Novell Inc, the world's fifth largest software major, has marked India as an important growth area for its global operations with contributions from its joint venture company, Onward Novell Software (India). Onward Novell had posted a turnover of Rs 90 crore in 1997-98.
"In the wake of the Asian crisis, India has been one country which has substantially over-achieved its targets," Nick Jackson, director (business development), Asia-Pacific, Novell, said.
This is likely to force Novell to rethink its earlier decision to reduce its budget allocation for India. Novell had pared its overall exposure to south-east Asian countries such as Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which have fared badly due to the economic crisis in the region.
Novell will step up its Indian operations through Onward Novell, a 50:50 joint venture with Onward Technologies. "The broad plan includes giving a special thrust, apart from its network operating software, in four categories," said Jackson.
Management and operating tools such as `Zen' (zero-effort network, a desk-top management tool), `Border Manager', `GroupWise & ManageWise' and `Novell Directory Services' will be given added thrust locally.
"We will focus on Novell Directory Services (NDS) for Windows NT, Sun Solaris, IBM AIX & MVS and others," Jackson said. "Novell's international strategy of broadbasing its activities through license-growth will be replicated in India," he said. This will ensure sales growth of Novell products through bundling schemes which in turn will provide value added services to other systems.
"Our objective is to develop and manage a multi-vendor heterogeneous environment," Jackson said. "This is part of Novell's open solution architecture (OSA) initiative under which the company will provide all tools and interface to write to network in different software scripts," he said.
The recently launched Netware 5.0 version operating system will be available in India from October 1998, and will be loaded with Zen providing multi-functionality for workstation management and administration.
"The technology gap between Windows NT and Novell is set to reduce in the days to come; already Novell network operating systems support more than 80 million users world-wide. This will stem the strides made by Windows NT," Jackson claimed. "Novell will also emerge as a strong player working with Java Enterprise applications," he added. The network of Novell Authorised Service Centres' hardware certification programmes will be expanded throughout the country in the next few months.
