Views from Around the World

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.

Many times I hear from customers about the need for more formal archive solutions for GroupWise.  There is an archive service, but it’s not sufficiently rich for central management and policy.  This isn’t my opinion, it’s what our customers have concluded.  

Fortunately, GroupWise is extensible by developer and more fortunately we have more than one partner who build archive solutions for GroupWise. Too often though, I find that customers are not aware that solutions exist until I’m invited to have a conversation about why there is a plan to replace GroupWise with something else.  

I’m not going to advocate one solution over another, it’s important to be fair to our partners. That said, a wonderful leverage point to facilitate GroupWise continuity and indeed growth is to engage our development partners.  I had the great opportunity this past week to meet with two partners in Montreal, GWAVA Corporation and the Messaging Architects.  Both have very comprehensive solutions that dramatically extend the usability of GroupWise and both sell innovative solutions for archive.  I know we have other partners, I refer to these two because I happened to be in town and they agreed to have a chat.So think about this.  

Compliance regulations are driving our customers to make business level commitments that are decided not in Information Technology but at the Executive Level.  A conversation with senior customer leaders will reveal the depth of the compliance requirements that they face and be absolutely certain that the management of archive information is high on the list.  Rather than say we don’t do this, I invite you to consider engaging our partners.  Their business succeeds when GroupWise succeeds.  We really are in this together and following the presentations I have seen, I have confidence that some of these partners have the highly specialized knowledge and skillsets to address these compliance requirements effectively and rapidly.  

We don’t need to build these solutions ourselves, they already exist.  

We are a partner oriented company, so consider extending your thought processes to include our Independent Software Vendor partners in addition to our CSI, SI and Professional Services oriented partners. What I’ve seen has impressed me very much.  If your customers use GroupWise, you own it to them and to yourself to learn a bit about the software solutions our partners build.  They will work with you, because our success is mutual.  I know I’ll be spending more time learning what extensive solutions can help our customers see the value of retaining and growing Novell solutions in their businesses.

Thanks as always for reading.

Ross 

Every year at this time we think about what we’ll do differently in the new year. The challenge is that so often our resolutions are revolutionary in nature. We plan to do things completely differently from the way we’ve done them before. And for the most part we fall back on doing what we’ve always done. I have an alternate proposal. Make some evolutionary commitments. As a company we are aggressively moving to our partner led model. Our customers are not familiar with this model since what they’ve seen to a great extent has been direct Novell involvement in each transaction. We fail our partners and our customers if we don’t shift that process.I’ve been spending a lot of time with partners recently with great thanks to the Partner Execs where I am. Our partners are enthused by the partner-led model and skeptical that we will walk the talk. That’s a fair concern. But by embracing and driving the change we will achieve two goals.

One, we will make Novell stronger and more resilient in the marketplace and, two, we will create confidence in the partner channel that we will support them as they sell our offerings. We make amazing software and wrap it with comprehensive and rich services. The real economics prevent us from being direct in every case and if we step back we see that other software companies are very successful with a partner oriented model. We can be too.

And so to my point about evolution. I am challenging all of us to evolve one thing. To make an effort every day to over-communicate to customers and partners about our partner strategy and ensure that they understand the what and why of what we do. Some customers will not initially like the change, so it’s on us to create a sense of value with it. I’ve encountered customers who have said that they believe that Novell has decided that they aren’t important and then when we engage aggressively through our partners they see that evolution doesn’t have to hurt.

I admit to a bias. I think we have an awesome company with great people and industry leading products and services. Those great people come from employees and partners. Together we can change our market perception and market value.

Until next time, Ross