IntranetWare sinks. Will Schmidt walk the plank?

Oh, me hearties, Cap'n Gibbs back again. So brace the mainsail, scupper the poop deck and avast behind (nothin' personal you understand).

Well, it's quite interestin' out here on the Sea of Networking. Take Admiral Schimdt at the helm of the good ship Novell: He announced at Comdex that his company is dropping the IntranetWare pennant and going back to hoisting the NetWare flag.

As they be sayin' in certain far-off lands, 'Duh.'

IntraNetWare, launched in September last year, was a profoundly dumb marketing exercise by any standard. It displayed a deep lack of understanding about the purpose and nature of intranets - intranets are a way of working, not a collection of infrastructure services.

I can just imagine what the Novell executive marketing meetings were like back in early 1996 . . .

Exec-1: What's all this intranet stuff?
Exec-2: I'm not sure, but it sounds really big. We should do something.
Exec-1: Hey, intranet has got 'net' in it . . . what if we repackage NetWare? We can call it IntranetWare.
Exec-2: Cool. Where shall we go for lunch?

If you've read this column for any length of time you'll be aware that I once worked for Novell, and I much admire its products and technologies. But Novell has a number of problems in its approach to business.

Consider the applications market. Novell tried to attack this market from the development side with tools such as AppWare and from the product side with WordPerfect. Both ventures failed because Novell wasn't committed to making either a success.

Why was there no commitment? Because Novell suffers from terminal NIH (Not Invented Here) Syndrome, which prevents new business initiatives from maturing. It also prevents Novell from responding to market trends in a timely fashion. For example, Moab, the next version of NetWare that will run over TCP/IP or IPX, will be available early next year. Isn't this just a little late?

Then there's NetWare Directory Service for NT. The beta's getting rave reviews, but it is so late that Microsoft has had time to make noise about Active Directory and dilute Novell's pitch. Plain dumb.

There's also the problem of Novell not completing products. I don't mean that the products don't work. Rather, their products often go to market 'unpolished.' Consider the NetWare Web Server. A fine piece of engineering that is one of the fastest Web servers around. But did Novell provide sample back-end applications? No. Dumb move.

This sloppiness is endemic in Novell's operations. Just look at Novell's 'death by patches' situation. You need to be an expert on its patches to know what you need to patch. It shouldn't be that hard! Dumb, dumb, dumb. But I digress . . .

So what's going to happen with Novell? Well, Mr. Schmidt is lauded as a visionary. He is credited with architecting Sun's Internet strategy and being instrumental in promoting Java. But since taking the helm at Novell last April, Schmidt doesn't seem to have been able to make any major changes. Do you see a vision? Do you see a strategy?

Well, Admiral Schmidt, them thar seas are getting very rough. The good ship Novell is starting to flounder and your Comdex address, which I thought was weak, showed damn little vision and lots of platitudes.

Novell needs some real vision now. Unless you get the sales up, you'll find Novell taking on water and yourself walking the plank. I give you no more than six months at the current rate. What next Admiral?

Will Admiral Schmidt find a new course? Predictions to nwcolumn@gibbs.com or leave a message for Cap'n Gibbs at (800) 622-1108, Ext. 7504.