A vision for an industry: Novell's Ray Noorda speaks out on Utah's information technologies industry.

• Author: Bullinger, Cara M.
• Position: Interview

A Vision for an Industry

Editor's Note: Ray Noorda, CEO and president of Novell, is now chairman of the Utah Information Technologies Industry Association (UITA). Utah Business interviewed him to find out what his goals are for the association - and what his vision is of this emerging industry which has put Utah on the map. Novell just reaffirmed its own committment to Utah with the additional purchase of land in Provo - eventual expansion of the company's headquarters there could bring the employment total to 4,500 jobs.

UB: As the new chairman of UITA, what are your goals for the organization?

Noorda: To me, UITA represents the starting point of giving real recognition to the value of the state as a supplier of major computer products which truly enhance the education process. In my view, on a per capita basis I believe the state is well prepared at the secondary and university levels to provide high technology graduates as any place in the world. It's just a tremendous resource of well-trained, highly motivated people. We've found that in our own company, there just isn't a better resource for good, young people coming into the industry than there is in Utah.

I came from California: there's a vast resource of people there, but they're different in the fact that in California they have a wide variety of opportunities to look at; but in Utah it's been rather few. Look at my own personal experience when I first came on at Novell - although I'm a Utah native, I hadn't been in the state for 35 years and continued to believe that the opportunities for growing a company here were rather limited. So my first request was that we move the company to California. But I determined rather quickly that wouldn't work - no one wanted to move.

Then I discovered that I might begin to enjoy my return here myself!

The information technologies industry provides an opportunity, I think, to minimize the exodus of highly talented and trained people from the state. There's no reason for people to move out of the state now except for experience.

UB: Do people no longer have to move out of state to obtain work experience?

Noorda: To get experience, many times people would move out of the state because there wasn't anyplace in the state to get the experience. Back in 1949 when I graduated from college, there just weren't any jobs in the state. So I left and probably didn't expect to come back.

But now, the job opportunities in Utah have changed a lot - from...