Novell Not Dumping Netware 113
jerel writes "eWeek describes how Novell will still develop and support NetWare. The eWeek article quotes Bruce Lowry, a top spokesman for Novell as saying, 'The bottom line is no. The whole thing with Linux is an additive thing. We're not dumping NetWare, we're adding Linux.' NetWare 7.0 will allow users to either upgrade to the latest version of the NetWare kernel or move to Linux." I guess this answers any lingering doubts going around.
still relevant. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:still relevant. (Score:5, Insightful)
This would be an Open Source-o-files dream come true if it were true, but IBM probably makes more money off of legacy applications and there hardware products than they would by anything Linux could offer them.
I think its a mistake for Novell to keep Netware around, they should just focus on developing for the linux kernel.
There are plenty of corporations around the world which would still support purchasing and using Netware, so I wouldn't see why they would just flat out trash it. Maybe make some significant modifications, but it wouldn't make sense for any company to throw away something still generating revunue. Novell has been around for sometime which means they're doing something right.
If they continue developing for both platforms the quality of each will suffer.
Disagree. By developing with both, they might just be able to tweak their own product to a dominant force which may not be a good thing should they do so. That would obviously mean after a while they would not need Linux anymore now would they.
======== Article Despite Novell's firm and frequent statements concerning continued development and support for NetWare, discussion of Novell's Linux strategy invariably leads to concern over Novell's NetWare commitment. Let us put those concerns to rest.
Personally I feel Netware is likely to make some major modifications over the next few months in order to tweak Netware into something that may catch the eyes of many businesses. Netware isn't something that we use at home, so I notice that a majority of posters here are a bit blind to Netware, and are rather making odd comments on it. For those who have used it at work, or at school somewhere, you would know it has its pros and cons. With Linux in the mix now, hopefully Novell can make some form of comeback from its mid 90's WOW! phase.
Re:Sort of like AOL- Netscape AND Mozilla (Score:1)
Novell is not.
Ray Noorda headed up Canopy at its beginning, I think. Maybe that is where you are drawing lines of familial relationship.
My thought (Score:5, Insightful)
I can't imagine Novell ever ceasing at least to continue doing hardware support updates for Netware. Novell's biggest attraction in these last few years after WinNT's taken over is that you can install Netware once and train your support staff for it, and then never have to use anything else ever again. It will end that, and screw their corporate reputation, if they suddenly announce "yeah, after now if you want to do new instals, you'll have to learn to use linux." I'm sure most of novell's current customers will migrate to linux all willingly and such, but forcing them to is not at all a smart move by novell.
I mean, Novell's core *base* at this point, or at least it seems from where i'm sitting, is those uber-uber-uber-conservative-purchasing-department situations.. Novell's mostly got mindshare around the people who still consider *NT* unproven. How comfortable would these people be with Novell suddenly offering *only* a new linux-based product?
That said, the linux netware-y thing should rock.
Re:My thought (Score:5, Interesting)
If the core benefits of NetWare existed on a Linux platform, nothing would keep companies from jumping at it. The truth is that many of these things (SALVAGE being my favorite) aren't as mature in any of the competitors yet.
People keep NetWare boxes for a LONG time. That alone is a good reason to maintain their own kernel... it makes it comfortable for when that time does come around to upgrade every 6-10 years.
Re:My thought (Score:1)
For the benefit of myself and maybe other readers here who don't have experience with NetWare could you (or anyone else) please point out what these benefits are? Besides the cost of migrating old NetWare installations to newer solutions, what other reason do people have to still stick with that platform? And if you're feeling really generous then how about listing some cons along with the pros too
Re:still relevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:still relevant. (Score:2)
targeting multiple platforms encourages better software design and uncovers flaws and weaknesses that might get swept under the rug, so to speak, or ignored in a monoculture.
the quality of software which has been ported to a diverse group of compilers / frameworks / runtimes should improve, not suffer.
would it be so much better to restrict system software choice to linux than, say nt? and what about code forks (which are not a problem in the nt world)?
