By Dave Kearns
Errors and omissions sometimes creep into these newsletters.
Most of the time the errors are minor and don't change the
conclusion. But to anyone noticing them, they can be jarring,
they can disrupt your train of thought and they can cause the
reader to stop and ask, "Well, what else did he get wrong?" When
that happens, and when a few of you point out the error, I try
to make a point of correcting it. Two recent newsletters had
factual errors that, while not important in terms of the topic
or conclusion, did cause some readers to take the time to tell
me about them. So it's important to issue corrections.
A couple of weeks ago, I was talking about the correspondence
that Blum Capital Partners, a major investor in Novell stock,
had with the board of directors in which Blum made suggestions
for improving Novell's bottom line. In that newsletter, I said
that Blum recommended that Novell "sell or spin off Celerant
Consulting, the British firm recently acquired by Novell," and
that Novell also "sell or spin off Cambridge Technology
Partners, the consulting firm which - in effect - acquired
Novell a few years ago since most of the upper management now in
place at Novell came from CTP."
The factual error has to do with the consulting firms' names.
"Celerant" is the name now used by what used to be Cambridge
Technology Partners. The British consultant firm acquired by
Novell was Salmon, LLC. I apologize for the error, but the
thrust of the paragraph - that Blum suggested Novell divest
itself of both companies - doesn't change.
A couple of people also quibbled with my statement that "most of
the upper management now in place at Novell came from" CTP. More
than one person told me that only 6 of the 14 people on Novell's
"Worldwide Management Committee" have roots
with CTP. The quibble here is what constitutes "upper
management." A number of the people on that committee have
little to do with company-wide management. They are, generally,
former executives of company's that Novell has acquired since
the CTP takeover. Some others who came along with CTP
(especially in the sales organization) have recently departed.
But I still hold the opinion that a majority of the people with
company-wide oversight came from CTP. This amounts, in my mind,
to a difference of opinion rather than a factual discrepancy.
And, in any case, it's not actually germane to the discussion of
Blum Capital's suggestions.
Last week's error was purely factual, but again had no direct
impact on the conclusions drawn. In talking about the reluctance
of many people to upgrade operating systems every time a new one
is released, I referred to both Windows NT 5 and Windows 2000.
These are, of course, one and the same. The operating system
released as Windows 2000 was known as "NT 5" during much of its
beta test phase. In fact, the released product still identifies
itself internally as "NT 5." Still, anything that causes the
reader to get pulled out of the conversation, to pull them up
short, saying "can that be right?" is a problem. I apologize for
that.
Now lest you think that I'm the only one who makes mistakes in
NetWare/Novell stories, there was a big flap last week which, on
closer inspection, is only a tempest in a teapot. We'll talk
about that next time.
The top 5: Today's most-read stories
1. How to solve Windows system crashes in minutes
2. Nortel faces uphill battle 3. Cisco pushes new security software 4. Verizon CTO lays out next-gen network plans 5. Next-gen net seen at a crossroads To contact Dave Kearns:
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's
written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print
"Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be
found here.
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