* Messman is toppled
What goes around comes around. Hoist on his own petard. As you sow so shall you reap. He who lives by the sword shall die by the sword. Choose your favorite cliché. In any event, what it means is that Jack Messman left Novell’s CEO position the same way his predecessor did: the board summarily fired him.
Messman didn’t even get to linger the way Eric Schmidt did when he was first relieved of his COO position and then that of chairman before finally being ousted as CEO. No, Messman was unceremoniously dumped of all positions in one fell swoop – and took CFO Joe Tibbetts down with him. Evidently the company’s recent quarterly financial returns or, rather, Wall Street’s reaction to them (see “The good news about Novell’s financials”) was the final straw for Novell’s board which finally delivered Messman’s head to investors who had been calling for his ouster since last fall (see “Investor and financial analyst urge Novell to sell off units”).
The move to replace Messman was long overdue. He never did, it seems, buy completely into the open source/Linux business, even (some said) driving all of the best known Linux and open source people out of the company (Chris Stone, Richard Seibt – even Eric Schmidt was more accepting of open source than Messman was). He was uncomfortable speaking to the press, which did nothing to improve the perception of the company among potential investors or customers, and avoided them whenever he could.
A company CEO’s personality (think Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, Scott McNealy, Larry Ellison, Eric Schmidt) and access are very important in getting the company’s message out to potential customers, and Messman was neither accessible nor personable.
But Messman had one quality that none of the current management has – he was the last one who had been involved with the company during NetWare’s glory days.
As a member of the board 20-plus years ago, he was instrumental in bringing Ray Noorda in as CEO and starting the company’s run as leader in the networking field. Messman’s successor as CEO, Ron Hovsepian, was still a young executive-in-training with IBM (in hardware distribution!) when Noorda was making Novell king-of-the-hill in networking.
If possible, the company’s future seems even more uncertain today than it did just a couple of weeks ago. Next issue we’ll try to peer into the crystal ball and see what that future might bring.
