Views from Around the World

I was recently in Ottawa, the capital of Canada, to meet with customers and partners.  A particular meeting called out the power of leveraging our install base.  One of our partners has been working closely with a department of the federal government to maximize the return on their existing investment in Novell products.  They leveraged features such as Virtual Office, the Identity Manager Starter Pack, and ZENworks Dynamic Local user; seemingly trivial features that they had previously overlooked in our products, to build what they called the PSS project or Password Self-Service.  

Here’s what was particularly cool about this customer success.   

Implementing anything “new” requires massive amounts of paperwork and bureaucratic approval.  This department was dealing with over 20,000 password resets every year.  Like many of our customers, they are entitled to OES but haven’t gotten there yet (although that is currently underway), they still use the NetWare kernel and the Novell client.  The reason?  They work great every day.  The architects leveraged the Virtual Office components and the Identity Manager Starter Pack to build a simple customer oriented password self-service app that required no major retraining, no additional licensing and nothing “new”.  The impact they say is enormous.  Over 15,000 users who use Novell file and print services every day now have a very simple means to manage their own passwords for their NetWare and eDirectory account, for Microsoft Exchange and for the local Windows workstation.   

That may not sound like a lot, but here’s the kicker.  The project is a complete success.  The department involved is showing it around the government and there is talk about having this Password Self-Service solution become a government-wide shared service.  That could be upwards of 300,000 users across multiple departments, and since not all departments are OES licensees, there is massive upside opportunity for Identity Manager.  They also are now also looking for ways to connect to a variety of additional back-end systems, all of which we can talk to through our connector technology. 

Want to know what’s really exciting?  The Senior Director told me that he is accountable for the shared service for file and print.  This project has been so successful and so light in its demands, he wants to have a further conversation about how his department could offer file and print services as a shared service to the rest of the government departments.  Shared services is a mandated approach.  Guess which file and print solution he now favours?  Guess how easy it could be to enable NOWS or potentially NOWS with Teaming across the government with their buy-in?  We’re early in that process for certain, but the team from Novell and our partner, along with the sponsors in government are taking the next steps in that investigation. 

We would not be here at all except for the IDM Starter Pack being part of the OES entitlement, a simple to deploy password manager in the client, innovation in our offerings, and the trust earned through reliability and scale of Novell’s offerings in this initial department. 

Until next time, peace.

I like to think that all of us at Novell are champions for both open source and open standards.  We advocate open source not only in our commercial and community Linux distributions but also in initiatives such as Bandit.  Open Standards is not so clear however.  We all get the Standards part, or we think we do.  In our minds for the most part Standards implies a set of rules, protocols and related interfaces that are agreed to by some communal body and supported by interested parties by consensus.  An open standard can be understood to mean that the source that defines the standard and even the code that implements the standard is freely available, although the concept of some reasonable royalty is not excluded.

Last week, I spent some time with some people from publisher IDG.  They had recently completed a study of the top things in the mind of the CIO and had offered to share their findings.  The conversation was fascinating to me and exposed a number of missed expectations, on my part at least.

I had believed that the word “open” is a good word when speaking with senior IT executives.  I was told very clearly that it has turned into a “weasel-word” through misuse and misunderstanding.  A large proportion of those surveyed had told the researcher that when they hear “open” the filter gates come slamming down shut.  Some of these reactions were attributed to “open source” being a war-phrase to some of these people.  It’s interesting to hear and incredibly disappointing that an excellent premise has been turned into a political phrase.  

What was more surprising and more disappointing was to learn that the phrase “open standards” is viewed as a buzzword of dubious meaning.

At Novell we’ve looked at and adopted standards very well I think.  We have, in my opinion, the greatest LDAP directory on the planet in eDirectory, we use XML aggressively, our access tools actively embrace SSLVPN, we include a PKI certificate engine in OES 2 amongst other places.  We support standards such as JSR168 in our T+C application, we support MIME and S/MIME in GroupWise.  Overall I think Novell has a great standards based story.

What we learn from the study is that we will again have to change our messaging slightly because those we desire to hear us have had their filters altered by noise from other parties.  Parties who perhaps want customers to believe “standard” means “shipped lots of boxes”.  

So you may choose to think about these ideas when you want to share your enthusiasm and our commitment to open source.  Where open source is seen as political, Linux is seen as alternative.  Where open standards based directory sounds like foo foo dust, LDAP sounds like a necessity.  As always, it’s up to you.

Until next time, peace.

I’ve run into an interesting perspective in some customer conversations lately and wanted to share it with you.  I think that we as citizens of Planet Novell understand that there are two Linuxes in our world, SLE and openSUSE.

