If union guys were scared that automation (robotics) would obviate them straight into unemployment, so should Google and the Wikipedia scare knowledge workers.
One of my team members brought me a RAID controller from a failed Dell server (go figure!), and indicated it needed a replacement. This was a sandbox system without warranty, and nobody wanted another PERC.
Not having fiddled with hardware in a while, I went to the Wikipedia to search for "PCI". I looked at PCI, PCIe, and PCI-X articles - all of which had photos. From them, I learned that PCI Express and PCI-X aren't the same thing, and that the card I had in my hands was PCI-X. This allowed me to spot the right replacement part in about 10 minutes, including a call to our preferred vendor.
I know plenty of hardware guys that I could have asked "What's this thing?", but they were busy - and I didn't need them.
Fair warning. If the "value" you're currently providing is largely due to things you know (which others don't), you may want to be ready for a new career or retirement in the next 5 - 10 years. I firmly believe that knowledge has been commoditized - moreso every day. All people will need to know, is how to find it. The value those people will need to add is the ability to take knowledge and do something meaningful with it (e.g. solve problems). That's not knowledge, that's talent - something that can't be commoditized.
At least I don't think so...(grin)
Thursday, June 15, 2006
Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Why the Cold Calls?
Some days and weeks are worse than others, with some predictability, but being the "decision maker" or "person in charge of IT" for an enterprise (according to the receptionist for the company's main telephone number) will earn you quite a few unsolicited phone calls.
Some are indecipherable. Some are bravado-laden, and some are frought with stammering and uncertainty. Some are from companies I'd heard of, but most are from nobody's. None of them are made with an intelligent human being on the other end.
I've established a heirarchy, detailing the rank of common sub-human life form career paths. It is as follows:
Some are indecipherable. Some are bravado-laden, and some are frought with stammering and uncertainty. Some are from companies I'd heard of, but most are from nobody's. None of them are made with an intelligent human being on the other end.
I've established a heirarchy, detailing the rank of common sub-human life form career paths. It is as follows:
- Multi-level Marketing Disciple
- New Copier Salesperson
- Used Copier Salesperson
- Copier technician
- New Car Salesperson (domestic models)
- Used Car Salesperson
- Door-to-door salesperson
- Cold-calling technology salesperson / technology recruiter
- Telemarketers
- Multi-level Marketing Leader (e.g. Amway's DeVoss & Van Andel, Arbonne's M0rck, etc)
In my opinion, this group sits just above convicted felons, and just below the guys who mop up the floors of adult theaters in New York City. As you can see, cold-calling telemarketers are nearly at the bottom of the list.
No offense.
Anyway, one of my great weaknesses is assuming that people are not in fact that ignorant. If I could get over this fundamental belief, I'm certain I could become a multi-billionaire. After all, it's the perception of customer ignorance that convinces vendors that calling people out of the blue and taking up their time to talk about stupid crap that they had better already have in hand on the off chance that they are in the market and would like to talk to you is actually a sound business development strategy.
The day I have to cold-call 'prospects' is the day you find me hanging by my tie from a water pipe above the drop ceiling.
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Savvy Investing
Just over five years ago, Novell acquired Cambridge Technology Partners for around $266 million.
Yesterday, they sold the renamed consulting branch - Celerant - for about $77 million.
Now, call me silly, but I thought the idea was to buy low and sell high.
Looks like Novell basically paid close to $40 million a year just to get rid of Eric Schmidt, and replace him with an even more misguided and incapable buffoon (aka Jack Messman). Good work if you can get it.
I've said it a million times - Novell has an absolutely wretched history of execution against a strategy...I continue to believe more and more firmly that this is due to Novell's complete misunderstanding of the corporate landscape. If you've no clue what the problems are and where the markets are, you're going to have a hard time developing a meaningful strategy.
Never one to complain without providing suggestions, here then are mine for Novell.
1) Sack Jack Messman.
2) Remind all of the new CxO's that there's NOTHING about which they can be complacent.
3) Start giving away professional services to get your products in the door, or reimburse the channel to do it for you.