--TRR
Re:still relevant. (Score:3, Insightful)
Most likely they are hedging their bet with the SCO thing. Sure SCO doesn't appear to have a case, TO US! But how often have we been flat out suprised by court decisions? Continuing to develop on both platforms does two things. It makes their business viable should SCO win. They can simply drop Linux and go back to NetWare, and two and more importantly, it makes it look to the stockholder
SCO's suites are Irrelevant (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:SCO's suites are Irrelevant (Score:2)
Dividing resources without making more money (Score:5, Insightful)
They are saying this to try to calm their customers so that they "abandon" netware as slowly as possible, giving Novell time to build up a platform and revenue stream based on Linux.
It is simple business strategy and it is very transparent.
Don't just accept what they say. Read between the lines.
Re:Dividing resources without making more money (Score:1)
Not true as far as I see it. Most of the Novell services will sit on top of netware or linux, this will be the same code. It's just which OS sits underneath that will be different. This is like Oracle running on Linux or Solaris. The only difference being that in Novell's case, one of the OS is in-house.
cjk
Re:Dividing resources without making more money (Score:1)
This is wonderful.
Sir, you obviously belong in the group that doesn't understand binary numbers.
Just the users (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Just the users (Score:3, Funny)
ARRRRGH! (Score:2)
AAAAAAAAAAARRGH!
Sorry, had to share
Re:Just the users (Score:2)
I haven't seen that movie yet!
Shit!!
No brainer. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No brainer. (Score:2)
Yeah, Only Microsoft would do something that stupid (and maybe SCO, but I wouldn't put anything past SCO these days).
I can see their reasoning. (Score:5, Funny)
Novell exec #2: not really. everything we've planned is working out as it should and we're on track to continue that way
Novell exec #1: damn. how about we put a bit more emphasis on linux, just to piss SCO off
Novell exec #2: now you're talking!
Everything is stable?? (Score:2, Informative)
Read Novell's web site, particularly paying attention to their Investor Relations section. There are two places to spend some time: Novell's financial statements over the past five years and their statement of risk factors. (All data quoted here taken from Novell's web site)
Just in the years 2000, 2001 and 2002, Novell has seen no growth in net profit. Novell's income has essentially been flat at ~ $
Re:Everything is stable?? (Score:1)
The real question is, is Novell sinking faster or slower than the larger economy.
In other news... (Score:2, Funny)
"No, no no. You've got it all wrong. We're the ones with that
But SCO said... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:But SCO said... (Score:2)
Not to worry! You still get IPX. :-)
zNetware keeps it simple. (Score:5, Insightful)
Dear Netware, (Score:1, Funny)
It's over, you're just too possessive.
I hope we can stay good friends.
Sincerely,
Novell
UnixWare (Score:5, Informative)
It turned out however, that the Novell sales team only knew how to sell Netware, and Unixware got nowhere. (Wow, that almost rhymes!
After about 5 years they sold the group to HP, to work on HP-UX, which kept them for another 5 years or so, and then closed the site and lay everyone off. (After they successfully ported HP-UX to the Itanium platform). C'est la vie.
Re:UnixWare (Score:1)
Novell just has to get on board and sit down in the captains chair and... make it so.
NetWare is still a solid tool (Score:5, Interesting)
Novell may have allowed themselves to get into a bad situation by not realizing how to combat M$ in the early days, but just as recently as a year or so ago I still knew of a couple of NetWare installations that were used in small POS/Video Rental type places.
More to the point, NetWare has a proven track record and is dead-bang reliable. Sure, it can have glitches and problems during installation, but my experience has been that once NetWare is installed, configured, and running OK, then they just work. And they keep on working. It usually takes a hardware problem to cause a real disruption.
I hated to use NetWare, mostly because I had never used it before and had one customer that required it, and so I had to learn it in order to solve that customer's requirements (now there's a concept, actually listening to and delivering what the customer actually wanted). It was a pain (about 8-1/2 years ago), but it worked, and it did the job it was supposed to do.
So before people start knocking them too badly, sneering at them, or looking down their noses at them, just remember their stability was more like Linux than M$, and once you knew "their way" of doing things you actually COULD make a stable server that didn't HAVE to be rebooted or coddled regularly as part of "preventative maintenance". Which would YOU rather admin? M$ servers? Or NetWare servers?
