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Novell draws product road map

Novell's annual BrainShare user conference has always been a showcase for the latest technological developments, and this year will be no different.

4 min read
Novell's (NOVL) annual BrainShare user conference in March has always been a showcase for the latest technological developments at the company, and this year will be no different.

Novell will be choosing its strengths carefully in the coming months, picking through a wide array of technologies in a search for those that reflect the firm's core networking software mission, according to executives.

Included in upcoming plans is: a software tool that makes it easier for



Novell VP John Slitz on Novell's focus
customers to deploy a directory-based scheme on their network, release of another NetWare beta along with an updated version of the operating system (OS) software targeted at small businesses, and possibly a repackaging of current Novell technologies.

"We are studying all of our options, and we're going to make decisions as quickly as we can," John Slitz, senior vice president of marketing for Novell, said in an interview with CNET's NEWS.COM.

The software firm has evidently unified behind a strategy floated by CEO Eric Schmidt, the former Java guru at Sun Microsystems hired last March. Novell is pushing its expertise in networking software, embracing Java as an easy-to-use development environment, and promoting new technologies such as Orion, a forthcoming clustering software product.

Novell has been hit hard by the rapid growth of Windows NT, a Microsoft OS targeted at corporate computing. NT server-based sales accounted for 47 percent of all units sold with PC-based server systems in 1997, according to market researcher Dataquest. Novell's share for the just-completed year was 31 percent.

For 1998, the research firm forecasts a 51 percent share for NT and a 30 percent share for Novell, though the server-based OS market is growing so rapidly that Novell's unit sales will be larger than 1997.

"I think technically they're starting to get their act together," said Chris LeTocq, an analyst with Dataquest.

"They have to have an effective, powerful marketing organization that articulates a message that sticks," LeTocq noted. "This is not rocket science, this is just understanding that you have to get in people's faces."

In this climate, Novell plans to embark on an effort to simplify the manner



Slitz deems Redmond "Never-Never Land"
in which users implement a key technology found in the company's OS, called Novell Directory Services (NDS). A new tool due out next month called Zero Effort Networking, or "Zen" Works, will automate several cumbersome functions of the directory, alleviating the need for administrators to organize the resources on their network themselves.

"We've got a bunch of new things coming out that really show directory," Slitz said. "That's really where the problem comes in. In order to use a directory, you've got to have a certain level of thought and organization to your network or it doesn't work very well. We're going to do a lot of that work for people with Zen Works."

"The results of this are going to be a lot of things that are going to excite some CIOs," he added.

As part of the administration initiative, the Zen Works tool will be merged with the company's ManageWise desktop and systems management product, essentially bringing the management software components of the company's product roster into its core NetWare OS.

"It's part of what we're thinking of as our manageability strategy. If you're going to be running your business on a network, you've got to manage it," Slitz said.

The industry veteran, hired soon after Schmidt was hired, said the company may use the integration of ManageWise into NetWare as a springboard for similar marriages between its OS and accompanying tools. Microsoft has chosen to tie all of its server-based applications to NT, with software such as Exchange, Cluster Server, and SQL Server, taking advantage of base NT services.

"I think we've got a bunch of good products and you're going to see more added. You may see some consolidation," Slitz said. "I think we have more product names than we have products. We have some product names that are features on NetWare and I think we may well look at them that way."

As an example, Slitz painted this picture for the company's collaboration and messaging software suite: "We could just take pieces of GroupWise and bundle it into NetWare and say: 'Here's an add-on.'"

Also on tap at the BrainShare conference is the release of a new version of the company's NetWare for Small Business for under $1,000. The software bundle is targeted at small organizations that want email and Internet access.

Attendees could also see initial copies of the company's third beta release of NetWare 5.0, previously code-named Moab, since the final test release is scheduled to roll out in April, according to company executives.

Separately, in the aftermath of a recent contentious dispute over support for a version of NDS tailored for NT, Schlitz said the company would continue to pursue Microsoft certification for the tool.

"We'd love to be BackOffice-certified. When they get around to it and when they think its in their best interests, they'll certify us," Slitz said. "We're willing to do it and they're not willing to have us do it yet. So we're open to it, but we're not dependent upon it."