4) Stop with the idiotic advertisements. Nobody understands what you're talking about. Don't print this garbage just for the sake of shutting people up who complain that you don't advertise.
What the hell does "Software for the Open Enterprise" mean??? Why would an executive at any firm want his 'enterprise' to be "open"? Does anyone have a significant problem with their enterprise being "closed", or do they have problems improving efficiencies and delivering value? Messages that are this muddy are a complete and total waste of time and money. Take a cue from IBM or Apple for the love of God, I'm sure they'll share their marketing people.
Here's the text, verbatim, of Novell's ad in Computerworld from 5/22/06:
"DEFINE YOUR OPEN ENTERPRISE
In my Open Enterprise, I can add applications, platforms and users without adding costs, problems and barriers.
Multiple operating systems. Distributed servers. Proprietary hardware. Without a data center solution capable of integrating and managing them all, you're losing time, money and productivity. Data Center solutions from Novell cost-effectively consolidate, manage and support all of your disparate systems on the most mature, scalable and secure Linux OS available. So you can centralize system management. Run leading business applications with the power of LInux and open standards. Lower costs. Improve service levels. And turn your data center into a profit center.
Data Center solutions from Novell.
This is the way to build your Open Enterprise."
I'm a Novell customer with just about every product under license, and I have no idea what this ad is selling. Worst of all, above the vacant gaze of some stuffed shirt, is a brain map with more meaningless jargon like "open", "build", "speed", "high performance", "immediate", "leverage legacy systems", "blatant". Who in the #^&*@ approved this idiocy???? It's sickening. Stop it.
Those are my suggestions. Print them out and use them to start your next fire if you will. I for one hope SOMEBODY in Utah starts to get it.
Yesterday, they sold the renamed consulting branch - Celerant - for about $77 million.
Now, call me silly, but I thought the idea was to buy low and sell high.
Looks like Novell basically paid close to $40 million a year just to get rid of Eric Schmidt, and replace him with an even more misguided and incapable buffoon (aka Jack Messman). Good work if you can get it.
I've said it a million times - Novell has an absolutely wretched history of execution against a strategy...I continue to believe more and more firmly that this is due to Novell's complete misunderstanding of the corporate landscape. If you've no clue what the problems are and where the markets are, you're going to have a hard time developing a meaningful strategy.
Never one to complain without providing suggestions, here then are mine for Novell.
1) Sack Jack Messman.
2) Remind all of the new CxO's that there's NOTHING about which they can be complacent.
3) Start giving away professional services to get your products in the door, or reimburse the channel to do it for you.
4) Stop with the idiotic advertisements. Nobody understands what you're talking about. Don't print this garbage just for the sake of shutting people up who complain that you don't advertise.
What the hell does "Software for the Open Enterprise" mean??? Why would an executive at any firm want his 'enterprise' to be "open"? Does anyone have a significant problem with their enterprise being "closed", or do they have problems improving efficiencies and delivering value? Messages that are this muddy are a complete and total waste of time and money. Take a cue from IBM or Apple for the love of God, I'm sure they'll share their marketing people.
Here's the text, verbatim, of Novell's ad in Computerworld from 5/22/06:
"DEFINE YOUR OPEN ENTERPRISE
In my Open Enterprise, I can add applications, platforms and users without adding costs, problems and barriers.
Multiple operating systems. Distributed servers. Proprietary hardware. Without a data center solution capable of integrating and managing them all, you're losing time, money and productivity. Data Center solutions from Novell cost-effectively consolidate, manage and support all of your disparate systems on the most mature, scalable and secure Linux OS available. So you can centralize system management. Run leading business applications with the power of LInux and open standards. Lower costs. Improve service levels. And turn your data center into a profit center.
Data Center solutions from Novell.
This is the way to build your Open Enterprise."
I'm a Novell customer with just about every product under license, and I have no idea what this ad is selling. Worst of all, above the vacant gaze of some stuffed shirt, is a brain map with more meaningless jargon like "open", "build", "speed", "high performance", "immediate", "leverage legacy systems", "blatant". Who in the #^&*@ approved this idiocy???? It's sickening. Stop it.
