Ray Noorda (1924 - 2006)

Ray Noorda died today (here). At 82 years old, he lived a full life and certainly created a lot of value for himself and his community in Utah. I only got to meet Ray once at a Novell analyst meeting when I was back at META Group. He seemed like a nice guy, but I must admit to being a bit starstruck as a 24 year old kid meeting the CEO of the biggest company in my space.

Of course, Ray will be remembered as the architect of the strategy that resulted in Microsoft steamrolling Novell in the Network Operating System space basically into oblivion. But that would be a shame because it was Ray and his team that really drove Local Area Networks into mass markets, which led to the networking of the world and set the stage for the Internet.

To give a feel for the scale of Ray's impact, Novell still does hundreds of millions of dollars a year in RENEWAL business on those NetWare licenses. This is basically 7-8 years after NetWare lost the NOS battle to Microsoft's Windows NT. Talk about a cash cow...

I personally will always have a fond place in my heart (yes, contrary to popular belief - I actually have a heart) for NetWare. I was on the volunteer LAN support team at my first job at American Management Systems and that's where I first learned about NetWare.

I was able to parlay that minimal bit of LAN knowledge into a job doing network consulting with Ernst & Young. At E&Y I earned my CNE, which is a pretty valuable certification nowadays. Then I joined META because of my expertise in LANs and network computing applications, and the rest is history.

So I may come down pretty hard on Novell because of their actions today, but in no way, shape, or form will I ever minimize their role in building the networks of yesterday, which set the stage for the interconnected global web of today.

We all owe a debt of gratitude to Ray Noorda for having a big hand in creating the industry that pays all of our mortgages. Godspeed Ray and enjoy the next phase of your journey.