| Analysts praise Novell's executive changes |
Jun. 22, 2006
No one was really surprised when Novell Inc.'s board fired former CEO Jack Messman. Many analysts think the move might be just what the Linux company needed.
Gartner Inc. Research VP John Enck, for example, said that "Gartner sees as long overdue changes that are a big step in the right direction for the company."
This is not to say that Enck thought Messman, who had been involved with Novell in one way or another for over two-decades, had done a bad job.
Indeed, "While as CEO and Chairman of Novell, Jack Messman did an excellent job of keeping Novell in solid financial health." But, "He was unable to maintain a consistent executive leadership team and had difficulty articulating the Novell value proposition to the market," Enck said.
That's where Enck thinks that newly appointed CEO Ronald Hovsepian should do well. Hovsepian, a former senior IBM executive, "should be an excellent replacement and has the vision and leadership skills to move Novell forward."
With Hovsepian at the helm, "Gartner expects to see consistent financial growth, gains in market share against Red Hat and continued growth in the identity management market under Hovsepian's leadership," added Enck.
Enck didn't go into detail about why he thought Hovsepian would do a better job, but Gordon Haff, a senior an analyst with Nashua, NH-based research house Illuminata, had his own explanation.
"Hovsepian has a reputation for getting things done, which is what Novell really needs. It makes sense to give him all the resources he can apply to the task," said Haff.
As for Messman, Haff said, "No surprise there. Messman hasn't been able to significantly improve Novell's position -- which should be better than it is for all the assets, both product and customer/channel, that it has."
Insiders at Novell also had an explanation for Messman's fall.
One manager said, "Blum Capital and some other stockholders were sick and tired of waiting for Messman to make more staff cuts, buy-back stock, and cut out some product lines. The last quarter [story] was the last straw and it got them the support they needed to make the change."
Dan Kusnetzky, former IDC vice president for system software research and now executive vice president of marketing strategy for Open-Xchange Inc., said, "In my view, Novell focused on trying to perfect every detail of its planning before doing anything. While this is admirable from one viewpoint, it also means that many market opportunities came and went while Novell was engaged in its internal analysis. Some would call this 'analysis paralysis' rather than careful planning."
"If Novell hopes to compete in the Linux market, the network and systems management market, and the collaborative applications market, it is going to be forced to work in Internet time as other competitors have done," Kusnetzky added.
"Ron Hovsepian appears to be an astute business person, one who will be able to quickly take stock of the environment and Novell's position within that environment. This, I hope, will help Novell move from its current position of very slowly building extremely high quality products to quickly building and marketing products that are good enough to satisfy the market," concluded Kusnetzky.
-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
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