Novell chief: 'We're taking the offensive'

Novell chief: 'We're taking the offensive'

By Laura DiDio
Computerworld

July 27, 1998

Novell, Inc. Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt wants the industry to know that Novell's comeback is last year's news. Now, with the imminent release of a new marketing strategy; NetWare 5.0, which runs natively on TCP/IP; and a native version of Novell Directory Services for NT (NDS for NT) -- all due out in late summer -- the Provo, Utah-based company hopes to regain some of the market share lost to rival Microsoft Corp.'s Windows NT. Schmidt talked with Computerworld senior editor Laura DiDio about his plans.

CW: NetWare's market share dropped 9% from 1996 to 1997, and new unit shipments of NT surpassed NetWare shipments for the first time. What are you going to do?

Schmidt: To regain momentum among our users, we needed to remove the "dissatisifiers" with the products. The main one was NetWare didn't run native TCP/IP. NetWare 5.0, which is due out in the next two months, addresses that issue.

CW: What are you going to do to get long-term growth vs. a short-term benefit from an upgrade cycle?

Schmidt: Our strategy isn't based only on NetWare 5.0. It's based on the directory services-centric model of network computing, and we have a multiyear lead in this area. All the comments about NT [taking over] presume that I don't make forward progress. I'm not stopping the race. I'm going to run faster. And frankly, I'm very happy NT is going to be late; we're going to capitalize on that.

CW: How, exactly?

Schmidt: We're taking the offensive, doing constant road shows and advertising campaigns and conferences targeted at the CIOs.

I've been on the road almost constantly talking to CIOs, chief technology officers and network administrators about their real-world problems and what we can do to solve them. The challenge over the next year is to give CIOs a reason to believe that NetWare is the better choice.

CW: And how do you do that?

Schmidt: One key is ZenWorks, which we released this spring. It allows businesses to control and administer remote clients through NDS. It ensures that end users are using the right software in the right way and can lower cost of ownership by up to 70% in some organizations.

Every customer we have is evaluating or using ZenWorks; it's the sweet spot. If I can come up with nine more products like ZenWorks, these arguments [for NT] would become a lot more academic.

CW: One reason for NT's success is that Microsoft sold the product so well to CIOs. Have you got something new to pitch them on?

Schmidt: Yes, I believe that directory architectures are as important [today] as architectures were 15 years ago. I came to Novell having done Java . . . the next interesting spaces are directories and security. In an apples-to-apples comparison with NT, we have clear-cut advantages in these two areas, and according to industry analysts, we will for the next two years at least.

CW: Microsoft has stated on its Web page since January that NDS for NT isn't an interoperable product and that it breaks the security of NT 4.0.

Schmidt: Microsoft can lie, but we're going to tell the truth.

I can't control what Microsoft does, so I will continue to focus on my primary goals: getting the sales force calling on the right customers at the right level and getting the right products shipping on time based on an IP world.

And delivering huge increases in performance in NetWare and our Java engine.