Is this how Novell treats its customers?
Technology companies are generally quick to publicly announce and highlight their customer wins. But in what strikes me as a first, Novell has publicized a customer loss, announcing to the world that the City of Los Angeles dropped it for Google Apps, including Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Docs.
Google recently announced the City of Los Angeles as its latest high-profile customer win for Google Apps, one that reflects growing momentum for the cloud-computing giant's enterprise business. Until Novell's announcement, I had no idea that Los Angeles had dumped Novell GroupWise in favor of Google Apps, and suspect few others did, either.
Novell, however, attacks Los Angeles' decision, arguing "The City of Los Angeles should have opted for this proven product [GroupWise] to ensure the security of its data and to save taxpayer money. They have taken a risk with no reward."
Translation? "We think Los Angeles is run by a bunch of fools who aren't smart enough to know what's good for them."
This is no way to treat customers.
It's not made any better with this throwaway line: "However, as a valued customer, Novell will continue to offer our world-class support to the City of Los Angeles during the transition."
Well, that's comforting, but given that it comes at the tail end of Novell publicly excoriating its "valued customer," it's doubtful that LA will linger long with such a "valued vendor."
This isn't the Novell that I know. I used to work for Novell, and have never seen the company publicly criticize a customer, not even for defection, of which Novell has seen plenty over the last decade.
It's unclear who Novell is hoping to persuade with the announcement, or what benefit it hopes to derive from it. Is it trying to stem a tide of customers dropping GroupWise for Google Mail? If so, why has it not done the same for all the companies (and there have been plenty) leaving GroupWise for Microsoft Exchange or IBM Notes/Domino?
In fact, the only companies that benefit from this kind of customer abuse are IBM and Microsoft, because Novell slams Google Mail's alleged security and cost deficiencies, without them having to sully their hands with the negative marketing. It certainly won't endear Novell to the City of Los Angeles or to its other customers.
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
As a very high profile example, consider Boeing tankers for the Air Force.
Sometimes this is done to get read for an appeal. Sometimes this is to save face after a public loss, since other customers may be looking at the bid results.
They didn't slam LA they simply defended the merits of their product. I doubt LA is surprised in the least.
In more aggressive cases, vendors do in fact "attack" the deciding body, as in, "We don't believe the committee correctly applied its decision criteria" or "The committee ignored relevant factors such as the long-term maintenance costs of the bridge design."
The public sector is a different animal, and many vendors behave in a manner that would be considered outrageous for interacting with Corporate customers.
You should, I dunno, real cnet or something: http://news.cnet.com/8301-27080_3-10384433-245.html is just the most recent article about the plans for Los Angeles to move from Novell to Google...and that was days ago, which is an age in Internet time...
As others have made clear, there's been a lot of coverage on the LA decision. We felt we had to correct some of the erroneous comments that have been made.
We specifically needed to address the security and cost issues. We do not feel anyone is a fool, but we do think there's been a lot of misinformation. We're not alone thinking this - as we stated in the post, these issues were raised by the LA Police Department, the City Administrative Officer, and others.
Ian Bruce/Novell.
But, I digress.
Anyrate, to Ian: Seriously, dude. Get a grip. You lost one. No big deal.
Why am I hearing the Imperial March in my head?
;-)
State and Local governments can be incredibly difficult to work for, especially if some of the players are powerful and unwilling to abide by the contract. Do not kid yourself into thinking they will not look for ways to make life difficult for Google with an ultimate goal of causing the contract to be rescinded. Unfortunatley, petty politics too often trumps techical excellence.
I wish Google good luck.
So you worked at Novell? Given the chip on your shoulder, I'd guess things didn't work
out for you there.
Novell has always had strong products, and the ****-poorest marketing in the tech industry. They went from about 90% of the network OS market to the 5 or 10% they now have. Microsoft, with inferior products (I mean specifically NT Server 3.51 and 4.0) but with truly great marketing, took much of that market away from Novell. The rest they lost to Linux. Netware was never impervious to attacks, but it had a much smaller attack surface than other network OSes. Novell has made a 15-year series of business and marketing blunders.
I'm transitioning away from Novell, after 21 years of using Netware. Not because I want to, but because Novell no longer gives me any reason to remain their customer. In fact, a year ago as my School License Agreement expired, I could not get a sales rep to call me back to arrange renewal. This kind of disregard for customers is more damaging than the public attacks on Los Angelos.
Well I'll tell you one set of people that thought this was a good idea - existing GroupWIse customers.
Far from not being a way to treat customers, many of us are very pleased that Novell have stood up to some of the ludicrously misinformed statements that have been made about the City of Los Angelese GroupWise system and the unquestioning rep[eating of these statements by lazy IT journalists that can't be bothered doing any proper research on a story.
If anything Novell's posting was very restrained given some of the things which have been said, but it is good to see them stand up for themselves for once.
- by pentest November 2, 2009 7:25 AM PST
- Novell is right.
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(19 Comments)Foolish doesn't even begin to describe the organization that uses any Google apps.