Re:NetWare is still a solid tool (Score:1)
IMHO, none of our Netware problems couldn't be fixed with a few new servers (okay, easier said than done) or a broader knowledge base. For example, our Groupwise 5.5 server crashed regularly (although it was an old box) -- but since we moved to GW 6.5 (and a new server), it hasn't crashed at all. GW 5.5 had compatibility issues with Outlook (fixed in 6.5).
We're still on Netware 5.x, and we have
They aren't dumping netware? (Score:1, Funny)
I just spent the last day replacing my netware servers with LANtastic!
Re:They aren't dumping netware? (Score:1)
The future for Netware is the past (Score:5, Insightful)
I recently wrote a series of reports for my boss in which I had to make the cases for and against a port of our product (an app server) to Netware. Bear in mind that it was over two years ago now that we decided to discontinue Netware development because sales had dropped through the floor (it was, and still is, available in older versions which we are quite happy to sell and support). Apparently, our sales department discovered that there was still some residual demand which was affecting their commission. The idea was shot down by the board after only a few seconds' reflection - apparently, my boss (Technical Director) didn't even have to present our work on the matter, they just knew it was a daft idea!
Is anyone actually considering picking up Netware development for commercial products? I bet there is not a single one out there. Prove me wrong.
Netware has become a legacy faster than anything I have ever seen - even the mainframe concept will outlive it. Netware is dead, long live Novell.
Whatever you say, Legacy -- I mean Novell, inc. (Score:4, Funny)
Thanks so much to the company that has been so innovative in so many ways, yet is the same company to release quite possibly the most unstable and unreliable NOS client ever in the history of enterprise computing. Thanks for telling us that you're about to blow off what is quite possibly the best-equipped product to do the job you've been claiming to try to do for years while at the same time telling us you're going to continue to support a proprietary product that you're still struggling to really make work with the world's most popular desktop OS. Thanks for letting us know that you're not a forward-thinking organization and that you're not discarding your now-bordering-on-irrelevant past products in favor of the open source future. Thanks for shit-ifying your client to the point that we're forced to use AD. Thanks for 20% (NDS for NT) of my helpdesk calls. Thanks for giving me something other than mainframe to call "legacy". Thanks for being self-destructive, and for keeping me employed, you irrelevant, unimportant, ancient, ack-basswards thinking morons. Oh, and thanks for the inadvertent tip to sell the shares of your company I bought a few days ago.
</drunken post>
Re:Whatever you say, Legacy -- I mean Novell, inc. (Score:2)
If i compare my experiences with other OS/clients, Novell is by far the best ever. The reason they failed was that they targeted the techies instead of the clueless PHBs like Microsoft did.
While Novell was by far superior in all aspects Mic
Novell serious about open source (Score:4, Interesting)
It looks to me like they are using well known open source products to add value to their own proprietary products.
They probably helped with the porting, but it is a smart way of getting great software into the Netware distribution.
Re:Novell serious about open source (Score:2)
Anyone ever notice that these open souce projects don't port well to non-unix systems?
Sure they can make it work...and when next version comes around, they can make it work and so on...but when can the codebase be stable? LAMP on windows is crappy even though there are official ports. It just doesn't integrate like it does on the core platforms (linux/bsd/*nix).
This is a real open-ended thought. Hopefully someone will be able to form it better than I just did. It just bothers me that we expect *nix ports
Wow....good Linux week (Score:5, Insightful)
IBM jumps in and whacks the good old folding chair on SCO's head
Oracle announces it will be a Linux shop through and through, taking all of SCOs threating talk and brushing them off like a runt.
Novell anounces that while it will keep Netware around, there will be a Linux option, further breaking SCO's back with their loss of any credibility.
I think now that almost every major heavy hitter in Industry from Movies to Wall Street is using Linux, in the process of deploying it, or making plans too, billyg must be seriously thinking, do I keep stonewalling or port everything over.
With all the FUD SCO tried to spread, the press releases and news reports throw it right back in their face, the very fact IBM's lawyers put SCO's GPL violations in their complaint validates it all.
