Ray Noorda
SALT LAKE CITY (AP) _ Ray Noorda, the Novell Inc. founder who battled
Microsoft Corp. in the early years of network computers, died Monday of
complications from Alzheimer's disease. He was 82.
Noorda, the so-called Father of Network Computing, had suffered from
Alzheimer's for years and died at his home in Orem, 35 miles south of
Salt Lake City, according to a statement from family members.
He became chief executive of Novell in 1983 and made it a software
powerhouse, dominating the market for products that manage corporate
networks and let individual computers share files and printers. But
Microsoft caught up by the mid-1990s.
Noorda, whom Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates once called the "grumpy
grandfather" of technology, was bitter over Novell's failure to check
Microsoft's power. He tried branching out in the early 1990s by
investing in the Unix operating system, the WordPerfect word processor
and other products to compete with dominant Microsoft products.
But those efforts failed, and Novell went into a decline from which it
has yet to fully recover. Noorda retired from Novell in 1995 to open The
Canopy Group, a capital venture firm.
More recently, Novell has turned to developing software for the Linux
operating system, trimmed jobs and moved headquarters to Waltham, Mass.,
although it still keeps some operations in Provo, Utah.
