Channel Chatter: Rudy, Novell and Me

On a day in which a Noreaster howled its way through the skyscraper canyons of New York, Novell braved the elements to introduce identity management software and rebrand its product portfolio. It did so by playing host to several hundred customers, integrators and analysts and most notably former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, now a No. 1 author with his tome "Leadership." After a marathon day of product introductions, Web casts, interviews and sales pitches, the Novell CMO strode into the Stardust dining room of the Waldorf Astoria, surveyed its opulent setting and then turned to me and said, "This is the kind of marketing you will come to expect from Novell." Stone flashed an ear-to-ear grin that underlined his self-confidence and the room filled up with leading integrators, large enterprise customers, hungry Novell field-sales reps and the company's top brass. What it pulled off was a major victory for a company that by all accounts should not be around, no less throwing an expensive dinner for a few hundred of its warm, close personal friends. Novell graciously invited me to the event under the auspices of a "small gathering of invitees." Considering my perception of Novell, I expected a few dozen individuals to show up, a healthy portion of rubbery chicken slapped in my plate and a PR exec trying to convince me to write about the company's product. All in all, I anticipated another sleeper.

Let me tell you, it was anything but and in a time when companies have forgotten how to spend on innovative advertising, enthralling events or creative marketing, Novell taught the industry a lesson. As crazy as this sounds, as I bumped into large customers from the IT departments of New York's Fortune 500 companies I thought to myself, "I didn't even know Novell had these kinds of customers." Just at my table alone was the dean of computing for the Mount Sinai School of Medicine who is managing a vast computing empire that resides exclusively on Novell. Gee, I thought the world was running on top of Microsoft NT and here was this woman talking about the virtues of Netware 6. I chatted up a director inside integrator Cap Gemini, which is working closely with Novell in its massive healthcare integration business, and another executive from PriceWaterhouse Coopers who negotiates global contracts for the firm and is more than pleased with his working relationship with Novell. It was also impressive watching the Novell field-sales team in action. Positioned in close proximity to his valued customer, one veteran Novell sales pro didn't miss an opportunity to take a shot at the competition. He lobbed one carefully chosen grenade after another, including, "Hey, how did you like dealing with Microsoft's new EA?" You could feel the shrapnel hit from New York to Redmond. Most impressive was the reps' aggressiveness, something that has been missing from Novell for some time. Wall Street analysts can crunch all the numbers they want to produce the future value of a company's cash flow as a basis for stock picking, but nothing is a better barometer of a firm's health than the hunger of its sales team. Score one for Novell here--I hope the company didn't "plant" some of those individuals at my table that evening.

One Cap Gemini Ernst and Young executive said he is impressed by Novell's technology but doesn't understand why they don't communicate more crisply to integration firms like his and other IT professional. I believe his exact words were, "Novell has great shit, but they just don't tell anybody about it."

Speaking of the evening, Novell made a masterful choice in selecting Giuliani to speak before the dinner at the Waldorf. Unlike the ways in which Computer Associates used Giuliani--to speak to several thousand people at CAWorld earlier this year, or at the Cisco Partner Summit where Cisco did the same--Novell used him to mix with the crowd and use his presence to transcend its position in the market. There is no one politician more revered or admired than Giuliani is right now and the crowd ate up his every word. People (including the author of this column) jumped at the chance to have their photo taken with the former mayor and exchange a few words with him. Of course I unabashedly jumped on line, whipped out a freshly purchased copy of his book "Leadership" and asked that he not only take a photo with me but also sign my book--tasks Rudy did most graciously. He even entertained some good-natured ribbing from me concerning his soft stance on the Italian-American-smearing series "The Sopranos." Giuliani basically told me to "lighten up." "It's only TV, forget about it," he said, and we both broke out in laughter.

Regardless of your politics, if you are considering Giuliani as a keynote speaker for an event, his presentation centers on the theme of his book and he walks you through some of the tenets of what he believes make for great leadership. Two points seemed to resonate with the audience. The first was his advice that great leaders are people who "prepare relentlessly." He dedicated a chapter to that theme in his book. The second point is that great leaders are eternal optimists. No one likes to follow a pessimist, he said. The first group of people who came to mind when he mentioned optimists were the many solution providers I know. Over the years no matter how bad the economy or how difficult the IT market, VARs tend to always look at the glass as half full.