ESR may be extreme, he may be a pain in the ass, but the man did make a major contribution to computing and this whole saga deserves to be written in history.
These are good times for the battle tested UNIX/Linux admins out there, it's really hard to be a paper Linux admin(RHCE whatever) and not get called on it, funny thing is most Linux people can do Windows, but they leave that for the help
ESR extreme? (Score:1)
Re:ESR extreme? (Score:1)
Novell jobs (Score:3, Informative)
Some servers were migrated to Netware 4, but NT was on the up.
After the IT jobs crash, you're lucky to even see any Netware skilled jobs available, and if you do, the rate is comical (this also applies to Windows and Cisco though).
Where I am now, we use Win 2000 Server for File and Print and Application serving. It really has been very good. It's been so long since I worked with anything Novell, I can't see why I would want to go down that road again now.
We use Linux for our Trading desktop OS and SUN as a very stable backend. All works very nicely so far.
Us techies can always appreciate a well design OS like Netware, but we also live in the real world....I don't care that F&P services are faster on Netware, I care more about the speed of our network or any other bottleneck of_the_day.
Our core IT policy is dictated by our parent company, you should have heard them when we switched from SUN to Linux (although they have just done the same thing)! You should also hear them laugh if Novell is mentioned....
Good luck Novell, but for me you're out of the running (at least while I'm in this job!).
Its not Netware it eDirectory (Score:4, Interesting)
MS's solution is to go all MS but for most large corporates it isn't possible. Novell can make money integrating diverse platforms for enterprises.
The Ximian purchase is strange in that Ximian is primarily a desktop focused company but for large corporates who want to replace single task workstations for call centres, process workers with Linux and integrate with a larger Windows network then Novell will be able to deliver such a solution.
Cheers
VikingBrad
Interesting.... (Score:1)
I've seen these types of things before, companies mearly jumping on a bandwagon because it happened to pass their house.
Where is Novell heading in the next 5-7years? what are going to be their target market? Where will their network opereating system fit into? high end? small business? anti-Microsoft-and-linux crowd?
If it were ME I would
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1, Insightful)
Well Novell certainly benefits from the investments of SuSE, Red Hat and others by using Linux.
See this is what makes the GPL cool, it keeps the software free and lets everyone cooperate on making the best OS without the fear that anyone can just snag the source and release a closed OS.
What you want back is the fragmentation of the old unix world.
Thankfully most of us and even old unix companies don't want that.
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1)
Unix didn't fragment because people extended upon the specification, Unix fragmented because
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1)
They wouldn't be fearful of GPLing their existing codebase, so they would have used
Re:Interesting.... (Score:1)
NetWare is good (Score:5, Informative)
Mono (Score:3, Interesting)
Novell is horrible for users (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Novell is horrible for users (Score:1)
Anyone remember the old billboard posters... (Score:1)
Time for an update with a dodo on it?
Does anyone remember (Score:1)
Novell is Smart. (Score:3, Insightful)
Legacy products can be very, very profitable. Good call Novell.
Some points (Score:5, Informative)
The only tricky thing is the difference in file system semantics between the Netware way of doing things and the Unix way - in Netware, if you have read access to
This is important, as the Netware model makes a sysadmin's life easier - he can focus on who owns what files, rather than worrying about the directory structure.
However, file systems like XFS allow for extra metadata to be stored, so in theory a user space daemon could provide Netware file semantics on a Unix file system.
Reminiscent of ipx/spx switchout for tcp/ip? (Score:2, Interesting)
Novell ported to Unix before and dropped it (Score:2)
Novell Acquires Ximian (Score:2)
I was just looking around their site for Linux information, and that came up.
I'm very glad to hear that. I've worked with ZENworks in the past, and it's one of the most useful tools for administrating desktops. I can't even estimate the amount of time application distribution saves (from actually installa
Did Novell finally hit something good? (Score:1)
Now it seems they're looking ahead and envisioning a way to reverse that. I think they have a pretty good technical argument if you ask me:
1) Move their valuable software (Netware, NDS, GroupWise, ZenWorks) from a dying platform to one that ha
Re:Why geeks are broke: (Score:1)
The defense rests, your honor.