http://www8.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0811/12enov.html
August 12, 1997 6:00 PM ET=20
Novell taps OMG founder for top-level post
By Lisa Wirthman, PC Week Online
=A0 Novell Inc. added more new blood to its executive team today, as the
company continues its attempt to turn itself around and become a leader in
network services.
Christopher Stone, the founder, chairman and CEO of the Object Management
Group, will become Novell's senior vice president of strategy and corporate
development, the company announced today.
The news comes on the heels of last week's appointment of former IBM Vice
President John Slitz as Novell's senior vice president of corporate
marketing.=20
Slitz joins the company at the end of this week, while Stone will come on
board Sept. 2, said Novell officials in Orem, Utah.
Both appointments address long-standing problems for Novell--the lack of
marketing and the need for a solid product strategy--that Eric Schmidt
promised to tackle when he became chairman and CEO in April.
Stone said his experience with OMG and its object management structure,
known as CORBA (Common Object Request Broker Architecture), is a natural
fit for Novell's strategy to provide distributed network services.
"I see Novell in the services marketplace with NDS [Novell Directory
Services] and future products using object technology," he said.
Integrating object technology into Novell products such as NDS and
IntranetWare could help the company address opportunities in electronic
commerce and in vertical markets such as financial services and health
care, he said.
Stone also said he sees object technologies being coupled with Java--an
area of expertise for Schmidt, who came to Novell from Sun Microsystems
Inc., the developer of Java.=20
"Eric and I are cut from the same cloth," said Stone, who added that each
brings Internet expertise to Novell. Java and CORBA are the major building
blocks for Novell's development efforts going forward.
But the first order of business for Stone will be helping to develop a
"concise, focused message and strategy" and working on partnerships and
relationships.
"That's the reason I got hired," he said.=20
--- Rohit Khare /// MCI Internet Architecture (BOS) /// khare@mci.net Voice+Pager: (617) 960-5131 VNet: 370-5131 Fax: (617) 960-1009