Paul Kapustka's Blog

October 10, 2006

Ray Noorda, NetWare's leader, RIP

As a onetime Novell beat reporter allow me to add my condolences to the family of Ray Noorda over the passing of one of networking's true business legends. While he didn't always make the right decisions, Noorda will no doubt be remembered by many for his efforts to build the interconnected local-area networking industry, which forever destroyed the big-iron thinking that previously dominated computing.

Noorda, who struggled with Alzheimer's disease in the later years of his life (a condition that reportedly contributed to the management problems of his venture-investment group), had earlier led Novell from a bankrupt idea to a networking powerhouse with its flagship NetWare software.

But Novell, whose IPX/SPX protocols once dominated corporate LANs, ran into significant competition both from Microsoft (with its Windows NT networking products) and the Internet itself, with its unstoppable open-standards TCP/IP protocol base. Novell's efforts to embrace the Internet (ah, who can forget NetWareNFS or UnixWare?) suffered from both internal and external competition, and (like Noorda's purchase of WordPerfect for a Microsoft office-apps alternative) never made it to prime time.

From a personal standpoint, Noorda was easily one of the most approachable and affable executives, not a small attribute to be remembered for in this era of outsized egos and over-important CEOs.

Posted by paul at 10:20 AM | Comments (0)