--Jay 11:31, August 29, 2007 (PDT)
Avi--nice work on the article. Here is some feedback that I think could make it better:
- careful with the grammar of the first sentence--the "it" you're referring to should be modifying "Novell", not "the fact that Novell"
- spell check. best thing is to probably copy and paste into Word
- what is Enterprise 2.0? either explain or remove... sounds kind of catch-phrasy
Company Overview
- Please explain what "enterprise infrastructure software" is in 1 sentence.
- Not crazy about the "mistress" analogy
- The Open Source paragraph is nice and clear...
- Would be helpful to see a comparison of multiple years in the table you have. Quarterly data is good if there are interesting trends but often trends can be confounded with seasonality (e.g., many retailers make half of all sales during the holiday season post-Thanksgiving). 3-4 years of data is better, I think, to how well the company has performed. Also, a stacked bar chart may make it easier to consume the software vs. service revenue trend
- Would be powerful to see a chart illustrating the following: "Novell has seen revenue drop by 1% every year for five years, and has only posted a profit once in the last six..." Also, I thought that software companies were typically super high margin--why is Novell the exception? Have they dropped prices significantly over time or something?
- Can you include a pie chart of revenue by major products and services?
Software Licenses
- What is the breakout of sales and growth for the other kinds of software it sells? Are they meaningful or negligible at this point? For instance, I can understand that the company is dependent on the virtualization trend but is it primarily b/c it enables more companies to run Novell operating systems or is it b/c it will lead directly to increased sales of their own virtualization software? Do they compete head-to-head with VMware Inc. (VMW)?
Customers
- who are their major customers? Do they specialize in any industries such that a downturn in telecom, for instance, would spell doom for Novell's sales?
Trends and Forces
- Is Novell really "cutting-edge" if its sales have been flat for 5 yrs?
- Can you give an example of virtualization and the Vista effect? Sounds like NOVL caters to enterprise customers only (i.e., big companies). The current explanation sounds more geared to end consumers or individuals
- The phrasing/presentation of the Microsoft partnership sounds too editorialized for a Neutral article... I'm not sure that the business driver was to "keep its enemies closer" rather than increasing sales of SUSE by bundling with a top incumbent software provider. This section could a bit of organization. Also, any data on how much the partnership has meant in terms of sales or % revenue contribution to NOVL?
- Can you clarify the relationship dynamics between the Open Source standards/community and NOVL? Making money from open sources is viable but tricky--I think this section could be clearer for the average joe reader
- Indirect Sales section should probably go under Company Overview... not really a Trend/Force in my mind.
- What other Trends/Forces are affecting this company? Are they making forays into any particular international regions? Are there hardware trends (e.g., the adoption of "thin clients") that may drive Novell's business? Are they heavily involved in enterprise server technology? I know servers have been hot in recent years--is it slowing down or continuing to accelerate?
Competition
- This section seems kind of generic right now, a laundry list of enterprise software companies. Some datapoints that would really help flesh out the story:
1) Linux market share vs. Windows; also trend over time. Need to make sure that this addresses the enterprise market--where Linux has made significant inroads--and not consumer, where Linux penetration is miniscule.
2) Novell's market share of Linux. They own the rights to UNIX, I think, which to my best understanding is a big deal. There are some significant lawsuits going on right now around the intellectual property of UNIX. Need to address this.
3) Market share of virtualization software, if applicable
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