A friend of mine died the other day. A friend of mine, and a friend of yours, too. You may never have met Ray Noorda, never have seen him speak or read anything he wrote. Heck, you may never have been in the same state as him at any time. But if you've used NetWare, then Ray Noorda was your friend.
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He came to Novell (oddly enough at the behest of his friend Jack Messman) in 1983. It was his job to turn around this 17-strong employee "enterprise" that was making computer terminals and printers. He did it by contracting with four bright Brigham Young University graduates, who later became known as "SuperSet", to create the resource-sharing system that became NetWare. By the time he left Novell in 1995, the company employed 12,000 employees.
In the obituary published in the Salt Lake Tribune, it was reported that Ray's son Brent Noorda, said: "In my memory, Dad was always president of one company or another. As a kid, I didn't know what this meant, so I asked, 'What does a president do?' Dad said, 'A president is the guy who sticks around to empty the trash after everyone else has gone home.'''
And that was how I first came across the man many of us called "Uncle Ray."
It was 1986 and I was a relatively new network manager. I'd just installed a new server (Advanced NetWare 1.0), was attaching new diskless terminals (from Santa Clara Systems, a company later acquired by Novell) and ran into a problem - the terminals couldn't find the server. So I called the NetWare help line in Provo. It must have been around 7 p.m. in Utah, and the man who answered the phone didn't sound like a first line help desk tech. I explained the problem and he, well sympathetic, told me he didn't know enough to help but that, if I'd stay on the line a minute or two, he would find someone to help me.
The next voice I heard was that of Kyle Powell, the SuperSet guy who, along with Drew Major and Dale Neibauer, created NetWare. Kyle knew the client part and was able to quickly talk me through the proper set-up. Later that year, at the annual Developers' Conference, the precursor to BrainShare, I learned who Powell was and sought him out to thank him for taking the time to help me. That's when he told me who had answered the phone. As he put it, when the guy who signs your paycheck says, "Take this call," you just do it.
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 at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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