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

To: EPS who wrote (26525)	4/7/1999 9:11:00 AM
From: Bearded One	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

A Good Interview of Glenn Ricart.... nwfusion.com Just one piece of it... Q. How important is the concept of DigitalMe to Novell? A. It's a very important step in realizing the importance of the directory. Consistent information across the network is what helps all of the network players play nicely with each other. The directory outlines the social norms for the network. It tells you who the players are, what the rules of engagement are and what pieces of playthings are out there. DigitalMe is an important piece of that directory promise because it represents the individual and giving them control. Up until now, you could have gone to a Web site and it would ask you for all your personal information. God only knows how many passwords you may have to these various sites you go to. We are bringing that kind of control back to the person who actually owns that information. We are rebalancing the Internet in favor of the individual. When we've done that, we will have taken a huge step in realizing the power of the directory. It means that we have got people taking significant roles as players. We've always had users represented by names and passwords but now we are giving users the ability to have a much richer version of themselves stored in the directory. They can have custom cards with pictures. It is a way for users to feel that they are actually part of the network rather than needing some foreign description of themselves to access the system. We are letting them step into the networked world. Q. How are you going to push this into existing customer base where network administrators are used to having control over this kind of information? A. Well, if we were in Detroit, DigitalMe would be what we would call a concept car. It's an attempt to see what we can do by moving the line back toward the user or the customer so that they are responsible for their own information. Right now, our directory - like anyone else's - is managed by a systems administrator and if you want to change your telephone number you talk to him and he changes it. It is just one stop in many in the process of changing your telephone number across all aspects of your life. The DigitalMe concept is trying to pull that task back to the individual. And by doing that, I think that we have reshaped how the network works for you. You only change it in one place and these other locations point to you and change that number automatically. Now imagine some future technology able to provide that kind transference of responsibility for corporate network users. What would that mean in terms of freeing up a network administrator's time for actually managing the network and not cleaning up the information stored in the directory? DigitalMe is perhaps very consumer looking but perhaps it is just the beginning of the notion that we are going to have more players taking more responsibility for their own information and their own roll in the organization.

To: EPS who wrote (26525)	4/7/1999 10:00:00 AM
From: David O'Berry	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

What a joke. After MSFT's BS blunders with the GUID and the activex control that pulls info from you, I would be wary of anything they have to say on this front. Will someone please tell me why when I have Word opened on one of my home-office machines my ISDN router lights up every 7 minutes? I did a sniffer capture last night and I do not like what I am seeing. I have not had the chance to do anything other than a cursory exam and so all I know is that the initiating packets are DNS queries. Does anyone have a clue? David