Those are my suggestions. Print them out and use them to start your next fire if you will. I for one hope SOMEBODY in Utah starts to get it.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
Staying Red
As you may know, I have bled "Novell Red" for quite some time. However, experience upon experience has caused not only me, but other deeply rooted Novell bigots to question the intelligence of remaining a Novell customer.
GroupWise in particular has been a very frustrating product to own and operate, especially over the past two years. We've had serious discussions internally about migrating away from it in favor of, well, anything else that will work.
Enter Ken Muir, the former ZENworks golden child who decided he wanted a new challenge and left that product for the GroupWise arena. Recently, I was fortunate enough to have a brief but in-depth conversation with him (via e-mail appropriately enough) about the fundamental issues I see throughout Novell from the perspective of a customer.
While I cannot share the details of our conversation, suffice it to say that I for one am willing to give Novell the chance to demonstrate they 'get it' again. This chance will be manifested in the form of GroupWise 7 SP1, which is expected to release sometime in the next month or two. When it ships, we will implement it in production - on Linux - and use it as the starting point for server hardware replacements that we must conduct nationally.
We continue to have successes and issues with OES SP2 on SLES, but every day provides another opportunity to learn. My hope is that the issues we encounter continue to be resolved by education, rather than becoming bug-finding expeditions (as we have been doing presently with other Novell products).
It's a difficult, difficult time to stay loyal to Novell. I keep asking myself, "If we were all Microsoft, how much time could we devote to other initiatives?" My experience tells me that we'd be swapping one set of problems for another. Microsoft OS'es aren't nearly as high-maintenance as the press would have you believe, but they do have maintenance requirements. They also have numerous feature deficiencies which we somewhat take for granted - this is what I fear the most. The decision to use Novell vs. Microsoft for your core infrastructure is never apples-to-apples. There are tons of considerations, intangibles, and dependencies, and these differ wildly in every organization.
For now, at least, we will remain Red.
GroupWise in particular has been a very frustrating product to own and operate, especially over the past two years. We've had serious discussions internally about migrating away from it in favor of, well, anything else that will work.
Enter Ken Muir, the former ZENworks golden child who decided he wanted a new challenge and left that product for the GroupWise arena. Recently, I was fortunate enough to have a brief but in-depth conversation with him (via e-mail appropriately enough) about the fundamental issues I see throughout Novell from the perspective of a customer.
While I cannot share the details of our conversation, suffice it to say that I for one am willing to give Novell the chance to demonstrate they 'get it' again. This chance will be manifested in the form of GroupWise 7 SP1, which is expected to release sometime in the next month or two. When it ships, we will implement it in production - on Linux - and use it as the starting point for server hardware replacements that we must conduct nationally.
We continue to have successes and issues with OES SP2 on SLES, but every day provides another opportunity to learn. My hope is that the issues we encounter continue to be resolved by education, rather than becoming bug-finding expeditions (as we have been doing presently with other Novell products).
It's a difficult, difficult time to stay loyal to Novell. I keep asking myself, "If we were all Microsoft, how much time could we devote to other initiatives?" My experience tells me that we'd be swapping one set of problems for another. Microsoft OS'es aren't nearly as high-maintenance as the press would have you believe, but they do have maintenance requirements. They also have numerous feature deficiencies which we somewhat take for granted - this is what I fear the most. The decision to use Novell vs. Microsoft for your core infrastructure is never apples-to-apples. There are tons of considerations, intangibles, and dependencies, and these differ wildly in every organization.
For now, at least, we will remain Red.
Thursday, May 04, 2006
Vista Delayed - Where's the Outrage?
Recently, there was reportedly a statement released by Gartner indicating Microsoft would again delay release of it's Vista product. I didn't dig deep enough to figure out why, because it doesn't matter.
It used to be a big deal for me, as a Novell die-hard, when Microsoft effectively announced to the world that "this whole big OS development thingie is, well, darned tough to figure out, and, well, sometimes it kicks our little wet Seattle butts."
This was glaringly evident when you could set your calendars by Novell product releases. Every three months, roughly, you could count on a pretty significant product release.
