within Northern Telecom. "There's not too much thought going into [directories replacing OSSs that exist]. The goal is for provisioning systems to interact with directories." Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc.