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Is Novell Doomed?
man_of_mr_e asks: "I recently had a bit of an epiphany, and wondered what other Slashdot readers think. It occurred to me that we haven't heard much from Novell regarding either Linux or the recent anti-trust developments. I began to wonder why. Then it hit me: Novell is doomed no matter what happens. With the exception of NDS, Novell has very little technology that makes sense in a Linux environment, and even NDS is losing ground to LDAP based solutions. So, Novell finds itself in the unusual position of hoping that MS wins its anti-trust appeals, since Linux could very well make Netware irrelevant.
On the flip side, if MS wins it's anti-trust appeals, then Netware has to compete with NT/2000 and ActiveDirectory. Again, this could make Netware largely irrelevant, especially now that most network printers are all direct-IP addressable and have little need for a print server (or at least in the concept that Netware/NT have)." Is this a good analysis or does Novell have an ace in the hole that will guarantee some future revenues?
I have two words for you. Sell Short.
We're on the road to Tycho.
I thought everyone knew Novell was dead - since the late 80's!
:-)
Or was that Apple?
Or was that Castro?
I forget
They have cornered the market in goldfish bowls, and will soon take over the world with their brilliant advertising campaign.
/.ers will take 200 posts to say: Yes.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes.
To answer the question "is Novell doomed", the assembled
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E_NOSIG
Never say a company is doomed unless you are talking about Novell. Oh wait...
The anti-salmon
Novell's share price hasn't moved much since a major drop in May. I think that if they were doomed we would have seen more action recently... unless now is a good time to short NOVL :)
-Duke
So you want to buy some Netware 3/x books and software? I have lots.
I knew they were doomed once TCP/IP trumped IPX.
What's the next Ask Slashdot, Is Data General doomed?
My Second Vote Was For Gore
great comedy company.
And I don't mean Active Server Pages. :) The last bit of news I've heard about Novell is their targeting of the Application Service Provider market. After all, this is where Unix (and to a lesser extent, NT) shine. File sharing services are ho-hum and directory services, while important, are being passed by in favor of returning to the mainframe style of computing. Dumb-terminals (web browsers) talking to mainframes (ASP applications) ... I guess what goes around comes around. However, Novell is going to find it impossible to get into that market. Their last-best hope is to find a buyer (Caldera or IBM) and roll NDS stuff into LDAP ...
James
Short answer: Yup.
--ken
Bitcoin pyramid: Join here: http://www.bitcoinpyramid.com/r/1427 it's FREE!
I'm eager to see the Netware server be replaced or revived with BSD or Win2K Advanced server. Maybe then we can have Win2K Pro on the lab workstations instead of NT4SP5. Besides, 3DSMAX would look a lot prettier in full Direct3D splendor, as well as true DirectX sound acceleration.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Many schools continue to use Netware because of the huge educational discounts given them. It would cost too much money to switch to NT, and Linux servers don't have good enough Windows compatibility for them.
Rumor Mill, Novell isnt dead its very much alive and ticking. Oracle and Novell have major plans coming soon. Oracle and Novell has been developing on a new NOS from the ground up for the past 3 years, all you share holders just remmber you heard it here first on /. ;)
- I came I saw I Conquered
Sure, LDAP and Active directory are great things. But let's take a quick look at what they are. Directory based management of all nodes/users/devices/whatever jacked into a network. They meet the same need that NDS met when it came out around 10 years ago. Now, think back to the days when NDS first came out on the scene. Netware 3. Did anyone really enjoy that product? No. Novell themselves openly admit that it was the first attempt at a rather complicated project. It wasn't until Netware 4 that NDS really became a powerful and useful tool. So, NDS has had 10 years lead (give or take) over AD and LDAP. Am I certain that these will suffer similar problems? Of course now, but NDS is tried and true. Netware has a userbase tens of millions (this isn't exactly a Banyan here) And NDS can manage both LDAP, thereby making it a more useful tool than either of the others. Expect to see Novell begin to sidestage their other products, like Netware and Groupwise, and focus on the one key product which will allow them to move forward. Expect to see an even greater cross platform push for NDS, allowing them to be the central authentication and management point for all nodes.
This comment was not generated by Uber Elephants...
