Editing Novell (section)

====Corporate ethos and "coopetition"====
[[Image:Novell Building F in Provo 1994.jpg|thumb|right|Novell's Building F in Provo in 1994, part of a large complex of Novell buildings once there, with the Wasatch Range in the background]]

By early 1985, Novell was rapidly expanding, but many people were still unaware of either it or the role that local area networks could play, and consequently Noorda referred to Novell as "the most misunderstood company in the world."<ref name="DH_Orem_1995"/> Nonetheless, in 1986 ''[[The Salt Lake Tribune]]'' was hailing Novell as another Utah success story in technology, likely to follow in the footsteps of [[Evans & Sutherland]] and [[Iomega]].<ref name="SLT_success_1986"/> Novell was quickly outgrowing its original site in Orem, with some employees forced to work in trailers.<ref name="DH_Orem_1995"/> A new, much larger site for the company was found in nearby [[Provo, Utah]] and construction was begun; by late 1986, employees were moving into the first building there while work on a second building was already underway.<ref name="DH_Provo_1996"/> Eventually between 1986 and 1993 six buildings would be constructed for Novell's use there.<ref name="SLT_buildings_2012"/>

{{Quote box
 |quote  = We don't even have an industry; we have to build an industry.
 |author = Ray Noorda, 1985
 |source = <ref name="Book_Noorda_quote"/>
 |align  = left
}}

Under Noorda, Novell embraced the notion of "[[coopetition]]", or cooperative competition.<ref name="Fortune_battle_1993"/> The central idea was that whatever was good for networking in general would be good for Novell and took the form of encouraging the growth of an ecosystem composed of hundreds of suppliers of hardware and software networking products, even if some of those suppliers had products that competed with Novell's.<ref name="NYT_Noorda_1992"/><ref name="Fortune_battle_1993"/> [[3Com]], who had been an early competitor of Novell's,<ref name="NYT_Noorda_1992"/> sold more instances of their [[Ethernet]] networking cards for use in conjunction with NetWare than they did for use with their own [[3+Share]] network operating systems, and a similar situation existed for IBM and their [[Token Ring]] cards.<ref name="PCM_NetWare386_1989"/> It was due to this kind of industry vision that Noorda would become known as the "Father of Network Computing".<ref name="ST_Noorda_obit"/>

From the first years of the new Novell's success, Noorda was credited in the press with forging that path.<ref name="SLT_success_1986"/> The company reflected aspects of Noorda's personal background, such as his [[LDS Church|Mormon religion]], which brought about what was termed "the Mormon work ethic" at Novell.<ref name="NYT_Noorda_1992"/> As one account later put it, Novell was "reputedly staffed with lots of hard-selling but soft-drinking Mormons."<ref name="Reg_Peaked_2013"/> Noorda himself was famous for his frugal ways and for working from a plain, small office.<ref name="BW_Noorda_1991"/><ref name="NYT_Noorda_1992"/>

In 1989 senior executives Craig Burton and Judith Clarke, whom many credited for much of Novell's past success, left Novell.<ref name="IW_craigjudith_1989"/> Burton had been seen as Noorda's most likely successor while Judith Clarke had been instrumental in marketing and positioning Novell.<ref name="IW_craigjudith_1989"/><ref name="Searls_2012"/>

In April 1990, Novell and [[Lotus Development Corporation]] announced merger of equals based on a $1.5-billion [[stock swap]] that would have been the largest deal in the software industry to that time.<ref name="LAT_Lotus_1990"/> But it collapsed the following month: when Lotus head [[Jim Manzi]] refused to give Novell an equal number of seats on the new board,<ref name="LAT_Lotus_1990"/> Noorda pulled out shortly before the deal would have been completed.<ref name="BW_Noorda_1991"/>

At its high point around 1993, NetWare had a roughly two-thirds share of the market for network operating systems;<ref name="Fortune_battle_1993"/><ref name="Age_forsale_2000"/> one analysis put the figure at 63 percent.<ref name="Proven_2013"/> There were over half a million NetWare-based networks installed worldwide<ref name="CCIE_2003"/> and some 55 million NetWare users on those networks.<ref name="NYT_Frankenberg_1996"/><!-- I've seen higher figures for the number of networks, but the "Fortune_battle_1993" source places the market size at 10s M users and 100s K networks, so these figures would seem to fit --> And networking itself was the fastest-growing segment of the computer market,<ref name="NYT_Noorda_1992"/> increasing by 30 percent a year and reaching a $10 billion figure by 1993.<ref name="Fortune_battle_1993"/> Novell was the second largest maker of software for personal computers, trailing only Microsoft.<ref name="NYT_Readies_1995"/> Novell's employee base, which had been around 15 when Noorda joined, had risen to 4,335 by the end of 1993.<ref name="10K_1993"/> Besides Utah, Novell continued to grow in San Jose,<ref name="DN_Provo_1998"/> where many of the sales, marketing, product management, and executive functions were located.