When we talk to customers and partners we assume that when we talk about SUSE Linux Enterprise that the listeners know what we mean.  After all, we understand the differences.  Well maybe our audiences don’t understand.  I’ve run into a number of situations in the last month when on calls with partners where we talk about the freedom of choice that Linux and the Open Source stack can bring where the customer’s brow furrows a bit.  Yesterday, a Director at a school board became quite incensed when we spoke about Linux and Open Source.  He said to us “I have Ubuntu on a laptop and it’s nice enough to fool around with, but I get a dump of updates every week and there’s a new version all the time.  There’s no way I would risk my business on Linux and Open Source.”  He was quite heated about the whole issue (and the air conditioning was broken in their office).  When we had an opportunity to take a deep breath together, he was surprised that I agreed with him.  Here was a very intelligent fellow with the capability to install and operate a Linux system who had no idea at all that the enterprise Linux we talk about is different from the Linux he sees in bookstores and on the covers of magazines.

Hence, I think we owe it to ourselves to ask the question whether the listener understands the difference between our amazing community project openSUSE and the best in class SUSE Linux Enterprise.  My own data tells me that the answer is “no” a lot more than we might think.

So in the spirit of the challenges I continue to post, I challenge each of you when speaking with a customer or partner about Linux and Open Source for the first time, to ask the question of understanding.  It’s a key element of differentiation for us and demonstrates that we are committed to the growth of Linux and Open Source as a global ecosystem and to the refinement of them to deliver the goods in a data center environment whose hallmarks are stability, reliability and not managing daily code changes.

Until next time, peace.

The most reliable software in the world is software that is never used. Once we install software, of any kind, we introduce an element of randomness to the flow. Most of the time, the random elements together add up to nothing significant. Sometimes they add up to something significant. Another piece of software installed on the same machine, or interacting across a network, or an untested use case, or a use case outside of tested scope; all can bring about the dreaded bug, the flaw or the failure.

As a software company we build and deliver amazing solutions. But as long as people touch it, there is a chance that the user will find something wrong, or something that doesn’t perform to some specification.

The differentiation for corporate customers is what comes next. Why is openSuSE not well suited for corporate use? It’s built by great people, with the purest of intent, and they will want to make things better. The problem is that corporate needs something more.

The “more” for us is Novell Technical Services. Without NTS our ability to walk the complete path is incomplete. Once we’ve sold something, who takes accountability for that next step? That’s NTS. In the original days, you could call Novell and actually speak to the talented engineer who wrote the code. In today’s world that won’t work. Demand for service has only increased, while time to deliver has only decreased. We have to change the model. We used to sell support based on incidents. In our world today, we are faced with industry created expectations that a customer can ask as many questions as they wish. To deliver on that expectation we’ve gone to web based support for everything except Sev 1 calls for contracted customers. For non-customers the process is still web based and is run by committed volunteers. This isn’t new. I remember the old days of NetWire on CompuServe and it looks a lot like the forum model of today.

Some folks have been critical of the change away from an incident based model. I’m proposing that we all need to embrace the change and celebrate it. By making incidents unlimited via the web, we push the bar past our large competitors and demonstrate how to do web support well for smaller software providers. By allowing customers and partners to not have to “allocate” incidents, they will now ask more questions. This means more rapid deployment, less shelfware and confidence that implementing the newest thing isn’t going to decrement “expensive limited incidents”. Our opportunity is to communicate this aggressively. We all know that the easiest way to lose adoption is to have a customer using outmoded and potentially unsupported code. I bet the decision to move to the web support model was a tough one, and that it was not popular everywhere. That said, I fundamentally believe it is game changing for our future because it removes significant barriers to implementation. Manuals and training go so far, but when that random event, the butterfly effect, occurs, we want to maximize the ability to get answers without the high costs and simplex model of telephone only support. Since Dave Cutler took the time to explain the rationale to me, I’ve been delivering this message to our customers. Here’s the reality. They get it, and thus far, I’ve received zero negative feedback.

There is one more thing we can all do. Encourage our customers and partners to look at the Forums. Back in the day, we learned as much from each other as we did from the Novell experts who helped out on NetWire. It’s an opportunity to create the next generation of the world’s most powerful software support infrastructure, the community.

Until next time, peace.

In the spirit of open disclosure, I have a bias. When I look across our BUs and at the other players in our industry, and listen to customers, I think we build top line software in each of our customer buying center areas. I’ve said it before, we make amazing solutions for our customers and partners to create value with.

Because I am a member of the SRM BMT and PLT teams, and with the Workgroup PLT to a lesser extent, I have the joy to converse with our engineering teams. I don’t claim to be an expert in engineering and its demands and I have to tell you it’s an incredible process. For those of us who are out in the field, talking to customers, partners and prospects, we hear demands for new services, for enhancements, and yes, to address gaps on a pretty regular basis. What we don’t know may cause us to have misunderstandings of the work that goes on in our development model. First the IPD process brought into play by Dr. Jaffe and his team has brought a consistency and powerful framework that defines what we build and how we build it. Moreover in participating with these wonderful Novell teammates, I do get to see the level of detail that they go to in the development and testing perspective. The development models are rich and powerful. I particularly want to call out what I see from a testing perspective prior to release.

