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BrainShare 2003 afforded me the rare opportunity for several one-on-one conversations with members of Novell's senior management team. For the most part, they voiced a unified vision—a solid commitment to a standards-based and network-services—oriented architecture. Novell calls this one Net. Two years ago, in my BrainShare coverage, I wondered aloud whether Novell could achieve this ideal. At this year's BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City, I learned that the company has restructured and is well on the way towards making one Net a reality. Now that Novell believes it internally, we'll see if the IT market buys it. What follows are excerpts from conversations with several key members of Novell's senior management team.

Jack Messman, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

MDS: What is it like to be at the helm of a company going through massive change?

JM: The first thing I can say is that this is a 7/24 job. I was here at the beginning, so I feel that I'm uniquely qualified to guide us through this change. Most of our efforts are centered around figuring out new strategies; assimilating people and different corporate cultures into our new strategies. We're actively changing our product and consulting cultures. It is key to make sure people appreciate one another and how they can contribute to the organization as a whole.

MDS: What role do you play in bringing Novell through this period of change?

JM: I'm not trying to figure out the future products, I'm trying to manage the transitions, and this is the toughest part—trying to avoid the valley of despair where everyone is abandoning the current product line while waiting for the new thing. Novell has announced new products and services, and is hoping to attract new customers. We're very serious about embracing Linux and open source. This takes pressure off clients who were worried they were trapped. Customers don't have to make a choice anymore.

MDS: Prior to joining PC Magazine I was an IT Director, and I would never purchase a solution that required vendor lock-in. Some vendors are doing everything they can to disparage open-source solutions, especially Linux, and I think Novell is on the right track here.

JM: When [customers] can have NetWare services on NetWare or NetWare services on Linux, then they are likely to stay on NetWare because they know they can leave. We give customers breathing room and comfort because Linux is not mature and Novell can bring 20 years of experience to Linux. And we fully intend to support NetWare services on Linux. Our customers want support for Linux and we're giving it to them.

MDS: During your keynote, you spoke a lot about listening to your customers. What have you learned from them?

JM: We're listening to [customers] and they tell us that we're heading in the right direction. We're Linux-enabling GroupWise with server and client software. We now have a Mac client for GroupWise, and cross-platform support for ZENworks, also. We're giving our customers more choice than our competitors are. We've got great technology and we're allowing them to use it. Novell is not dropping NetWare. We have NetWare, GroupWise, and ZENworks figured out. Now we're adding exteNd, secure identity management (the combination of which will provide a solution not [just a single product or group of products] that allows companies to work better together) and we also bring our consulting services, which will bounce back….We can provide consulting services that our customers need, with a focus on Web services and migration to Linux.

MDS: You mentioned consulting services bouncing back. What are your hopes for Novell, given the difficult economy and how it affects IT purchasing?

JM: We have the right strategies, and now we need to execute well, and hopefully the market will pick up and help us out a little. Linux is an option for our customers, not mandatory. We are working to verticalize our solutions and are targeting state and local government, education, healthcare, telecommunications, and financial services. We can provide these industries with specialized solutions and then leverage our consulting expertise.

MDS: And what about the future of networking?

JM: I believe that we're on the verge of growth of the Internet, and we don't really know yet how the Internet will fundamentally change the way business works. The beginning of the change was the wild speculation in dotcoms, but many people lost sight of the benefits of technology and were using technology purely for the sake of doing something new. Web services will lower the cost of integration and provide new ways for companies to work together and discover the true value of the Internet.

Alan F. Nugent, Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer

MDS: What makes Novell special?

AN: For 10 years prior to joining Novell, I ran NetWare, and when you flip the switch on, the thing ran and didn't go down. Those servers were something that you could count on. As our business grew, so did the services that Novell could provide and they stood by those services. Now I'm on the inside, and I see that we're trying to continue that legacy of reliability, scalability, availability, and security. I also see a passion about knowing how to do things right and doing them as dictated by our customers. Novell needs to listen to customers; our strategic technology investments are customer- and market-driven. Technology is commoditizing, and they won't invest in that purely for the sake of buying the newest technology—they'll invest in the services that help their employees, partners, and customers do their jobs.

MDS: How is Novell embracing standards-based computing and open source?

AN: We make sure that we have the right sets of standards-based interfaces around our products so we can attract third-party developers to create products that work with ours. There are some great open-source solutions available that people use every day, like Perl, PHP, Python, MySQL, Apache, and Tomcat. Our goal is to embrace the technologies that the customers are using and support them. We are working more closely with the open-source community and introducing new technologies to help drive that community forward and facilitate developer collaboration. This is evidenced with our source code site, http://forge.novell.com.

MDS: When I talk to IT managers, I hear that a primary concern about implementing open-source solutions is support. No business wants to have to rely on a loosely knit community for support. How will Novell address support for open-source components?

AN: When a customer buys one of our products we support it. If the crisis is a service running on Linux, then we'll support customers on Linux. We have not yet selected a distribution, and when we do, the partner will have to be integrated into our support structure. When a customer buys NetWare 6.5 and they have a Perl script that crashes, then they can call Novell and we'll help them as far as their problem relates to our products.

MDS: I've noticed over the years that many of Novell's products grow out of your own internal needs. Would you like to comment on that?

AN: Novell's internal needs do drive new product development as our IT department sees opportunities and needs. We have a solid IT department that really understands what it takes to support Novell's business needs and their insight is essential. Our engineers want to do cool stuff and we need to direct their efforts based on customer and market needs.

Carl Ledbetter, Senior Vice President, Engineering and Research and Development

MDS: What does the future hold for Novell?

CL: Novell eDirectory already runs on Linux and has more objects in use than all other directory vendors combined. More than 80 percent of new seats not on NetWare are being used to synchronize to other application directories. iFolder is getting traction on Linux and so is NetMail. Many customers like the stability, robustness, and reliability of the OS [NetWare] and the collection of very powerful network services like file, print, identity management, messaging, Web services, resource management, and software distribution. Many other customers like the services and want to use them to meet business needs and don't care a whit about the OS that they run on top of. Novell will keep the stability of the NetWare kernel and expose the feature set to Linux to prevent vendor lock-in. Many customers don't want to be locked-in to any vendor and now Novell can target them.