Computers Today, October 16-31, 1998 Chief Guest

October 16-31, 1998 CHIEF GUEST

"I'd like to spend the rest of my life to get the entire world networked"

One-and-a-half year after CEO Eric Schmidt took office, Novell is no longer the moribund networking giant with slipping sales and the subject of takeover rumours. During his visit to India last week, in a long chat with Computers Today's Editor J.S. Raju and Associate Editor Atanu Roy, the former Sun Microsystems technology chief anaylsed the state of the networking mart. Excerpts:

What are the industry's current driving forces?

Everyone has organised around the Internet. People ask what is the fastest growing thing in the Internet. I think it is instant messaging. It's fascinating, because it's people-to-people. The real killer application is communication between person and person. This is not a new story, of course. In order to do that communication possible, in Novellspeech, you need a directory, you need a way to find people. So, we are positioning our directory as a backbone, for communicating on the Net.

In a way, it is seen that the Internet, more than Microsoft, has hit Novell.

Novell was late to wake up to the Internet phenomenon. I often wonder how could this happen, because Novell has great technology. It's possibly because this company got distracted, just focussed on WordPerfect and so on. However, it is only Internet technologies that I now talk about.

So NetWare 5.0 is more of a catching up?

It was a catch-up. But it also stands on its own merit. If you look at the number of clients it can handle, besides the files, and the performance, its support for high-level Internet protocols, we don't have a competitor.

But Netware 5.0 is just the starting point of a broader strategy. As companies and institutes crave for directories, we intend to be the primary vendor of them. Those directories will run well only on NetWare, but on Windows NT and Unix as well. With these extremely large, scalable, very fast directories, you can solve all management, security and auditing problems too.

How is it then different from CA's Unicenter, IBM's Tivoli or HP's OpenView?

It's a different architecture. Unicenter and Tivoli solutions are very complicated, powerful network management solutions, but they do not have an open directory component. That's why they use a proprietary one. We hope they use ours. More than just management, our directory can also be used, for example, for authentication, identification, and electronic commerce. It's a different concept. We might be ahead of the market. I would always want to be ahead of the market, than behind.

Everyone puts it as NT vs Netware. Do you think they can go hand in hand?

It's the press which created this confusion. We added fuel too. But our customers use NT where it's right, and they use NetWare where it's right. So it's not 'or', but 'and'. NT as server for certain kind of applications, Netware server for file, print, directory, database and some specialised applications. There are many customers for whom NetWare platform alone is the right answer, but there are also others for whom there should be a combination of Netware and NT.

How do you see the Internet and the Web evolving in the next few years?

The hottest problem now is what I call tragedy of success. We have so many people on the Internet that we don't know who they are, we can't find anything, we don't have any security, and it's growing faster than anything. What Novell would like to do is to be the company that fixes those problems, without slowing down good things.

For instance, today applications store cookies, which are digital signatures on the PC. I can never remember which PC I was using when. So if I use a different PC, I have to reauthenticate myself. Why can't the cookie travel with me? I have a directory, which keeps all the information, I go over there and it says, it's an error!

Something like 20 percent of the world's data is stored on NetWare servers. It's a very large number. That data is trapped right now, in the sense it is not available on public Internet. We would like to give the option to every Novell customer to make that information available. That's what the secret of NetWare 5 is all about. One day people may discover the information they didn't have before, they may be able to talk to customers they way they could never do.

A year ago you said that the push technology will be the next hit. It didn't happen. Which is the 'inversion' you talk of now?

Remember why did I tell that. Browser was me looking for everything, and push was everything coming to me. But push didn't work either. The next inversion is based on profiles: what do I want, what are my preferences. Amazon.Com is a good example, because at Amazon, by giving your name and your number, etc. you create a profile about who you are and what you want.

What is the role of portal services there?

Portals exist when there are many destinations. You need a portal to provide order. It's unclear to me how portals will evolve, whether they become the central destination or they become part of another destinations. In one case you go 'to' it, in another 'through' it. One year from now, the portals will be different again.

Here is an easy way of asking the question. On the Web, it's possible to have a single store, like the big store called K-Mart in the US, where you can buy everything in the world. Or you can have a large number of specialised stores, which you call shopping centres. We don't know what will come up. Nobody knows. But Novell will be too happy to sell interactive platforms to both camps.

What is your opinion about the Network Computing architecture?

There are lots of truth to the Network Computer architecture. The architecture is server-based and has mobility. But the problem with that architecture is that the initial ones did not deal with the fact that most customers have a large number of Windows PCs. Customers like to mix and match. The idea was good, but it was too pure.

Did the progress you had in the last one-and-a-half year match with the targets you fixed when you joined Novell?

Last year, my strategy was: Get the company to the Net. We achieved that faster than I thought. The company is growing, it's profitable, customers are happy, morale is good. We met our objective, though not in the same way as I expected.

What did you expect?

I actually thought that the customers would be more sensitive to the scalability, and performance of platforms. In my experience, customers are more concerned with the solution. So in the last one year I learnt more about solution marketing, talking about the benefits to the customers. Today, I talk about the network being cheaper, easy-to-use, easy-to-manage. Customers love that. That's why the NT and Netware positioning is so important. If I say, NetWare and not NT, the customer will say, I don't understand his problem. I didn't know much about these as a CTO in Sun.

As far as the convergence of media goes, how do you see the progress?

I think there is a convergence of interoperability, in the sense that in the Digital Age everything is bits. I do not believe that the computer would be replaced by TV, nor the TV by a computer. But I do believe there would be better interoperability. In America, PC shipment last year was higher than TV shipment. PCs will continue to grow faster.

What about the consolidation in business?

Networks tend to favour consolidation. As organisations turn big, they consolidate. It's cheaper to merge which is why you get large monopolies. In the next five to ten years, there will be only a few very large network software companies.

What can we expect to be the next value proposition from Novell?

It's the directory service. And it brings in one application after another. But I don't think we are going to change and buy WordPerfect. We did that. We would be very, very focussed this time.

You once said, "Network is the network". What did you mean by it?

Everybody focusses on the computer, as opposed to the network. But as we think of a computer that's not networked, we feel the computer is lonely. By itself it is not useful anymore; he can't buy anything, he can't find anything, and he can't answer any instant question. So the mission should be to network all the computers in the world, with a modern, proper, secure network. I think that's a good goal. I would like to spend the rest of my life to get the entire world networked together.

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