We all understand that no software project is ever “perfect” mostly because the definition moves around with the freneticism of a mouse on speed. I have to tell you that our internal teams go through a very serious testing process prior to release, and the level of commitment to quality is readily apparent. Quality is a key and ongoing customer metric. Like any software company, something from time to time is going to get past the shields, but I think the most important element is the attitude towards customer joy that I have the opportunity to see from the folks who work on our amazing products every day. These folks get it and are incredibly committed.

I want to close with a story shared with me by Client Executive Karine Lachapelle who was being challenged on the cost of ongoing maintenance by one of her customers. Here’s the gist of the conversation Karine shared.

The Director opened the discussion by telling me:

“The problem we find is that we understand that the maintenance we are paying is granting us access to tech support. The problem is that your products are never down so we don’t need to use the tech support. We have the feeling of paying for something we don’t use.”

I looked at him and said:

“So Denis, you would need to explain to me more clearly how the fact that our products are never down is a problem for you”… His face in response? Priceless!

So thanks to all the folks who do great work to help us be successful together, thanks to Karine for this real world story and let’s all remember the quality of the people at Novell who drive the quality of what we all bring to the marketplace.

Until next time, peace.

Ross

Over the last month, I’ve spent a lot of time with prospects, customers and partners talking about virtualization. This is no surprise because “The Big V” is so resonant now. What’s interesting is the scope of the conversations.

Here’s what I mean. I spoke on Virtualization in three different BrainShare sessions. While each approach came along a different vector, at some point there was consistency in the dialogue. Last week I spoke at IDC Canada’s Green IT Conference and I specifically discussed how virtualization could help organizations facilitate the Green Data Center. In the conversation the same consistency was reached.Many analysts have been saying that Virtualization is not the end, only a means, and could create new risk. I asked one of my best friends, the CTO for major broadcaster whether he believed that physical servers were easier or harder to manage than virtual ones. His comment was the same as every other answer I’ve received to my question. To a person the answer is that physical is easier to manage because the tools exist and worst case you can “see” the server. For virtualization to move to the next level, this view needs to be able to change.

So what’s my point? We are in a truly unique position in the marketplace. We have an amazing policy based VM management framework in ZENworks Orchestrator with VM Manager. What sets us clearly apart is the addition to the Novell family of the people and solutions from Platespin. In every conversation, at some juncture, the recognition came up that understanding the nature of the workloads over time was one of the most important elements in defining what should or could be virtualized. Platespin’s PowerRecon allows customers and partners to do this in the most elegant and effective manner I have seen. PowerRecon also allows organizations to monitor utilization and allocate expenses according to the customer’s business model. Once the workload life-cycle is understood, PowerConvert makes the transition of workloads from physical to virtual, virtual to virtual, physical to physical or even virtual to physical simple and automated. Together, the Orchestrator policy engine and intelligence coupled with the planning capability of PowerRecon and PowerConvert’s automation brings a solution set to the market that customers already recognize as needed and business critical.

I fundamentally believe that this next generation of virtualization is ours to lead. I hope you believe that too. Until next time.

Ross

Technically or socially? From a technical perspective not a lot of people. We already have file sharing, we already have whiteboarding, we already have instant messaging, we already have email. Socially however, the practice has huge impact.

In a study conducted at General Motors of Canada, the CIO learned that to hire new people into the company in “white collar” jobs, GM had to be able to offer software tools similar to those available in the public space. In fact to be able to hire good people who fit into that younger demographic a lot of different requirements became obvious. The new hires expected and demanded this style of application, along with flexible work hours, work from home, and modern and powerful IT tools. They didn’t want to be forced to work with green screen tools, generic Windows or older versions of popular apps.

This isn’t unique. I hear this very consistently from companies of all sizes. Interestingly we aren’t the only people seeing this. Over at BEA they are actually selling an app that they call Enterprise Facebook. Entry price is $100K. With Teaming + Conferencing we are in an ideal position to take a leadership position in this important growing market, in my opinion anyway.

I think this is true for a number of reasons. First, the demand already exists, so we don’t have the timelag associated with being too early or having to wait for the demand wave to reach useful proportions. Secondly, the pre-existing offerings haven’t gained the legs that the vendors would like. We all hear people talking about Sharepoint, but when you get into it, we discover that really it’s mostly used as a web skin to a file system. Third, and I think most relevant long term, the majority of the offerings in the public space don’t make client and server side requirements onerous. Let’s be open and honest here, Sharepoint does have wonderful function, so long as you are willing to lock in on Windows Server, Windows Desktop, Office Professional 2007, Outlook 2007, Sharepoint Server 2007, Live Communications Server and on and on and on. Many independent reviewers say Sharepoint is completely open so long as your definition of open is at minimum eleven proprietary servers per hosting site.

