TECH TALK By Paul Motter (MF Networx) Take me to your Leader... (March 19, 1997) -- The emergence of Eric Schmidt as the CEO for NOVELL INC. <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: NOVL)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: NOVL)") end if %> sheds light on what many industry analysts have been pondering for years now. How can Novell differentiate itself in the networking marketplace against the encroaching MICROSOFT <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: MSFT)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: MSFT)") end if %>? "The Internet revolution went right by them," is a phrase often slung about in conversations about both Novell and Microsoft. But Novell has something Microsoft just can't seem to get right -- Novell Directory Services (NDS). With NDS, a network administrator can see and manage every element on his network -- users, servers, web servers, even NT Workstations -- organized by physical and/or logical locations according to his plan. Novell recently took the bold step of making NDS an open platform, available for all who want to write applications compatible with Netware networks. This is a boon to software developers and hardware manufacturers who need software manageability for their devices over their network interface, and it is a boon to Novell. If the network runs over Netware, then Novell runs the network. Novell hit hard times about two years ago. The company's investment in WordPerfect had taken it on a downward spiral that it has had a hard time pulling out of. The company divested the CEO who got it into that pickle, Ray Norda, nearly two years ago, and sold WordPerfect to Corel not long after that. With Bob Frankenberg at the helm, Novell managed to get Netware 4.1 out the door, a technologically successful product, even if not the panacea to the bottom line the company hoped it would be. Six months ago, a weary Frankenberg left for greener pastures and the stalwart Joe Marengi took the helm in the interim as the search for the perfect CEO began. Marengi spearheaded the effort to make NDS an open platform, specifically choosing to embrace JAVA and the Java Naming Directory Interface, an open directory service programming platform to allow Java developers to create network management applications for NDS. Novell's new version of Netware, called "IntraNetware," is a tight package that offers the managability of 4.1 plus a Java-enabled webserver with all of the TCP/IP services. At SUN MICROSYSTEMS <% if gsSubBrand = "aolsnapshot" then Response.Write("(Nasdaq: SUNW)") else Response.Write("(Nasdaq: SUNW)") end if %> Chief Technical Officer Eric Schmidt was the figurehead, the visionary who spearheaded the effort to make Java the open application programming language for the hardware and operating-system agnostic Internet. The whole idea for the Internet is to provide a fully accessible network that is capable of sharing resources and supplying services to any type of computer, whether it is a Newton, a PC compatible, a Unix workstation, a Macintosh, or an IBM mainframe. The first software innovators, after the original hackers of Berkeley who integrated BSD Unix and TCP/IP in the 1970s, were the Internet browser people who came up with Mosaic and eventually Netscape. This ingeniously simple idea allows the user interface (the browser), created specifically for whatever computer the user happens to have, to present universally accessible material (in the form of basic ASCII text and jpg/gif files), in the form of beautiful, cohesive webpages. But simple ASCII text and pictures have their limitations. What if the programmer wanted to do more than create webpages? What if he wanted to write interactive applications that were as universally accessible to users, regardless of what kind of computer they were using, as webpages are? Enter Java. Java was created at Sun Microsystems, and Eric Schmidt had a lot to do that. He encouraged the development of Java by the company, but more importantly, he spearheaded the effort to make it an open language available to all who chose to use it. What was the motivation behind this seeming magnanimous stance? The good of computer users everywhere? Not exactly, more like a shrewd business sense that is possibly the only strategy that could loosen the grip of the stranglehold Microsoft has on the software world today. Schmidt's strategy at Sun Microsystems was this, "One is the halo effect. Our customers come in for a Java demo and they leave carrying (Sun) SPARCstations. Second, there are a lot of ways of making money when you have a lot of customers, such as training and development tools. Third, if Java enables us to sell our systems into places that we wouldn't otherwise sell, that's the real payoff." What will Schmidt's strategy for Novell be? As one of the foremost proponents of open systems, Sun MicroSystems has managed to prosper in a world where others have flailed helplessly against the Wintel juggernaut. Did Novell know at the time it decided to open up the NDS platform that Eric Schmidt would eventually be heading the charge? No. But Novell certainly seems to have known what kind of a CEO it had in mind when it began that long search many months ago.

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