If Novell is able to capitalize on what took place last week and Stone can continue to produce the kind of marketing he is obviously capable of, then maybe Novell will emerge as an industry leader once again. Despite Giuliani's best efforts to answer a litany of questions thrown his way, he was somewhat perplexed by a question I asked regarding modern-day leaders he admires from the world of business, politics or even sports. During his presentation, he stuck to the safe ground of referencing the leadership capabilities of Winston Churchill, Joe Torre or Ronald Reagan. However, when I pressed him to go beyond his script, Giuliani seemed a bit stumped. He could only come up with Lou Pinella, the Seattle Mariner's coach who is contemplating a move to the New York Mets. See, somehow Microsoft found its way into the conversation--Jeff Raikes is part owner of the Mariners.

Exchanging Ideas and Technologies
Some thoughts on the recent Emerging Technology XChange which was sponsored by the parent of VARBusiness magazine, CMP Media. Emerging Technologies was hard to resist for two reasons. First was the location, the Ritz Carlton on Amelia Island, Fla. Second was the chance to rub elbows with solution providers and vendors who were giving VARs a glimpse of their new wares for the coming year.

Among the vendors trying to impress the VARs with their creative flair was Lexmark, which demonstrated that the people who make printers are some of the most innovative in the industry. During a "World Premier" it used an Austin Powers skit to weave together a product demo and marketing spiff bundle. If was a wonderful mix of self-effacing humor and competitive jabs. For the skit, Lexmark hired an Austin Powers lookalike and tapped the acting talents of the usually reserved channels marketing manager Jeane Hodge who donned a black skirt, platinum blonde wig, fishnet stockings and a rather convincing Eastern-European accent. Not bad for someone from Louisville, Ky. The Lexmark event featured everything from pyrotechnics to mouth-overs ala Conan O'Brian, video feeds from its R and D lab, secret agents and exploding packing crates, all for the sake of getting VARs to move a few more MFP units rather than those from HP. Lexmark, now full of bravado due to its recent Dell deal, showed it can be brash but not cocky. A five-star performance by Hodge who showed that someone with a double grad degree in economics and finance can have a sense of humor.

Omnipresent was FalconStor's Wendy Petty who heads up sales for the network storage vendor, which is looking to build a base of VARs who can help corporations tap into the Internet to manage their storage needs. Petty was on a number of panels painting a convincing picture for FalconStor's which as many know is backed by ReiJane Huai, architect of ARCServe at Cheyenne Software. Huai was president of Cheyenee when it was sold to CA in 1996 for a cool $1 billion and he is putting some of the old team back together to make a go of it at FalconStor. The company gave a sneak preview of a storage appliance it is hoping VARs will use inside some midsize accounts to better manage their client's storage needs. Petty is a rising star inside the storage industry, which desperately needs a spokesman.

Speaking of rising stars, Interland's Tiffany Bova--a recent defector from Affinity, gave a Carly Fiorina-like presentation at ET Xchange. She had a packed room of solution providers eating out of her hand as she took them through her pitch on why they should partner with Interland when it comes to the Web and application-hosting business. Bova was mobbed after her presentation by business-card-seeking VARs. During her presentation, Bova reflected on how she had lost a major account to Dell because a rep from the Austin, Texas-based computer maker walked into a client and noticing a battery of Compaq servers at work offered to replace and upgrade them all with Dell serves for free. "There went my maintenance and service contract, there went my client," Bova said. "Had those servers been at a remote, secure data center location I would probably still have that client." Bova's boss is former Dell exec Joel Kocher who is running the publicly held Interland. Bova also told the crowd how they could generate recurring revenue from such managed services as those supplied by Interland, which estimates it has some 4,500 VAR partners today. Looks like Bova made a bold move.

Other vendors making an impressive splash at ET Xchange included Rainbow Technologies and WideRay

Speaking of bold moves, the scene at the cocktail lounge during ET Xchange was nothing short of bold. If you want to take the pulse of the solution provider, head to the bar at any of these events. A number of integrators were partying it up, grateful that this dreadful year is nearly behind them but also celebrating a resurgence in business. Many solution providers present said they posted a strong September and orders for the fourth quarter were promising. All cited services as carrying the day along with security and storage.