Something interesting happened to all of us as we've matured in our profesisons. Quality started to matter - a lot - especially when we found ourselves without it.
Novell's insane rush to meet these ridiculous, blue-sky deadlines for product releases didn't result in better products. Quite the opposite - the quality of Novell products across the board has declined rapidly. All too often, product groups re-prioritize based on objectives that don't think nearly far enough ahead, and wind up releasing software that is a complete mess. NetWare. GroupWise. ZEN for Servers. BorderManager. Novell Portal Services. All of these products used to be great. Or at least full of promise. Now, some of them are either garbage, or soon to be deceased.
Only GroupWise is too stubborn to realize it's a dinosaur and needs to reinvent itself to remain relevant, but e-mail as a platform is one of the hardest for companies to replace. By rights, on it's merits, it should be a relic of a past long and thankfully forgotten. Sadly, it's not.
I'm surprised most of all by my own indifference to any announcement that the ship date for Vista will slip. I think to myself "Let it slip, if that means it'll be right when you finally ship it." This is a lesson Microsoft seemed to have learned over the past 10 years, and I'm glad they have. It's a lesson I wish very much that Novell would get through it's thick, old, dinosaur skull.
It used to be a big deal for me, as a Novell die-hard, when Microsoft effectively announced to the world that "this whole big OS development thingie is, well, darned tough to figure out, and, well, sometimes it kicks our little wet Seattle butts."
This was glaringly evident when you could set your calendars by Novell product releases. Every three months, roughly, you could count on a pretty significant product release.
Something interesting happened to all of us as we've matured in our profesisons. Quality started to matter - a lot - especially when we found ourselves without it.
Novell's insane rush to meet these ridiculous, blue-sky deadlines for product releases didn't result in better products. Quite the opposite - the quality of Novell products across the board has declined rapidly. All too often, product groups re-prioritize based on objectives that don't think nearly far enough ahead, and wind up releasing software that is a complete mess. NetWare. GroupWise. ZEN for Servers. BorderManager. Novell Portal Services. All of these products used to be great. Or at least full of promise. Now, some of them are either garbage, or soon to be deceased.
Only GroupWise is too stubborn to realize it's a dinosaur and needs to reinvent itself to remain relevant, but e-mail as a platform is one of the hardest for companies to replace. By rights, on it's merits, it should be a relic of a past long and thankfully forgotten. Sadly, it's not.
I'm surprised most of all by my own indifference to any announcement that the ship date for Vista will slip. I think to myself "Let it slip, if that means it'll be right when you finally ship it." This is a lesson Microsoft seemed to have learned over the past 10 years, and I'm glad they have. It's a lesson I wish very much that Novell would get through it's thick, old, dinosaur skull.
Monday, January 30, 2006
Vinyl vs. CD - A Digital Advocate's View
This is really, really off topic.
But it's cool.
I bought my wife a good, German made turntable for Christmas. She has old LP's from her childhood that have sentimental value, and I have 78 laquer records my grandfather listened to in the 30's and 40's through the 70's of greats like Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.
Much of what we have is old, and sounds typically record-like. Hissing...pops...distorted high-end, etc. My wife did have a couple of LP's that were 'modern' and stood a chance of sounding good, though. Billy Joel's "The Nylon Curtain", for example. It was a little dusty, but sounded unlike any CD I'd listened to.
Keep in mind that I'm a child of the 70's - I never had a turntable that wasn't in a tiny blue box with a huge white tonearm. Now, I have a really good home theater / sound system - if LP stands a chance of sounding good, it'll be on my rig.
We found a small shop that sells used LP's, and they had a fair selection. Three or four Billy Joel albums, a lot of Beatles in great shape, Doobie Brothers, Chicago 17, Police (The Singles), Smithereens 11, and a Billie Holiday album that was really good.
The Smithereens album was basically unplayed - it looked immaculate, as did several of them. We happen to own the same album on CD as well. I've listened to both - the LP on my new turntable, the CD in my Pioneer DVD player (using S/PDIF optical connection). The CD has more SPL, and I suppose you can say it has better dynamic range (bigger difference between quiet passages and loud ones). I can blast the CD until glass rattles, it sounds clear as day.
