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What Lengths Loyalty? August 21, 2000 By Art Wittmann 
As I worked on the analysis of Novell that appears in this issue, I was struck by the depths of loyalty Novell engenders in its long-time customers. Oddly, systems vendors seem to do this with some regularity. Digital had fans right up until the company was dissected. In the '80s, IBM still had its loyal following--even in areas where no loyalty was called for. There's only one thing in my experience with which I can compare this phenomenon. The Green Bay Packers. I grew up in Wisconsin (the explanation could almost stop there, but I'll continue). For the first 30 years of my life, I learned to love the Packers--though during those 30 years I would have been hard-pressed to tell you why I loved them as I did. When I was born, Vince Lombardi had amassed perhaps the greatest football team of all time. Not the greatest players--the greatest team. His years coaching at Green Bay represented the pinnacle of football as a team sport. Lombardi and his players "got it" as few others ever have. As individuals, the Packers of the early '60s were anything but great. Bart Starr was a 15th-round draft choice, his receivers liked liquor as much as they liked football and Lombardi himself was not a particularly nice guy. But they "got" football. Unfortunately for me, I had to learn by watching tapes and reading the occasional book or article--or (God forbid) listening to those a decade or more older than me talk about it incessantly. My years in Wisconsin were marked by three decades of bad coaching, bad management and--not surprisingly--losing records. Yet through it all, I managed to become a Packers fan--as did everyone else who grew up in the state. (For those of you who grew up in Wisconsin and somehow did not become Packers fans, save your e-mail and your lectures. I know you exist.) Novell has a strikingly similar story. The folks at Novell so totally "got" personal-computer networking in the mid-'80s through the early '90s--a time when no other company "got it" at all--that an undying love was instilled in a good many network admins of the time. And just as Packers fans enjoyed watching Mike Ditka's Bears lose, so too do the Novell faithful love watching the missteps of Novell competitors--particularly those of Microsoft. Yet Packers fans couldn't fully enjoy Bears' losses because each and every one of us knew at heart that the Bears were a far better team in the '80s than anything fielded by Green Bay at the time. So it was with Novell. When Eric Schmidt took the job as CEO, his predecessors had left him a monumental mess to mend. Outdated products, ignored developers, new markets left to pass. And just as my beloved Packers could snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, so it was with Novell. Yet the faithful remained. Did you know that the waiting list to get season tickets for the Packers is decades long? Did you know that the Packers are the only team owned entirely by the public? No one actually trades the stock: It is to be cherished, handed down from parents to children. The Packers are an institution--unfortunately, Novell isn't. The Novell faithful still have reason to hope, but not for the victories that Novell once managed with ease. Novell management will tell you that NetWare is a cornerstone. If that's the case, then that corner of the Novell dynasty has been laid on quicksand. Thankfully, the company has put its hopes behind its directory products. Maybe Novell can show that it "gets" the directory like no one else in the industry, and a whole new breed of fan will be born. Sadly, though, if Las Vegas made book on it like football, the odds would be very long indeed. Send your comments on this column to Art Wittmann at awittmann@nwc.com.
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