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

To: Frederick Smart who wrote (26370)	3/31/1999 7:25:00 AM
From: EPS	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Novell Debuts New Identity -- VARs are target/sales army for Novell Directory Services Cassimir Medford Salt Lake City-The faithful made the annual pilgrimage here last week and the message is good for VARs: Novell is back. Novell Inc. snatched away headlines from rival Microsoft Corp. with its announcement of a new focus on its Novell Directory Services (NDS) and a set of new products based on NDS. At the top of the list of new products that drew raves from attendees of the company's Brainshare '99 conference was digitalme, a digital identity technology based on the company's NDS that allows end users and consumers to configure a universal identity that goes beyond simply a name and password. With digitalme, users can extend their personal identities to include preferences, bookmarks, interests and contact information. Users can adjust the available information to match their participation in different virtual communities. They can include more personal information for "buddy" communities and less for new commercial relationships. "The question is not where you want to go today. It's who you want to be today," says Eric Schmidt, Novell's chairman and CEO. "It is the next step. We build a structure where individuals control what happens to them. The value of the Internet is in its ability to empower the individual." According to Schmidt, businesses can use digitalme to improve the Web experience of its customers through more focused and highly personalized marketing. VAR Test Run Novell's VARs could be the first group to sample the benefits of digitalme. The company's customer services group will test-run a digitalme community for VARs in an effort to gain acceptance of the technology in the channel, and also to familiarize Novell's VARs with a product the company hopes will deepen the market penetration of NDS. "Once our channel starts using the technologies, they will better understand the possibilities and will be able to not only explain them to their customers, but to suggest creative ways in which those technologies can benefit their businesses," says Richard Nortz, Novell's senior vice president of customer services. VARs' reaction to the new Novell was positive. "The 'dump Novell' bandwagon is starting to slow down," says David Prellwitz, vice president of Alden-James Group Inc., a Novato, Calif.-based VAR. "Novell will grow at an accelerated pace during the next two years. The inability of Microsoft to deliver products and show a set of directory services is going to force it further and further into relinquishing territory." Digitalme is the product realization of a strategy the company has pursued for more than two years. Novell is attempting to establish NDS as more than just a static, parochial means of identifying people and devices on a NetWare network and more of a full service identification system for the Internet. "It's the way in which businesses can capture and hold the customer," says Schmidt. "People like to go back to places where they feel welcome." --- The new Novell is: - Focused on NDS instead of NetWare - Looking beyond the LAN and out to the Internet - Developing applications to stimulate market for NDS - Creating digitalme VAR communities - Seeking partnerships outside its traditional base Copyright ® 1999 CMP Media Inc. techweb.com

To: Frederick Smart who wrote (26370)	3/31/1999 10:32:00 PM
From: Jack Whitley	Respond to of 42771

<<CEO John Chambers wants to exploit those strengths to grab more voice conversations, too. He says "old world" giants like Lucent and Northern Telecom, which build traditional circuit switches, are in serious trouble. Convergence, he says, "will be the next Industrial Revolution.">> After a lot of deep thought and watching both vendors in action, I am convinced that it is going to be easier for for voice companies to do data than for data companies to do voice. LU may well be the next Intel, they have a gigantic technology portfolio, and they vigorously police their marks/patents. To call them "old world" is whistling in the graveyard. jww