Ray Noorda, one of networking's foremost pioneers, died Monday at his home in Orem Utah. He was 82. I interviewed Ray many times in the late eighties and early nineties when Novell NetWare, which utterly dominated PC networking, had a full head of steam. Ray, as everyone called him, was a visionary and helped give rise to bustling tech community in the greater Salt Lake area. He was also a humble man who wanted to create jobs for people. And he did - 12,000 of them at Novell's zenith.
Ray was also an innovator. He sold network servers and cards at a loss to create the hardware infrastucture ripe for his more profitable software. He also created a robust network of Novell resellers, ergo folks who sold, installed and supported NetWare. A lot of people I know got rich off what Novell created. NetWare ruled and Microsoft, Novell's arch nemesis, stumbled several times before it got traction in networking. Novell's undoing came when Noorda tried to take Microsoft head on by buying Unix, Wordperfect and other products to broaden the networking portfolio. He and his senior executives, some of them second rate, could never tie them together into a coherent story that would pose a serious threat to the Microsoft monopoly.Novell for many years was synomous with Utah so it is ironic that today, a shell of its former self is headquartered across the street from EB in Waltham, Mass. Ray Noorda created a fabulously successful enterprise and technology. He was on top for many years and fell victim to changing times.