Of course Novell is irrelevant; they've been that way for a year or two now. The question is, how could they fix themselves? Since "embracing" open source is so trendy these days, that seems like a likely route. They have decent resources and (presumably) developers; why not take a shot at changing NDS into an open standard (perhaps just changing into an LDAP based product), and building adapters for the various OS's? There's probably a lot of other options. Certainly they are no longer the market dictator that they once were (and probably never will be again), but I see no reason that they can't remain in business producing useful products.
(If you find no amusement in the subject line of this post, you won't find any in the body either.)
No Laughing Allowed!
Novell, is doomed, but it will be a slow onsetting doom. They were very broadly installed in major corporations, and there is some effort involved in ripping out their existing services and replacing them with more long lived options. So, for the short term future Novell will continue to survive on service of existing clients. They'll also likely continue to sell their product to people who strongly back the "if it ain't broke" mentality.
In the long run though they haven't innovated in any significant way in a while. It seems like ever since the Internet came to town they've been struggling to figure out how to take advantage of it. I suspect it may be too late.
So, barring any miracle come backs I would expect to see them drift into obscurity/bankruptcy in the next 5 years or so.
Here. The explanations are full of PR twisted nonsense and fake optimism. Doesn't look good.
A better way to ask this question may have simply been, "Is Novell going to come up with something to keep themselves afloat, or are Linux, MS, and everyone else going to eat them alive?" Of course, that doesn't have the magic MS antitrust, CueCat, or PS2 topics involved, and so probably never would have made the cut.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
--Let's see got my CNE in 97, worked on a Novell system once since then...
--Doomed
This
Ot's over 10x faster than a Linux based caching proxy. In some cases its almost 100x faster. So I
/Results/bakeoff-2/#Sect:7.3
don't think Novell is out of the picture yet.
Bullshit.
http://polygraph.ircache. net
Squid beat out the Novell box (the Dell)in most tests.
i browse at -1 because they're funnier than you are.
The ace in the hole that Novell has is a team of good developers and a strong presence in networks outside the US. It's the first that's the most important: technologies come and go, companies can retool and reorient and survive.
Novell supports LDAP, Oracle runs faster on a novell server then it does on NT, and is cheaper if you want, say a 5 license version (Comes with Novell 5).
I prefer a Novell server for a file server or print server then say an NT server, as with Novell inherent design, no one does much from the console, where as in some (I do say some) people running NT servers, all of a sudden start installing office and other applications on the servers.
Then again, I lock my linux box up, and don't let people do anything from the console.
Novell is just that, a file server, and for performance, it's pretty sweet. Everyone just seems to get lazy and prefer pretty graphics on there machines, nothing wrong with that, but it's a server, your not supposed to have to actually sit at it to do everything (yes yes, I know you can remotely administer NT servers, but some people like to customize desktops (ever seen catz or dogz running on your production servers? fun to play with while your waiting for something to happen))
My 2 cents
On the flip side, if MS wins it's anti-trust appeals, then Netware has to compete with NT/2000 and ActiveDirectory.
Er, exactly how does NT/2000 and ActiveDirectory go away if MS loses its anti-trust appeals? He seems to think that the trial is about forcing Microsoft into bankruptcy.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Novell has two money making ventures currently, their caching solution, which actually is selling very well, and NDS. Netware is not gaining marketshare, although it does continue to limp along. I think somebody will eventually buy them to get NDS.. perhaps IBM... it's been long rumored they might buy them up at a firesale price. It would make sense and give them a hedge against active directory. There are lots of cool things you could do with the netware filesystem and NDS. How about a peer to peer file sharing system for linux whereby different servers could mount and access remote filesystems easily, through firewalls with integrated NDS authentication. Just a thought.
Really, if you look at it, it doesn't really matter whether Microsoft wins or loses that case.
:)
Active Directory isn't going to go away. It might land with the OS people, or the Applications people, or whatever, but it will still be out there, and I think they're right: Microsoft's saturation will make it rather difficult for Novell to compete against them. They're DOOMED!
I think though, with LDAP being as solid as it is, and considering its openness, it's really only a matter of time before speciallized commercial directory services shrivel up and die. They just won't be worth paying for.
Eh, that's worth at least $0.02
...or maybe not.
Never underestimate the laziness of a sysadmin. Easy, fast, large scale network management is in great demand these days, but is largely untapped. This is reason why Microsoft is getting into it, and I suspect that Novell will too.
