Novell News

First a bit of a sales pitch:  Danita's released a guide for GroupWise on iPhones.  Go check it out at calendonia.net.  She loves GroupWise and she loves her iPhone so I'm sure this new guide will be as useful to iPhone users as her GroupWise upgrade guides are to GroupWise Admins.  Well worth shelling out the bucks!

Okay, so now the interesting Novell news.  There's a bid to buy out Novell.  Check out the article at: http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-10462638-260.html.

It seems at this point the majority of us talkative Novell customers/partners are concerned about the merger.  We're not necessarily assuming this is a positive move.

Although, when I think about it, perhaps this will be good.  That is if the purchasing group will actually LISTEN to the customer base about issues such as buggy code and bad tech support.

Back in the 1990's more than once I said that if Novell were to put out a Linux distro and couple it with their world class support Corporate America would be more likely to consider it as a serious contender in their computer centers.  Of course back then Novell still had regional support.  Meaning, we had support centers in each large regional area that spoke our native languages and understood our cultures.  Really, Canada and the US are pretty much kissin' cousins so one center in Utah would be just fine to support both countries, but a big place like Brazil may need it's own center.  And it was easier to get past the first line support when calling in for a bug fix than it is now.

And off she goes into another rant about India support....kind of.  Having support in India for India-based customers makes sense.  They understand their culture, speaking patterns, and language.  But India support for a female US-based customer is insufficient at best.  I end up in "Certifications pissing contests" with men who weren't even considered yet when I started in the industry (okay, so I'm old and crotchety but I have a point).  Colleen O'Keefe seems to think it is all an issue of accents  And that's SO not it!  I understand them just fine, no linguistics class will solve the major problem.  There's a huge difference in culture - women in India are still second class citizens and no manner of US "re-training" is going to change that attitude any time soon.  (Heck I still struggle with it here in the US MidWest!)  Front-line support in India is also afraid to go off-script or escalate calls and that's a cultural thing as well.  Free-thinking and risk-taking is not something most folks there are comfortable with given their unemployment rates.

My point is, if the bidding company does due diligence and talks to Novell's long time customers and actually listens, Novell may have a chance at one last resurgence.  But there's been so much damage already - and this is coming from a Bleeding Red "N" fanatic - most customers are going to very cynical of any new promises.

So, my suggestion to Elliott Investments is this: put back the WorldWide support the way it was in the late 80's/ early 90's when it was truly world class support.  Make it easier for partners to open calls and have access to back-line engineers and developers when reporting a bug.  It's a sad day when it is easier and cheaper to get an SR open and resolved with Microsoft than it is Novell.  Talk to the partners left in the channel (there aren't that many) and really listen to their needs.  Then follow through.  And finally - bring back the innovative coding to the US/UK/EU programmers who can think outside of the box and have proven time and again they can deliver solid, reliable code.  India is best used for commodity coding, not new products.  It can be done, and it can be done in a cost effective way if you get creative about it.  Reverse the off-shore trend and instead invest in a quality product and you may win back customers who left.  May, being the key "gotcha" word.

All-in-all, I'm on the fence about the deal if it goes through.  And for my environment, it looks like it's time to take a closer look about the pros and cons to move from Novell to Microsoft.  Which is a very sad day for me, but not a first in a long career that's had me in the programing chair, training chair, engineer chair, consultant, and "All things IT" chair.