Novell's dilemma is eerily similar to that of Microsoft and the stories they tell bear a resemblance as well. Both companies also send jobs overseas -- cost savings being the main motive -- but they don't make as much noise about it as lame and unsubstantiated excuses.
Novell's lagging position in the messaging and collaboration market
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That said, many (including me) talk about Novell’s lagging position in the messaging and collaboration market behind Microsoft and IBM, the defection of GroupWise customers to other platforms, etc. If Novell is lagging behind its competitors, why is that the case?
It's a difficult management challenge, and it's one I broached during a conversation last week with Ron Hovsepian, the CEO of Novell. Hovsepian said that in the past year, he has had to replace 24% of his workers to gain the skills Novell needs.
"One thousand of our 4,000 employees are new to Novell," he said. "Candidly, among all the good revenue stories and the profit improving, people don't realize how much we've really gone in and changed our workforce to get the right skills here."
When I asked Hovsepian why he didn't retrain his employees instead, he said Novell "absolutely retrained the ones that we felt had the right aptitude and the right capabilities," and he stressed that his company continues to invest in training. But the reality is that companies often don't have the luxury of the time it takes to retrain.
