IBM Takeover Of Novell?

umjaja96 writes: "Reuters is reporting that IBM is rumored to be looking to buy Novell. Perhaps Big Blue is looking to strengthen its mid-range and lower end servers with something not from Redmond?"

Comments

Microsoft to purchase AndoverNet

[codejnki]

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft (NasdaqNM:MSFT - news) and AndoverNet (NasdaqNM:ANDN - news) on Monday declined to comment on rumors that Microsoft was looking to take over the electronic news service company.

Shares of both companys did what is normally expected of over inflated speculative trading.

``We don't comment on rumors,'' said Microsoft CEO Bill Gates.

`Typically we don't comment on these kinds of rumors,'' said Rob Malda creater of the overly popular Slashdot news board.
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"War doesn't determine who's right, just who's left"

Commodity directory services

[IGnatius T Foobar]

If the rumor is true, IBM may be looking to do what we all know Novell needs to do to stay alive, yet doesn't have the guts to do: open-source the Novell Directory. What have they got to lose? Market share? That's trickling away already: Windows NT and Linux are absolutely clobbering Netware in the marketplace. Novell's crown jewels right now are NDS. NDS, a robust, scalable, portable directory service. NDS, a directory that's proven in Fortune 500 installations. NDS, a directory that'll get clobbered once Microsoft Active Directory begins to take hold.

Novell needs to open-source NDS now, before it becomes irrelevant. IBM has the guts to do this, and the bucks to maintain the software as a loss leader to continue to sell services around it. If NDS is open sourced, it will become ubiquitous almost overnight, especially on Linux systems, where it will become the standard directory service. If they choose the GPL, even the Debian folks will adopt it. Imagine being able to write directory-aware applications for Linux, knowing that NDS will always be there.

That's my $0.02, anyway. Personally I think the rumor is bogus.
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Re:Commodity directory services

[Gerdts]

Not everyone at IBM has caught the open source fever-- please don't assume that all code sent to IBM becomes open source. As an example, take a look at what has happened with AFS. Back in the early to mid 90's, IBM bought Transarc thinking that there was going to be a big push for globally distributed file systems.

IBM recognized that AFS had some deficiencies and pushed forward with DCE/DFS. At first, they gave an (official, I think) EOL on AFS along with the migration path to DCE/DFS. Once AFS customers figured out what they needed to do with DCE/DFS to make it work as well as AFS already worked, they cried foul and encouraged IBM to alter its product plans.

IBM changed their tune, saying that AFS would be supported in the future, and AFS 3.5 came out on short order. It improved file server performance by over 3 times! Meanwhile, DCE has been open sourced (or something similar, I forget) by the OSF and IBM seems to have forgotten about DFS after their big '96 olympics web site replication with DFS was met with a big "so?".

As of late, though, IBM has determined that there is not money in distributed file systems. They have shifted their "development" to India, and declared AFS to be in "maintenance only mode". [Thread 1] [Thread 2]

As such, AFS currently uses Kerberos IV. Pretty much every site that is serious about AFS has licensed the source and patched it for Kerberos V. This patch has been going around for at least 5 years, yet IBM has been unable to integrate it. Even worse yet, look how they have approached security bugs in Linux 2.2.14.

It would make a lot of sense for AFS to be open sourced, but they are making no moves in that direction. I suspect that a similar fate awaits NDS, should IBM get their hands on it. Then again, maybe the leftovers from Transarc and Novell could get together and come up with a Kerberos V implementation for both products.

Novell has hot code

[JCCyC]

1) NDS, already talked about.

2) The filesystem. It kicks ass, and reached its splendor in 3.12. From then on, it had to share CPU cycles & memory with NDS, but still was obscenely fast. Nothing, I tell you, NOTHING running on i386 ever matched the performance of a NetWare file server. NFS is a joke, Windows networking is a joke, Samba (although crucial for interoperability) is the emulation of a joke. I'd hate to see that code go up in smoke as Novell finally dies.

Netware was a peculiar beast. There were about 5 or 6 different pools of memory allocation, with different management and different use, which you had to fine-tune for maximum performance. A sizeable chunk of the manual was dedicated just for that.

Ok, that's enough nostalgia rant tonight. Now I really gotta sleep. Bye.

Novell

[ackthpt]

Every day that goes by that I haven't heard the demise of this venerable, one-time leader, I'm amazed. IBM must want their office space...

Vote Naked 2000

Looks like a big marketing problem

[CaptainSuperBoy]

Netware is a fine OS, even if you don't hear that much about it any more. It does what you want it to do reliably and quickly if you know what you're doing and know how to set it up. The problem is that Novell has always had marketing problems and has run into trouble getting their customers' requirements right. This is apparent when you look at their early attempts at supporting TCP/IP and the internet.

IBM is another company not known for being able to market great products.. look no further than OS/2, which beat Windows 3.1 in EVERY way except software compatibility at the time WARP was released.. it didn't catch on though, due in part to IBM's poor marketing.

Maybe it's just me, but I see problems when two companies which have trouble selling great products think of getting together.

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Re:hmm...

[Snard]

Wonder how Novell could complement Big Blue to justify a buy-out....

I think that red goes very nicely with blue, don't you?

Re:Why?

[um... Lucas]

They could just like Novell for the fact that it's Novell... Do what they did with Lotus and buy them up, and continue their businesses as they were previously, but be able to add Novell networks as another thing they do under their services operation... And since they would be the owners of Novell, who would be to argue that they aren't the largest source of Netware expertise?

So far as caldera and SCO goes... SCO's much more scalablet than Linux, sorry it's true. SCO's got a large installed base. Even if they can't integrate all of SCO's code into their products, they can learn quite a bit by it, enough to fold into their internal developement in an attempt to get a leg up on Redhat, et al... But mostly for the name and the installed base, is my bet...

It's a deal that should have happened already.

[jht]

Novell brings a couple of things to the table. First, of course, is NetWare. Still the fastest pure file/print solution out there, with pretty good Java servlet capability bolted on. Then, there's the crown jewel - NDS. NDS is already highly portable, can manage users on Unix and Windows, and can be used to manage desktops very nicely. NDS can be extended to almost anything, and unlike MS Active Directory, NDS has over 8 years of development (and live users) behind it.

IBM has systems available all over the map - from Intel PC servers running Windows or Linux, to RS/6000 systems with AIX, to AS/400 and S/390 minis and mainframes. NDS could help them tie this picture together better. And they own Lotus - which could benefit nicely from better NDS integration.

Not to mention that IBM has done a nice job with Lotus - sure, 1-2-3/SmartSuite is toast, but they've done a terrific business with Notes, and still have a substantial lead over Microsoft in the category.

It's a good fit for IBM, good technology, and a chance to get one of the few missing pieces in IBM's technology arsenal for a cheap price. IBM could buy Novell with pocket change. I'm surprised this deal didn't happen a year ago.

- -Josh Turiel