I know I’ve said it before, but it never ceases to amaze me which topics and issues draw lots of reader comment and which don’t. Last week’s newsletter about Novell’s financial problems, is one example. I expected people to say something about the stock options investigation that Novell is conducting, or perhaps about the ties between and among Novell, HP, Compaq and Larry Sonsini. But no one said a word about that. Instead, there was an outpouring of comment about Novell’s sales efforts - a topic I thought was a tad dry, but worth mentioning in light of what former Novell exec Matt Asay had said about there needing to be a different way to “sell” open source.
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A number of people wrote to me for the first time to talk about how effective they thought the Novell sales teams were. One systems integrator, Michael K. Grady, chairman of Gracon Services, said that the sales people “…are focused on solutions, not ‘red box’, not ‘open box’ not ‘anti-Microsoft’ box. They will engage actively in ‘proof-of-concept’ implementations of their solutions at a prospect site. They are not espousing ‘open’ or proprietary anything. For a change they are saying to the resellers channel ‘this is how our solution works, do you have any customers that might be interested in this?’ Very refreshing indeed! We haven't had this much interest in solutions from Novell in a long time.”
And the security officer for a government unit in Texas wrote: “The local Novell team's approach with us has been, ‘Hey, this stuff runs on Windows and Linux, you choose - we'll support you either way.’ Of course, they follow up with the fundamental differences between Linux and Windows, but not in the religious war of the ‘anyone but Microsoft’ crowd who seem to be the most vocal about Linux. We have found they spend more time speaking about the features/benefits that they bring to the table rather than on the ‘why open source?’ message. Their approach seems to be working as our Ops and Infrastructure Director and our CTO are listening and considering moving forward with Linux for application hosting over Windows and AIX.”
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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