By bringing Sitescape into the Novell family, we strengthen our position on teaming and conferencing, and increase our leverage. T+C is mixed source, the hallmark of what we bring to the marketplace, that right balance of proprietary and open source that serves customers well. We have the opportunity space to take a leadership position. While T+C falls into the Workgroup Business, we should all remember that customers may not care about our internal structure and that by positioning ourselves as thought leaders in this space, ie “we’ve taken a thought leadership position in this space” - go ahead be bold, we win. We become what we say. Every organization we deal with, as well as those we don’t, are thinking about this type of service somehow. Their positions on the road vary. Our opportunity is to set a pinion for Novell as the freedom oriented choice that prevents vendor lock in and that is priced competitively.

Some of us have felt we are late to the game. I assure you we aren’t. I was working on a Brainshare presentation on Social Networking yesterday and on one slide use about twenty different social network logos to make the point that the market is exploding. My seventeen year old daughter looked over my shoulder and said only one thing. “Dad, you’ve missed a few”

Until next time.

Ross

I thank John Dragoon for his informative message on the study around the Novell brand.

I would only add one more thing….

We are all our own brand. In the faces of our customers and partners, we are all Novell

Be loud, be proud and carry our brand and banner high. That may sound trite in the face of all the soundbiting and creative clipping that occurs in the media, so do this test yourself next time you go shopping for anything. Listen and watch closely the face of the person you interact with, whether that person ran the cash in the checkout lane, was restocking shelves or standing on the floor or behind the counter in the store. Then when you are gone ask yourself three questions.

1. Did the person I spoke with appear happy to be at work?

2. Did the person I spoke with convey enthusiasm, positive belief or happiness to have me in the store?

3. As a result of my answers in the first two questions, do I feel any desire to go back to that store?

Attitude may not be everything, but we are all the face of Novell. The face we choose to show has real impact. We’re all adults and free to choose. I’m just proposing conscious choice.

Thank you my friends

Ross

Back in the days before there was a Novell, there was the IBM PC. Some rapidly aging folks believed then that this microcomputer idea had legs but only when PCs could work together similar to the way terminals did on the host. When Novell Netware arrived this idea started to walk. Back in those days, vendor representatives were thin on the ground. Up here in Canada, I was one of those first people to take NetWare to the customer. We had no fancy programs or really rich training, and no one protecting our margins. We took training at Drake, we sourced product from distributors who knew very little about the products with rare exception. We got our technical support from Novell and each other through NetWire on CompuServe. Customers acquired Novell product, services and execution from partners. Before there were CNEs and CNIs, there was NetWare Certification. We signed up because the offerings were rich and powerful and we could make money in this new marketplace. Novell really did write the book on partnering.

Enter today. We have a new Partner program that puts revenue and profit in the hands of our partners. We provide them support aligned with their specialization. We make training available. I think back to the days of 1983, because I WAS THERE, and how much success we had with such limited support, and I imagine what it would have been like had we had what we have today back then.

Novell invented partner led. I was a partner with an up and coming software company called Microsoft back then too. Great people, but the company at that time didn’t get the value of partners.

Today, every software company is talking about partners. All software companies are to an increasing extent focusing on partner led. The differentiator we have is that we do make amazing solutions that create value and we do so in areas that are not commoditized. Pundits talk about the commoditization of services like file and print and it makes pretty reading. Get in front of a customer and it’s still a key priority. I had a wonderful conversation while delivering the Novell Corporate Overview in a briefing this week on this very subject. Real customers do want simplicity, but simplicity is not a commodity.

In my youth, I was fortunate enough to receive some military training. One of the precepts I remember every day is that of force multiplication. We cannot be everywhere, nor in many cases, should we be. Why? Because our partners are already there, on the ground and ready to take our message forward. In that regard, it is like 1983. Great partners, close to customers, ready to go.

The very best thing we can do is help them be successful by talking them up, conveying the partner value message and by continuing to show everyone that we bring wonderful software to the market.

Getting off the soapbox. For now at least

Here’s a simple challenge for every Novell employee who speaks to customers and partners.

Look for the opportunity in your conversation to say “We make amazing software for you. Every business can benefit from at least one of the incredible solutions we build.”

Sound like hyperbole? Then check your premises. We do make amazing software and there is always at least one solution that a customer can benefit from.

The reason I challenge each Novell employee to start saying this in conversation is that your commitment and belief will come through. The other reason is that a lot of people don’t expect this kind of enthusiasm and aggressive positive messaging from Novell. It’s a game changer. Ask anyone who has had me lead a briefing, presentation or conversation. I do it all the time.

It works. Try it for yourself.