Can he save Novell?
By Margie Wylie
Staff Writer, CNET NEWS.COM

Looking at Schmidt's credentials, it's no surprise that Novell was thrilled he took the job. For 11 of his nearly 14 years at Sun, Schmidt oversaw nearly every software division of the company, including most recently, its networking arm.

But in 1994, after years of deadlines, late nights, and indigestion, Schmidt, at the tender age of 39, attained a distinction many engineers and scientists work a lifetime for: chief technology officer. As CTO, Schmidt was in charge of "strategy," research, and vision. Still, after a couple of years in a position some people would consider the best job in the world, Schmidt seemed frankly at a loss as to what to do with himself. "I'm CTO," Schmidt said in an interview with NEWS.COM late last year. "Sometimes I think that stands for chief talking officer or chief traveling officer."

Schmidt seems more a doer than a talker. The Beach Boys promise of California sun lured Schmidt from native Virginia to the San Francisco Bay Area for a post-graduate degree, where he later joined Sun Microsystems in the early 1980s. At the company's energetic young campus, which often bore more resemblance to a frat house than a business in those days, Schmidt managed a Sun software division and was the brunt of Sun's first two now-legendary April Fool's pranks. It was in Schmidt's office that the original pranksters assembled a VW Bug during the wee hours of the night.

Those days, however, are gone at Sun, where each year's prank appears successively more staged than the last. And now, Schmidt will be showing a deadly serious side as he takes on Novell. Once the undisputed king of the network and the start-up that dared beat Microsoft out of an entire category of the computing industry, Novell is faltering. Stock prices that soared and repeatedly split in the late 1980s are today hovering at the abysmal price an Internet IPO might expect (somewhere around $8 per share at this writing). After a disastrous series of acquisitions and then divestments, plus the relentless competition from Microsoft Windows NT, Novell is still standing, though on shaky legs.

Last week the company laid off 15 percent of its European workforce and may this week announce a layoff of up to 20 percent of its domestic employees, according to a Computer Reseller News report. If it's a challenge Schmidt wanted, it looks like he's gotten it.

NEWS.COM interviewed Eric Schmidt earlier this month about his jump to Novell and his aspirations for the company. We also picked his brain about his life while he was still at Sun and have included video clips from that interview.

You were at Sun for over 13 years and had risen to the position of chief technology officer. Why take a job with a struggling company a lot of people have written off as a has-been?
Schmidt: Because I obviously don't agree with that view. Novell is a company that is very well-positioned to be a leader in network services. For me personally, I had worked at Sun for almost 14 years, loved Sun, loved working for Scott [McNealy], but frankly I'd done all the things I could think of doing at Sun. I wanted to work in network services, and here's the biggest company in that space that could actually use me.

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