Kill Novell! Allchin fingers the real competition

MS on Trial Jim Allchin, whose job these days is to pilot Windows 2000 into harbour, was a key Microsoft figure in the Caldera case email chains, and was seriously worried about Novell. On 9 September 1991, he emailed Bill Gates: "We must slow down Novell. ... As you said Bill, it has to be dramatic ... We need to slaughter Novell before they get stronger." Allchin was not generous enough of spirit to express any admiration for Novell publicly, but in an internal email on 26 March 1993 he produced a ringing endorsement: "I still don't think we take them as serious as is required of us to win. This isn't IBM. "These guys are really good; they have an installed base; they have a channel; they have marketing power; they have good products. and they want our position. They want to control the APIs, middleware, and as many desktops as they can in addition to the server market they already own. We need to start thinking about Novell as the competitor to fight against - not in one area of our business, but all of them. If you want to get serious about stopping Novell, we need to start understanding this is war-nothing less. That's how Novell views it. We better wake up and get serious about them or they will eventually find a way to hurt us badly." ® Next section: The incompatibility card Back to start