However...
The LP sounds like I'm listening to the band perform. It sounds live...like I'm there. It's most noticable with strings ("Blue Period" on Smithereens 11 opens with a cello or something - it sounds 100000x better on LP than CD), and on the low end. CD's sound muddy by comparison. On LP, I can make out each note the bassist is playing, and the kick drum punches you in the chest at far lower SPL's than CD.
In my mind's eye, I know why this is true. It's the same reason that TV and movies don't look as 'real' as life. It's not about resolution or anything like that...it's about reassembly. In life, music and motion come to us instantaneously via our senses - you cannot measure the gap between one 'frame' and another, because there aren't any...it's one continuous feed, called reality. If you stop a movie on one frame (especially a moving frame), you see blurs. Or, you see that an object has moved from one spot to another between frames - even if barely, it's there. No matter how fast you capture the pictures, movies are basically high-speed still frames. Each still frame misses something - the difference is what we call reality.
The same is true with music. CD's bombard your ears with "still frames" of audio, at a rate of roughly 44,000 pictures per second. You're hearing what the sound measured on a microphone at 1 fraction of a second, played back very very frequently. What you get is a pretty good picture of what was being recorded. Unlike video however, it's possible to record audio in such a way that there is no loss....hence, analog LP recordings.
I always blew off LP bigots as unnecessarily esoteric. The convenience, longevity, durability, and quality of CD's are unmatched. I'm a music lover, and I love CD audio. But I love LP audio more. It takes more care & caution, and you appreciate it more when you hear it. All the garbage you hear from CD bigots about LP's being scratchy and filled with static-pops are made by people who've either never heard LP's, or never heard them played on good equipment. This argument & information is lost on them. If however you're an open minded lover of audio & music, I hope you too find the chance to splurge on a high quality turntable & sound system, and invest in some well preserved vinyl. You won't be disappointed...how often can you say that?
But it's cool.
I bought my wife a good, German made turntable for Christmas. She has old LP's from her childhood that have sentimental value, and I have 78 laquer records my grandfather listened to in the 30's and 40's through the 70's of greats like Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Duke Ellington.
Much of what we have is old, and sounds typically record-like. Hissing...pops...distorted high-end, etc. My wife did have a couple of LP's that were 'modern' and stood a chance of sounding good, though. Billy Joel's "The Nylon Curtain", for example. It was a little dusty, but sounded unlike any CD I'd listened to.
Keep in mind that I'm a child of the 70's - I never had a turntable that wasn't in a tiny blue box with a huge white tonearm. Now, I have a really good home theater / sound system - if LP stands a chance of sounding good, it'll be on my rig.
We found a small shop that sells used LP's, and they had a fair selection. Three or four Billy Joel albums, a lot of Beatles in great shape, Doobie Brothers, Chicago 17, Police (The Singles), Smithereens 11, and a Billie Holiday album that was really good.
The Smithereens album was basically unplayed - it looked immaculate, as did several of them. We happen to own the same album on CD as well. I've listened to both - the LP on my new turntable, the CD in my Pioneer DVD player (using S/PDIF optical connection). The CD has more SPL, and I suppose you can say it has better dynamic range (bigger difference between quiet passages and loud ones). I can blast the CD until glass rattles, it sounds clear as day.
However...
The LP sounds like I'm listening to the band perform. It sounds live...like I'm there. It's most noticable with strings ("Blue Period" on Smithereens 11 opens with a cello or something - it sounds 100000x better on LP than CD), and on the low end. CD's sound muddy by comparison. On LP, I can make out each note the bassist is playing, and the kick drum punches you in the chest at far lower SPL's than CD.
In my mind's eye, I know why this is true. It's the same reason that TV and movies don't look as 'real' as life. It's not about resolution or anything like that...it's about reassembly. In life, music and motion come to us instantaneously via our senses - you cannot measure the gap between one 'frame' and another, because there aren't any...it's one continuous feed, called reality. If you stop a movie on one frame (especially a moving frame), you see blurs. Or, you see that an object has moved from one spot to another between frames - even if barely, it's there. No matter how fast you capture the pictures, movies are basically high-speed still frames. Each still frame misses something - the difference is what we call reality.
