In the 1990's Novell transitioned from being a standards introducing company to being a standards sustaining company. In 1990 the LAN vision was complete: a network operating system standard had been devised; it had been promoted successfully and it had created a billion dollar industry.
The organization that sustains a standard isn't the same kind as the one that first parades it in front of the world. Audaciousness and single-minded vision are necessary qualities for bringing a new idea to life. Consensus and orderliness are necessary for keeping it useful.
In the 1990's Novell transitioned to becoming a "Statue of Liberty" company -- a company that holds a standard high for all to see, a company that is marveled and envied by it's contemporaries, a company of importance, but a company that doesn't move much.
In the 1990's Novell's vision base widened. Instead of being centered around the Ray-Craig-Judith-Superset axis, it widened to include top management from many of the companies Novell and Ray had acquired. It transitioned from a monocentric vision to a polycentric vision and transitioned from a vision originating from within management to a vision supplied to management by professional visionaries. The new senior managers didn't so much create visions as they did pick and choose which visions to support from the many presented to them by consultants and middle managers.
In the 1990's many of the top management moved to or were appointed out of the California area. At one point in 1991 the only company officers living in Utah were Ray Noorda and Jim Bills.
The result was a company that was highly profitable, but very hard to figure out. There was a lot of talent at Novell, but the company could not produce a leader that could explain what that talent was supposed to be doing. A the company wandered, it wandered into "the niche hills". It could ably support those markets it had already carved out, but it was lackluster about carving out new marketplaces. In yet another way, Novell turned inward.
A standards-sustaining company is dominated by the slogan "No Surprises". The standards-maintaining company doesn't need surprises any more -- they just cause lots of dislocations between the various constituencies that the standards are serving. An example of what this transition means is shown in how Novell treated Netware 386.
Netware 386 was Novell's last breakthrough product. It was the last to originate the way the original Netware had: as a feeling on the part of the Superset people that new technology -- in this case the 386 chip -- could support the LAN vision in a better way.
Netware 386 was a complete rewrite. In many ways it didn't act the same as Netware 286 -- which was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that it could work better. The curse was that supporting it would be different than supporting Netware 286.
In 1988 and 89, as Netware 386 developed, Novell had some hard choices to make in marketing it. The challenge was to reach Novell's many different kinds of customers in ways that allowed Novell's many marketing channels to do so profitably.
One solution was to bring out Netware 386 as a high-end only operating system. In this scenario Netware 386 would be priced higher than Netware 286 so that it would appeal to only to those customers developing very large networks using high performance equipment. In this scenario the operating system is positioned to compete with minicomputer operating systems and priced accordingly. This solution follows the very traditional path of bringing in a high performance solution at a high margin and appealing to a limited segment of the market. This solution had the support of the West Coast divisions within Novell where many of the people came from worlds where networking was something minicomputer operating systems had claimed to be doing for many years.
The alternative was to supplant Netware 286 with Netware 386 by introducing a range of Netware 386 products designed to service low-performance as well as high performance markets. The advantage of this solution was market penetration by the 386 product. If a lot of Netware 386 went out quickly then it would send a strong signal to the horizontal applications software developers that 386 was going to become the mainstream LAN operating system and they should commit their design work to it. This would insure that Netware 386's most visible competitor, LAN Manger, would have a hard time getting established.
One of Netware 386's distinctive features was that it was much easier to install than Netware 286. Marketing it across the board, high and low, would give all Netware users a much-easier-to-install Netware and the convenience of a very smooth migration path. This PC-centric-oriented marketing was championed by Craig Burton and those within Novell who had a lot of direct experience with the personal computer marketplace. But pursuing this strategy meant making a lot of change. It meant transitioning Novell's service, training and support arms from 286-based expertise to 386-based expertise. It meant Novell's third party applications developers would have to transition quickly too. It meant a lot of change.
Craig's demise in 1989 put an end to talk about a multi-tiered 386 introduction. The survivors felt there was no reason not to "skim the margin cream off the top" that this new technology offered as they had always done in the minicomputer industry.
Novell introduced Netware 386 in 1990 as a high-end operating system, and Netware 286 has remained a viable product for many years. Rather than supplanting Netware 286 with a low-price version of 386, Novell has chosen to modify 286 so that it acts more like 386.
With Craig's leaving, the meaning of "open systems approach" changed considerably at Novell. Early Novell viewed open systems as a form of "corporate jujitsu". It was a way of thinking that let Novell develop policies and products so that the successes of other players became successes for Novell as well. Craig was particularly good at devising those kinds of tactics, and none of his successors had the frame of mind to match his skills in following this theme.
In the new Novell the open systems approach was transformed in meaning to refer to the details of making connectivity happen between various minicomputer communications systems. Open systems referred to making a connection happen between, say, the TCP/IP communications protocol and a Netware file server. Open systems was transformed from a strategic business style to a strategic suite of products. Novell in the nineties remains firmly committed to open systems, but the meaning of open systems changed.
Many times in the middle eighties Novell "bet the company" on an idea. The most spectacular of those became the company "milestones". By the late eighties Novell had a large installed base and was reaching the Fortune 1000 marketplace it had targeted. It listened to these customers and it found what: that they were happy with the product. Novell found that it was no longer necessary to bet the company on a new idea to make these people happy. These customers wanted Netware to do what it was doing now only better. By the late eighties Novell had reached and was beginning to find acceptance with the customers it wanted to cater to; it had an installed base; it was time for the revolution to stop.
With the departure of Craig and Judith Novell faced it's second "milestone" as a company: what would it become as Novell-without-Craig-and-Judith? The answer is a different Novell, but just how it would be different was unclear to the rank and file and perhaps even to Ray.
One way to analyze this was to look at Craig's and Judith's strengths. Those features of the company that depended on those strengths would likely be reduced to average or less than average by their loss. The other things to look at where Craig's and Judith's favorite programs. These programs would be carried out by their successors all right, carried out to the trash heap.
Craig was strong on strategic planning based on close monitoring of technological trends. He understood the technology's capabilities and limitations and had a good feel for company trajectories -- why companies would choose one path over another. Craig's distinctive programs centered around the concepts of PC-centrism and open systems: the ideas that the personal computer environment was king and that corporate jujitsu -- joining the enemy -- was the way to overcome competition.
Judith's strengths were in her feel for developing an image and assembling the resources to explain a new technology. Her distinctive programs centered around the LAN Times and trade shows and media events.