Bibo Ergo Sum.
I think LDAP is supported by Novell.
If you need a directory service, what will you use if not NDS?
I agree that Novell will shrink a little bit, maybe twice, but it will be alive as long as NDS is alive, i.e. all the observable future.
Andrew
Most Novell installations are run because the particular server program that they were using required it. Instead of migrating to Novell NetWare 5, most companies tried to make their servers as homogenous as possible to keep cost-of-ownership down. That meant, for the most part, Windows NT. If a company had a sizeable investment in Novell, they might make the leap to NW5, just to protect their assets (also, internal techs that only know Novell are screwed if their company migrates exclusively to NT)
The number of people getting their CNE (Novell higher certification) is dropping. There are currently 300,000 MCSEs, and the source materials for studying the new 2000 track are abundant. The market has been decided in the certification track.
Companies are also trying to run IP-only backbones for greater routing policy controls / QoS (try running an IP phone when IPX is transferring SAP updates). I know that Novell supports IP now as well, but they were even later into the internet game than Microsoft
Also, try getting drivers for "non-standard" cards (including some 3com NICs). I tried installing NW5 with the proper drivers, and it refused the driver and wouldn't install (NW is really client/server, so a server without a NIC is inconceivable; NT server can install a NIC after the OS install). Flacky things like that, along with no really strong reason to adopt such different tech than workers are used to, means that Novell is dying a slow death.
Anonymous coward,
CCIE candidate, MCSE
Sure, the products Novell makes are going out of style pretty fast, no matter which direction you see the market going in, but simply because something is obsolete doesn't mean that it's going to stop being used. After all, if something works for the job, there's no reason to replace it. How many slashdot readers still have old 486s lying around because they're cheap and effective for certain tasks?
At the university I attend, a large number of servers are run on what I would consider to be outdated hardware and software (think VMS/VAX), and there is little talk of replacing it. Also, the local school system in my area uses Novell servers for simple file sharing, and I fail to see why money should be spent to either buy expensive software (Win2k) or hire expensive administrators (Linux) to replace something that does its job perfectly well.
Please see http://eltoday.com/article.php3?ltsn=2000-10-20-00 1-13-PS
Dont sell Novell's NDS technology short. It is years ahead of M$'s active directory technology. Their sales might be weak, but enough to keep them alive long enough to win in the directory market.
I've been in the tech industry for more than a couple of decades now. I've heard at least 10 times of the immiment death of Apple. 4 or 5 times the imminent death of Novell. More times than I can count "imminent death of the internet". IBM, micro~1.oft, and many others have their death predicted on a regular basis. Ignore these death notices, instead go play on fuckedcompany.com and pick off a few feeble dotcoms. You have a good chance of being right.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
i have worked in both the university and private sector, and have had to use novell in both. to say that they have outlived their life span is a mildy safe assumption. unless novell puts out some REALLY good products in the next few quarters, i expect to see them listed under the corporate obituaries. netware is slow, obsolete, and a waste of time with new advances made on both the *nix and M$ fronts. that's just my $.02, i guess...
"How it infuriates a bigot, when he is forced to drag out his dark convictions"-- Logan Pearsall Smith
BTW, there is a CLient32 for Windows 2000. No need to dump the Netware server just to run it.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
well, I never did see anyone build on that land. perhaps they finally realized that not even the wonderful Radia (routing guru from DEC who went to work at Novell, last I heard) could save their sinking ship. (btw, is Radia still there? anyone know??)
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
The real question should be: If you woke up one morning and realized you were irrelevant, what would you do to make yourself relevant again? Technologies come and go but a decent answer to this question could make alot of people's lives easier.
--
Peace,
Lord Omlette
ICQ# 77863057
[o]_O
--
Let's not all suck at the same time please
Let's not all suck at the same time please
I'm going to have to ask you to move your desk back as far as possible...we need to put some boxes in here....yeahhhhhh.....
rhino
Because it feels like something I've done before, yeah I could fake it but I'd still want more...
Well, if you made an ass of me like this, I'd probably quit dealing with you in the future. Looks like that's what happened with Novell.
Well enjoy your strict license enforcement. You think it protects profits. I'll just shop elsewhere and prove that your practises will have the exact opposite effect. Maybe go with a Linux solution. Fuck you Novell.
