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

To: Jerry Feder who wrote (26605)	4/11/1999 9:59:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Pretty limited article for someone who attended Brainshare The writer clearly didn't grasp what was happening around him. For the writer Novell's future is in Netware sales (and legacy conversion sales at that!). This perspective is nearly two years out of date and part of MSFT FUD. The writer hasn't got a good grasp as to exactly where the growth areas will be for the company and keeps looking backward. Somehow he doesn't grasp the full significance of Bordermangers being taken on by Dell and CPQ vis a vi Inkatomi's caching products and the internet. There is no mention of LU. Nortel, and other NDS partners and what they are after in NDS. Not a word in the article about Novell as an internet player. Not a word about i-chain or digitalme. Not a word about NDS's use in ecommerce. Schmidt's agenda is to make Novell an internet leader. That means you must examine the role of Novell's NDS directory in the context of enterprise networks connected into the internet. Novell will supply more than just web servers here (although the author doesn't mention it, the IBM websphere deal is supposed to provide enterprises with the ability to easily set up web sites), it will supply the means by which corporations can extend their internal directories across the internet to their customers and to their vendors. If you come at Novell only from the perspective of enterprise internal networks you miss where the company and its customers are going.

To: Jerry Feder who wrote (26605)	4/12/1999 11:04:00 AM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

I sent this in to the writer: Hello! When I read your opinion, I thought here's someone who has been very objective and concise. I agree in most part with your analysis of what Novell is doing about growing the company now. As an investor and an end-user, I have a personal stake in what happens to Novell. Here are several of my insights as to why Novell will continue to prosper: 1) NDS This product is light-years ahead of any other product in the market today. Even when Windows 2000 ships, Active Directory will not be able to compete with the raw power of NDS. Now that MSFT has announced that it will ship Windows 2000 (server) without Intellimirror and other tools, the NDS advantage will continue to grow. 2) Leveraging NDS You say this is the same thing as #1 but it's not. Building the directory is one thing, finding/creating ways to use that directory in a positive way is another thing. That brings us to the "ZENs". The first product, ZENworks is a major breakthrough in desktop management. Even MSFT is green with envy. As this product matures, I think we'll see more interest in NDS (even NDS for NT) which will grow revenues and sales. Let's not forget that Novell is gearing up to create and deliver 10 more ZEN products this year and one to keep your eyes on is digitalme. This one will cause many people to stand up and notice. 3) Network Appliances HUGE market PERIOD. It's been reported that INKTOMI (the leading Cache software vendor) is working to move out of the cache space and into other areas on the internet front. This leaves Novell's ICS product as the leading alternative product (did you see the Cache Bake-Off? Report?). This will create a new market for Novell and ISPs (which by the way was Dr. Schmidt forte over at SUNW). Once they get into ISPs with the cache product, look for them to leverage their deals with other products like "Liberty" (based on Netscape's Messaging server product). Aside from that, other network appliances I suspect to see from Novell include: - DNS/DHCP servers - Proxy servers - VPN servers - Storage area network (Dell and CPQ had something on display at BrainShare's Tech Lab) - LDAP/LDUP cataloging - e-commerce appliances and servers 4) "Internet-based networking" Novell will continue to move into the central role as the only player that can seamlessly integrate private networks to the public internet without compromising security and accessibility. This starts with NetWare 5 and native IP but goes further with LDAP/LDUP integration, native HTTP on the server (that makes the NetWare 5 server a default webserver [webservers are basically file sharing servers and who does better file sharing services than NetWare?]) Products that will provide this flexibility? - Novell Distributed Print Services (NDPS) with it's Internet Printing Protocol (IPP) - BorderManager's VPN capabilities will create internal private networks which will hamper "network intruders" since the internal private network will not be an open playground but segmented via secure "borders". - WebPublisher (Host Publisher) - this is a tool that will allow you to create web-based documents and publish them to an intranet/internet site from MS Office products. - GroupWise moving forward —> integration with MS Outlook. 5) Moving forward with Java-based application development. Novell currently has one of the best Java Virtual Machines on their NetWare 5 server. Adding IBM's WebSphere and Oracle 8i you start to develop a platform for truely powerful platform independant applications. We won't see that this year or within the next 18 months but further down this road, it will have a large impact once customers begin to use this potential. For some time I recall a product Novell developed but never release called NetTop. This was an OS that could handle networked appliances via Java and TCP/IP. Basically they developed it to run any number of devices from PDA's to thin clients to settop boxes (for cable TV). I don't recall hearing much about it since Dr. Schmidt came onboard but I don't think it's been "trashed". I expect to hear something about this "development" some day soon but again, I'm not hoping for this to "save" the company. Another product market that will be HUGE for Novell will be IP telephony. They already have a beta product and developer information that you can either download for free or if you are part of DeveloperNet, you can obtain from them. This can be big because of 2 reasons, NDS's maturity/scalability and telcom support for NDS (Lucent, Nortel, Cisco, etc). With companies like this onboard, IP Telephony is quickly becoming the next hotspot in IP-based products (converging data networks with your voice network will create a new paradigm with IP telephony and messaging at the center of it). If you don't believe me, check out my cable company's Optimun Online and the new telehpone service they offer. Currently they are becoming a de facto Local exchange carrier but to redeploy their network as a pure IP-based system that includes telephony and internet access isn't a far-fetched thing. Future phones will include CU-SeeMe-type technology over fiber optics with additional web-browsing capabilities (looking for a phone number??). All of this comes back to who can deal with the internet and I believe Novell has "Internet Religon". They will be a force to reckon with in the next 3-5 years as their products develop and grow beyond their proprietary network OS and into the Internet. Thanks for your time! Peter J Strifas