The same is true with music. CD's bombard your ears with "still frames" of audio, at a rate of roughly 44,000 pictures per second. You're hearing what the sound measured on a microphone at 1 fraction of a second, played back very very frequently. What you get is a pretty good picture of what was being recorded. Unlike video however, it's possible to record audio in such a way that there is no loss....hence, analog LP recordings.
I always blew off LP bigots as unnecessarily esoteric. The convenience, longevity, durability, and quality of CD's are unmatched. I'm a music lover, and I love CD audio. But I love LP audio more. It takes more care & caution, and you appreciate it more when you hear it. All the garbage you hear from CD bigots about LP's being scratchy and filled with static-pops are made by people who've either never heard LP's, or never heard them played on good equipment. This argument & information is lost on them. If however you're an open minded lover of audio & music, I hope you too find the chance to splurge on a high quality turntable & sound system, and invest in some well preserved vinyl. You won't be disappointed...how often can you say that?
Wednesday, January 04, 2006
A Knock Against IBM
We've deployed a number of IBM eServer x206 systems throughout our company, as well as about 4 x306's. To date, we've only had three issues with them in the 6-9 months they've been in place. Unfortunately, each one has found IBM tripping over their own shoelaces trying to meet our 4 hour response SLA.
Part shortages, staff retirements, etc. have all contributed to a far-below-satisfactory experience with the x-Series support model. Our servers have been in the midwest, southwest, even in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Repairs that should take a few hours, end up stretching into days.
Given the number of server systems we have to replace in the coming months, this had better be a series of unfortunate events - not a preview of woes to come.
Dell is out...if IBM fails, I guess it leaves HP/Compaq and Gateway (ugh).
Part shortages, staff retirements, etc. have all contributed to a far-below-satisfactory experience with the x-Series support model. Our servers have been in the midwest, southwest, even in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Repairs that should take a few hours, end up stretching into days.
Given the number of server systems we have to replace in the coming months, this had better be a series of unfortunate events - not a preview of woes to come.
Dell is out...if IBM fails, I guess it leaves HP/Compaq and Gateway (ugh).
Tuesday, December 13, 2005
How does this OES thing work?
We're trying to figure this question out. Again, simple lab install of a product using the newest available media...problem after undocumented problem have cropped up, and nobody within our reach seems to have any concrete answers (or blame to lay).
We're on the cusp of a pretty big project, and the timeline is severely compressed. We don't feel confident enough in NetWare to support the project long-term...so, unfortunately, for the first time ever, we have to decide between OES (about which we know nothing yet), or Windows Server.
Novell have been sent a series of flares and distress signals (and we are a 'reference' / success-story account)...unfortunately, we've been let down by the sales organization as a whole in bringing focus to our plight.
Good thing my rolodex is filled with the names & numbers of old friends who still roam the Provo halls. With a little luck, we'll get the help we need to translate our significant NetWare expertise to the OES/SLES platform combination.
We're on the cusp of a pretty big project, and the timeline is severely compressed. We don't feel confident enough in NetWare to support the project long-term...so, unfortunately, for the first time ever, we have to decide between OES (about which we know nothing yet), or Windows Server.
Novell have been sent a series of flares and distress signals (and we are a 'reference' / success-story account)...unfortunately, we've been let down by the sales organization as a whole in bringing focus to our plight.
Good thing my rolodex is filled with the names & numbers of old friends who still roam the Provo halls. With a little luck, we'll get the help we need to translate our significant NetWare expertise to the OES/SLES platform combination.
Thursday, November 10, 2005
ComputerWorld IT Management Study Released
I recently participated in a study conducted by ComputerWorld, asking questions about IT management and strategic vendors, etc. The results were forwarded to me today, and I found them to be pretty interesting.
