In the marketing war between Microsoft and Novell, the Redmond giant has been armed with a bazooka while Novell has been firing back with a peashooter.
But now the NetWare and Novell Directory Services (NDS) creator is turning up the volume, hoping to get its message across before it is drowned out by the massive Windows 2000 launch campaign the third week of February.
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Last month, Novell took a bold step - it launched a Web site to dispel the "blatant untruths" about NetWare that Microsoft published on its Direct Access Web site.
Novell is also crowing about a few recent moves. Novell partnered with Deloitte Touche and Perot Systems to develop products based NDS, and it has allied with 3Com and Lucent over NDS. Novell also announced a partnership with Compaq to help their mutual customers extend their networks for Internet e-business applications. Finally the company has recently announced a variety of e-commerce, messaging and network management products.
Novell is getting vocal at a time when other vendors have the same issues on their minds - get in one last punch and tell one more tale before the Microsoft marketing machine rolls over everything on February 17, the date of Windows 2000's release.
Novell's recent measures are just the start of the marketing campaign users and partners have wanted to see for some time. Novell devotees want the company to do bold, in-your-face, direct comparison marketing.
"What users say is partially true. In the past we have not responded at the same level [to Microsoft criticisms,]" says Dave Eckert, manager of competitive analysis for Novell. "With our new marketing organization in place, we have the permission of our executives to go ahead and be more aggressive, where we didn't have that directive before."
Some users are even suggesting that Novell take a page from Microsoft's playbook - talk to the top corporate executives, you've already got the techies sold. They say its long past due for Novell to cloak its technical prowess in a pin-stripe suit and visit the CEOs and boardrooms of Corporate America.
"You don't tell CEOs how seldom a NetWare server goes down or how often Microsoft Windows blue screens, you tell them about how much money they are losing when that happens," says James D. Cimino, president of consultancy Bright Ideas in Edison, N.J.
"Novell has to get out of the lab and back to the boardroom," Cimino says. And it needs Eric Schmidt to fill that role. "[Schmidt] has to take those technical details and turn them into dollars."
"We have had some people in the organization, but not everyone working together to do that," Eckert says. "We're not there yet, though it's the direction we're working toward."
Right now, observers say, Microsoft NT owns the hearts, if not the minds, of CEOs. "Like IBM and Cisco, no one ever got fired for buying Microsoft," says Ward Cook, DP programming lead at the University of Maryland in College Park.
"There are technology companies and marketing companies," says Dan Posner, CEO of Tech Management Solutions in Boca Raton, Fla. "Microsoft is a marketing company. They can tell you to go to hell and make you run home to pack your bags."
If Novell is seen as a technology company, can it spawn a successful marketing campaign that will compete with the likes of Microsoft's billions? Can Schmidt rival Bill Gates in convincing CEOs that NDS will be around in five years?
"We've bemoaned the fact that Novell has been strong at marketing to technologists, but weak in marketing to the top management," says Dirk Smith, CEO and president of NetWare developer Alexander LAN, in Nashua, N.H.
"Microsoft has proven that you can overpower the conclusions of network administrators by selling to the CEO," Smith says.
At its Global Partner Summit in Phoenix three weeks ago, a panel of Novell executives appeared unsure about their strategy and queried the audience of developers on the approach Novell's marketing should take.
"Novell did not explain to us that they had a good way of going after that CEO mindset," Smith says. By its actions alone though, Smith says that Novell has been making some of the right moves recently.
"Novell has been reviewing its value proposition and key messages," Eckert says. "In the past, where we have spoken in very technical terms, we are working to express these values in business and economic terms." For instance, Novell delayed the December 1999 launch of its e-commerce business-to-business products until it could redefine those products and re-aim them at CEOs, Eckert says.
The company also has scheduled a roadshow with IBM and Lucent, dubbed its eOpportunity Tour that will show IT executives how to integrate directory technology and build secure e-business platforms.
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