Because avoiding vendor lock-in is typically a larger organization's issue, Novell is targeting the large-scale segment of the market. "I don't see GM, Lufthansa and Daimler-Chrysler with data centers full of Win2003 data-center edition," Nugent says.
This market-segmentation strategy means Novell must forgo the pursuit of smaller companies. Nugent acknowledges that small and midsize businesses will still have a hard time going in another, non-Microsoft direction. Furthermore, Novell has lost that battle in the past, so focusing on larger customers is smart at this point.
Nugent didn't mention SuSE's and Novell's established success overseas; however, it may be wise for Novell to look to an international market segment for initial growth, given that the battle in the United States will be much tougher. The company is off to a good start with international customers like McDonald's Germany, Costco Mexico and Siemens Business Services.
Can Novell Have It All?
If Novell recognizes that many large-scale corporate customers want to avoid vendor lock-in, it will have to produce a road map for making more, if not all, of its other products open source. Nugent claims that one of Novell's proprietary products, eDirectory, is so powerful that customers don't mind its proprietary nature. He says "it's completely transparent," and that IT directors don't view it as a potential lock-in by Novell. But for many years, eDirectory (formerly Novell Directory Services) was undeniably a powerful barrier to leaving Novell--middleware was only somewhat useful, and migrating, say, a 30,000-user tree was expensive. IT managers who remember this might question Novell's commitment to flexibility.
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