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Among the many people currently or previously at Novell whom I’ve admired and respected over the years is Mike Lyons. It was just a year ago that Lyons, Novell's vice president of Global Support and Services, and his organization won certification under the Support Center Practices (SCP) Certification program, still the only Linux vendor to do so. This month Lyons got a new boss.
Novell recently named Colleen O'Keefe to the new position of senior vice president of services. According to the announcement, “O'Keefe brings deep expertise that will help ensure Novell customers receive world-class services to optimize the value of their Novell investments.” Now, if there’s one area where Novell continued to be “world-class” even as it was sinking in marketing, sales and – yes – even technical expertise, it’s the support organization.
One reason why the great folks in support have such longevity (Lyons has more experience at Novell than, I believe, all the other vice presidents put together) is that even when the company was being run by knuckleheads, they recognized the very great value that the excellent support provided to the company. Even when marketing and sales let down the existing customer base, support was there to ensure that NetWare (and ZENworks and GroupWise and all the other products) kept running, and running well.
My advice to O’Keefe is this: Just let Lyons and his folks continue to do what they’ve been doing, providing world-class services. The best use of your time will be ensuring that they get the funding necessary to keep offering the best service in the industry.
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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