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Novell's strategy laid bare

Tags:
Netware,
Suse,
Messman

Stephen Shankland CNET News

Published: 17 Feb 2005 13:50 GMT

It's been a fast-paced 13 months for Jack Messman.

The Novell CEO began an ambitious Linux overhaul of his company in 2003, acquiring SuSE Linux to provide an alternative to the fading NetWare operating system. Since then, the company has released a major new Linux edition, revamped sales, dropped its number two executive and prepared a new version of NetWare: Open Enterprise Server, which comes with Linux built in.

The Linux transformation is going well but not completely as planned, Messman acknowledged. Among other things, Novell hasn't had the success it wanted in North America, where SuSE Linux trails rival Red Hat.

Messman's assessment of that weakness -- and some progress fixing it -- is borne out by a recent survey of 440 North American information technology managers published in January by securities firm SG Cowen. In a comparison of the percentage of sites that rely on different versions of Linux, Red Hat slipped from 86 percent in 2003 to 72 percent from November 2003 to January 2005, while Novell gained from 21 percent to 33 percent over the same period.

Messman, 64, has been a Novell board member since 1985 -- Novell's glory days selling NetWare -- and became president and CEO when Novell bought his company, Cambridge Technology Partners, in 2001.

He sat down with ZDNet UK sister site CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland after his keynote address at the LinuxWorld Conference and Expo in Boston.

Q: How would you assess the Linuxisation of Novell?
A: When we did the merger with Cambridge Technology Partners and Silverstream, the strategy wasn't clear to our employees. They were still in this hunkered-down mode of protecting NetWare against Microsoft. Once we focused on Linux, they started to get it. In less than a year, we educated the entire staff. They embraced it. They saw how they wouldn't have to give up NetWare to get to Linux. They saw Open Enterprise Server as a good move. The morale is up. They see us in an offensive mode rather than a defensive mode.

We got a little bit of DNA from Ximian and SuSE that has permeated our entire company. Now we've started to cross-fertilise. We had a few emotional wars early on with KDE and GNOME [two competing graphical user interfaces]. We solved that by putting them both in the Novell desktop and letting the customers decide.

So you think it's been good culturally and technologically. How has it been from the business side?
We used to have trouble [getting noticed]. Linux was like a flashlight. It shined light on Linux and Novell. Talking about Linux... got us in the door... to talk about other things we had, like identity management. The common comment was, 'I didn't know you guys did that.' Customers now understand better what we're trying to do. The identity management thing was tougher. Initially, we were trying to sell it as a directory. People said, 'What the hell is a directory?' If you talk about identity management, they get it.