Surfing a High Tech Wave:
A story of Novell's early years - 1980-1990
by Roger Bourke White Jr.
copyright 1991,1996, 2001, 2003, 2005 Roger Bourke
White Jr.
Cooperators and Defectors: The Prisoner's Dilemma Concept
In Volume One: Building the Foundation, I talk about Novell as a small startup company. It covers Novell as it struggled to find the right vision, and the right people to make that vision happen. That happened in the 1980-84 time period.
Volume Two: Novell Emerges covers the years from 85-88 Novell prospered mightily as the vision was implemented. It prospered mightily in sales and it grew mightily in numbers of people. Because this second part of the part of the story is more complex, In Volume Two: Novell Emerges I switch from telling it in a single time line to telling about it in two time lines -- technical and cultural -- and give one example of how not all the projects implemented by Novell turned to gold -- the story of the Netware Centers.
In the Volume Three, End of the Visionaries, I will talk about how Novell transitioned from being a visionary company to being a well managed company. The "New Novell" was still profitable, but it was no longer a company trying to make an entirely new industry. This last volume centers on specific people -- Ray, Craig and Judith -- so it goes back to the single timeline format.
The story in these chapters is told in a fairly chronological fashion. The number of people involved is small and the focus is singular.
Chapter One: 1981: Building the Foundation for Ray's Dream
Chapter Two: 1982: Crisis -- "The Time of Six Presidents"
Chapter Three: 1983: Vision Unchained -- Ray comes to Novell
Chapter Four: 1984 Crossing the High Sierras -- putting the pieces in place
Novell becomes more complex in these years. I have switched to talking about technical changes, Novell culture and the Netware Centers.
The Technical thread
Chapter Five: The PC-based LAN Revolution Begins
Chapter Six : Other technical goals for Netware
Chapter Seven : The genesis of SFT Netware
Chapter Eight: E-mail
Chapter Nine: Sales and Trade Shows
Chapter Ten: Conclusion of the technical section
The Cultural Thread
Chapter Eleven: The Quarterly Cycle of Life at Novell
Chapter Twelve: Coming of Age Financially
Chapter Thirteen: The Culture of Growth
Chapter Fourteen: Education and Marketing
Chapter Fifteen: Making Novell "Bricks and Mortar": Building the Buildings
Chapter Sixteen: Corporate Culture
Chapter Seventeen: Ray's Management Style
Chapter Eighteen: Building a Management Team
Chapter Nineteen: MEMBERS Meeting
Chapter Twenty: International
Chapter Twenty One: Conclusion of Novell's Culture
The story of Netware Centers
Chapter Twenty Two: NetWare Centers and NetWare Everywhere: The life and death of a big mistake
Chapter Twenty Three: Seeing the Dark Side: Is Novell Cooperating or Defecting?
Chapter Twenty Four: The End of Netware Centers
The focus narrows again here. While Novell is more complex than ever, the story of Craig and Judith's departure symbolizes the transition that Novell is going through from visionary company to well managed "Statue of Liberty" company.
Chapter Twenty Five: The countdown on Craig and Judith
Chapter Twenty Six: The Final Days
Chapter Twenty Seven: Dismantling Craig- and Judith-ism
Chapter Twenty Eight: The Epilog 1990-5: The end of the Revolution
Chapter Twenty Nine: Novell transitions to a standards maintaining company
Chapter Thirty: Roger's Further thoughts on the Novell experience