Any time a piece of bad PR comes out about Novell, such as Jeremy Allison resigning, I feel conflicted. I am not a Novell employee, so I don’t know what goes on behind those walls. I’m a Novell customer, or rather, my organization is. My day to day job is tied into the long term operation of Novell.
I maintain the network, and the backbone of the logical network is Novell. File and print with OES NetWare, email with GroupWise, workstation management with ZenWorks. Clearly, I identify with the products and specifically, the technical aspects of the products. So in turn, I identify with certain Novell employees. By extension of how I deal with Novell products, those are the engineers and support staff. Slightly beyond that, as a Novell product advocate, I identify with the people who reach out to the community such as the cool bloggers and the like.
Who I do not identify with and who I don’t fully understand is management, public relations, and marketing. Looking in from the outside, I’m not exactly sure what they do. I know day to day operations eat up much of the time for management. But I’m unsure of the overall strategic plan. Surely, this Microsoft deal is part of that plan. Despite what the open source community’s more vocal members think, I do not think this is some under handed attack on Linux or GPL based open source software. I truly believe Novell is trying to get back into the data center, through Microsoft. However, I believe they erred badly when working in the patent provisions as part of the deal. They further compounded that error by going silent about it. A few blog postings by executives didn’t seem to do a whole lot to stem the tide of discontent and uncertainty. The kicker of it all, is that they didn’t bother to consult important open source community members, within their own walls. They ignored a very valuable resource. That reflects very poorly on management and its ability to identify and use their own resources.
I’m currently reading a book on Steve Jobs, The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, and I’m in the section where he has returned to Apple after his company Next, was acquired by Apple. Steve Jobs is a marketing guy with an affinity for hardware. That hardware is the extension of his marketing aura. People tend to identify Apple’s turn around with the iPod and Mac OSX. However, that turn around started before those products were available. It might surprise people to learn that Apple swung their hundreds of thousands of dollars in losses per quarter to returns using existing technology and software. They took existing hardware running the classic Mac OS, stuffed it in a strange looking bubble of a case, called it the iMac, and then proceeded to market the hell out of it.
My point with all of that, is that Novell has the technology. While my example above does not directly apply to Novell’s position seeing as it’s only a software company and not a hardware company, my point remains the same. Novell keeps trying to gain market movement through their technology. That’s great, but it’s not nearly enough. They need to market their brand name. They need to get out there and actually get in contact with customers. Try playing their own game instead of Microsoft’s. How about trying new things such as free licenses for existing customers on certain products like SLED? I don’t know about anyone else, but I stopped installing time bombed software half a decade ago.
I’ll admit that I’m not a marketing person. But out here in the trenches, when someone says Novell marketing, a Novell admin will always pipe up and say “what marketing” or something along those lines. Clearly, Novell’s marketing has been hurting for a long time and has not done anything to change that perception lately. Their sales division does not go above and beyond the call of duty by any stretch. Their public relations seem to consist of nothing more than blog postings. And finally the upper management who deal with all these aspects, do not seem to be making a whole lot of positive change.
This post is painting a very dark picture at Novell. Not everything is dark. Their product lines continue to fill many needs I and many other customers and potential customers have, even if they don’t know about them. The idea to have and continue support for cool solutions, cool blogs, open audio, and the Novell forums is very much appreciated and the right thing to do. The unpopular decision to depreciate NetWare for OES Linux was a very difficult but necessary decision for the long term viability of Novell in the file and print realm. Finally, Novell offers products that have one piece of build in marketing that can be leveraged. Simply said, they aren’t Microsoft.
What Novell needs is leadership that can use all these pluses to change perception and put themselves on the radar where they otherwise aren’t at this time. The part of the Microsoft deal where Microsoft offers SLES certificates is very indicative or the sales and marketing issues Novell faces from within and how they seems wholly unable to do it themselves.
And finally, they need to do this for customers and potential customers and not for the investors. Investors are blood sucking leaches, a necessary evil in the corporate world and should be treated as such. They bring money, and should not be listened to otherwise. Just because you have money, doesn’t mean you have any clue how a company should be run. I understand how that is an overly simplistic view of the situation and probably isn’t well grounded. But I point to the Steve Jobs example from above. Apple’s board continued to put useless executives into positions at Apple as the losses mounted. When Steve Jobs came back, the board was gutted and replaced with “Steve’s people” who basically let him do what he needs to do.
This post is a simplified look at Novell from the outside in. I like Novell’s products, but I think management is failing the products, not the other way around. I want Novell to last long term and continue to crank out quality software. I just don’t think the software itself is enough.