Of particular interest was the fact that Dell and CDW - two vendors that are well known in the market, but with whom we've not had great experiences - appear to be less important to companies the larger they get. Companies below 1,000 employees find Dell and CDW to both be very strategic, but beyond that, neither has made enough headway to be frequently considered a "top" vendor.
IBM on the other hand, is virtually off the radar until your company reaches 1,000 employees in size. If that's you, there's a 50% chance you would name IBM as your "top" vendor.
I once developed a PowerPoint deck entitled "Why Dell Doesn't Get It - A Summary View from a Customer at a Crossroads", and dropped the bomb on our Dell account team when they showed up for a visit one day. It outlined the atrocities they had committed toward us in the form of product design and support of our strategic OS platform, and in overall product quality.
From that day forward, our rep never showed up without first confirming a projector wasn't awaiting him in the conference room. That PowerPoint deck made it to a bunch of people at Dell, and we continued to give them opportunities to do the right things for us (fix problems they caused us). In the end, Dell took the position that an expenditure on their behalf to help correct a significant set of Dell-admitted issues with their RAID controllers was greater than our value to them as a customer.
We're no longer Dell customers.
Of particular interest was the fact that Dell and CDW - two vendors that are well known in the market, but with whom we've not had great experiences - appear to be less important to companies the larger they get. Companies below 1,000 employees find Dell and CDW to both be very strategic, but beyond that, neither has made enough headway to be frequently considered a "top" vendor.
IBM on the other hand, is virtually off the radar until your company reaches 1,000 employees in size. If that's you, there's a 50% chance you would name IBM as your "top" vendor.
I once developed a PowerPoint deck entitled "Why Dell Doesn't Get It - A Summary View from a Customer at a Crossroads", and dropped the bomb on our Dell account team when they showed up for a visit one day. It outlined the atrocities they had committed toward us in the form of product design and support of our strategic OS platform, and in overall product quality.
From that day forward, our rep never showed up without first confirming a projector wasn't awaiting him in the conference room. That PowerPoint deck made it to a bunch of people at Dell, and we continued to give them opportunities to do the right things for us (fix problems they caused us). In the end, Dell took the position that an expenditure on their behalf to help correct a significant set of Dell-admitted issues with their RAID controllers was greater than our value to them as a customer.
We're no longer Dell customers.
Wednesday, November 09, 2005
Concerns about Novell - Layoffs, etc.
I've had the opportunity of late to provide commentary - directly and indirectly - to Novell regarding their long-term viability. This topic comes up as a result of their recent layoffs, which as I had stated earlier, do not surprise or concern me greatly.
Here's some excerpts of what I've said on the topic of Novell and 'execution':
I followed that commentary with the one below several days later, aimed at a Novell employee who still thought the onus for finding additional value with GroupWise in particular, lay outside Provo:
In response to this, I was told by that Novell employee that the "channel program" probably isn't going away, because Novell has too many smaller customers to sell to directly. It will however be changed significantly. I was told, however, that the team responsible for marketing GroupWise is definitely focused on selling it in the form of point solutions.
My reply:
Here's some excerpts of what I've said on the topic of Novell and 'execution':
"Nobody will tell you that Novell's problems are technology related. Unfortunately, marketing alone isn't going to fix the most significant problem facing our Provo friends. There are a lot of sacred cows at Novell, and very few people there are brave enough and/or sufficiently empowered or incented to slaughter them in pursuit of the greater good.
If Novell suddenly happened upon the ultimate advertising campaign, all of the underlying issues within the organization - the self defeating corporate architecture that has been built there over years and years, the lack of communication, direction, and ability to execute - would come sharply into focus.
...
I've no doubt that Novell is committed to keeping GroupWise around for a long time, because tens of millions of seats renewing each year pay a lot of bills. I'm also excited to hear that consultants are replacing Exchange with GroupWise. My fear is that without a significant series of changes at Novell, none of that will matter.
Novell's problem is that they are no good at engaging medium-to-large companies as strategic partners. As others have noted, Novell is great at developing products that allow IT groups to spend less time on tactical activities - once these solutions are in place, there's very little on-going sales opportunities. To be a strategic partner, you need to be able to provide simple, effective, solutions that add value, not just help to avoid costs. ZENworks is primarily a cost avoidance investment -
it doesn't make duties disappear, it just makes them vastly simpler and less
expensive to perform. To a large extent NetWare was kind of in this boat -
you could perform the same duties for a larger number of users, with fewer IT
staff (or in less time). Cost avoidance.
GroupWise could be a strategic platform for companies, but neither Novell or any other third party have been effective at developing applications that meet the "strategic" test. The fault for this situation can be widely dispersed, but Novell doesn't make money by finding fault or assigning blame. GroupWise could and should be the foundation for document management, workflow, intranet publishing, knowledgebases, customer self-service, etc. All of these things add value, because they make non-IT employees (e.g. the business) more efficient. They are all, therefore, strategic. And yes, I know that GroupWise has a DMS capability. However, if it's something that two former consultants, a CNI, and a CNE can't get working reliably, it's too damned hard to use.
In all my years dealing with Novell, I've never seen or heard of anyone presenting GroupWise as the foundation for a BPM/re-engineering/intranet/document management strategy. I have sat through hour long demonstrations of nifty client features, while nary a word is spoken about back-end management. I've also sat through demos where every feature was positioned against Outlook.
For a person in my position (Manager of IT for a $1.5 Billion company), this kind of thing is maddening. "Better than Outlook / Exchange" is not the same as "great" or "exceptional". I don't use Outlook or Exchange. I don't care how great the client is. What can I do with this tool to provide a strategic benefit to my company? I will immediately take issue to anyone who argues that this is forefront in Novell's marketing strategy, because we have challenged Novell's sales and SE teams for years to differentiate themselves - they have failed at every opportunity.
For Novell to be relevant, they need to be able to sell themselves as strategic partners to VP's, SVP's, and CxO's. Nobody in the boardroom cares how nifty the client is, how many seats you've sold, or the cool indexing features in the DMS system. Companies don't have document indexing problems, they have business
problems. When Novell figures this out, discussions like this will be a
thing of the past."
I followed that commentary with the one below several days later, aimed at a Novell employee who still thought the onus for finding additional value with GroupWise in particular, lay outside Provo:
"As I've stated before, if Novell wants to become/remain relevant to larger enterprise organizations, they should be developing presentation decks right now titled "Improving Business Processes with GroupWise", or "Enterprise Strategies for GroupWise Document Management".
Novell has continually barraged customers with product features, leaving it to them to figure out how best to implement them. All around you, competitors sell lesser products as point solutions, with the added benefit of re-use for other purposes. If you're relying on the channel to be the "value add" part of the equation to large enterprises, you're kidding yourself. My company, like many others, doesn't deal with the channel because they rarely ever truly add value. Looking at revenues, etc., I think the question "How's that working for you?" is valid here.
One of the most significant sacred cows in Provo wears a nametag called "Channel Partners". Slaughter it, butcher it, and serve a big steak lunch in the quad behind Building H. When everyone's done eating, go back and figure out how to sell your products as value adds / strategic assets to companies yourselves."
In response to this, I was told by that Novell employee that the "channel program" probably isn't going away, because Novell has too many smaller customers to sell to directly. It will however be changed significantly. I was told, however, that the team responsible for marketing GroupWise is definitely focused on selling it in the form of point solutions.
My reply:
"...please know that I wasn't advocating Novell sell directly to every customer, but that you not rely on the channel to make your value propositions to large enterprise customers (as has been done for some time). As a former employee, the argument I heard against this wasn't the size of sales force required, but that acting in this way would alienate channel partners. I found this to be alarmist and
unfounded - companies like mine have always dealt with Novell sales directly.
We've not seen GroupWise effectively positioned as much more than a mail product. It's issues like this I'm interested in seeing fixed - not only for myself, but for the health of Novell as a company."
It's amazing to me how much Novell professes to care about and invest in GroupWise, given how little they do to reduce adoption barriers in large enterprises. This problem isn't GroupWise product-specific though - it's pervasive throughout the company. I certainly hope that changes...soon.
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