Look, they are doomed. Either they'll be sucked up by some other company or they'll follow the overwhelming majority of the B2B, B2C, and other Net IPOs into the grave.
So let's move on. Why do we still not have IPv6?
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
If you worked in a business enviroment like a grocery store,you would realise using Novell as a file server makes sense.Novell isn't going anywhere.Novell provides a great secure file server in such applications.Especially since a lot of programs used in such cases run in DOS,it's a great solution.Linux isn't worth it due to retraining the workers. .
Great minds think alike,but,fools seldom differ.
If Microsoft loses the appeal then Linux becomes the dominent and only relevant operating system in the world and Windows 2000 is dead.
If Microsoft wins the appeal then Windows 2000 becomes the dominent and only relevant operating system in the world and Linux is dead.
There's so much wrong with this picture I don't even know where to start!
Well, I can't agree with most of these posts who say that Novell is dead. Yeah. Novell & Netware aren't exactly on the high ranks of NOS's anymore, but they are far from being shot in the dark and dead.
I work in a Netware 5 environment and we have run Netware here since v3.11 and they have absolutely no intentions of ever switching to Linux, NT, or any other OS. Netware has always performed beautifully and NT won't scale to the size and stability that we need. Linux is a great OS and I love it, but the work required to change our corrugated cardboard system here to Linux would be way too expensive.
Norampac (the company I work for) is very dedicated to staying with Novell & Netware and I imagine there are plenty of other companies that are out there that are in the same situation. Yes, perhaps other companies are producing products that can do things in the same fashion, but that doesn't mean the company is dead. Novell produces some extremely reliable and rock solid software and the companies out there using it, know that.
Don't say a company is dead just because they're old.
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No matter how fast computers get, you'll always be waiting - Matt Klem
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At yesterday's Novell security seminar the big topic was edirectory services, which provide a one stop access to databases for prospects, customers, salespeople, etc... This service is active at CNN.com and of all things... Redhat! Their new apt like software update system is controlled by edirectory, but running on linux. edirectory is an extension of NDS and Novell is requiring all sales people to become RHCE, since they are supporting their product on Linux. Linux was mentioned many, many times during the seminar and the rep was using a laptop running caldera linux with vmware, and using Powerpoint under Windows to do the presentation. That was cool to see being done by a major vendor.
Novell yes, I remember it well. The recent thinning of their staff, and the fact that 90% of the networks I have run into are NT and Unix leads me to cast my vote for the longevity of Novell... NotGonnaMakeIt... The network OS is a consisitantly shaking foundation, 'what's replacing what' is a common enough phrase these days. Novell, unless they can find a niche in this newly formed marketplace they dont stand a chance. Oh well, their building in Utah is nice enough to look at. Heh..
Ummmmmmm, no. The box I used, the Dell 6350, was disqualified and not used in the test. Not that I cared, because the bakeoff tested only forward-proxy performance. My project used reverse proxy only, which at the time there wasnt a standard benchmark for. I cooked up my own and the Novell won hands down, both with real and simulated load. The linux box would start to drop sessions at around 2k simultaneous, I've seen the Novell go over 30k without dropping any. Im more of a linux fan than a Novell fan btw, but they really did a good job with the ICS.
Novell has lost all the customers they're going to lose, either to Windows NT, Linux, or other vendors. There are still Novell shops, and believe me, they are committed to Novell for the long term. They probably won't win back any ground, but they should be able to stay afloat supporting the remaining clients they have.
--Gus
From the: If-it-runs-without-help,-why-bother-it? dept.
:P~ But the smaller ma-and-pa shops aren't going to stand for it. They want their dusty little box in the corner.
One of the main reasons that people in the industry I'm in don't switch from Novell to something else is its reliability and stability, even when running on old, dusty hardware. Sure, very few of my clients know how to configure a Novell server, but they don't have to. The same box that they bought 3 years ago is still sitting in the same old corner, headless, and has been messed with perhaps twice when some over-zealous cleaning lady tried to dust it. That's it. It's a reliable fileserver, never crashes, and requires no maintenance. Doesn't lose its shares, data, etc. The backup runs nightly and reliably.
Sure, Linux has some of these great features, too. But why change over when what you got is working? Some of my clients have moved. They've moved to NT. Suddenly they are suprised that they need to buy a top-of-the-line computer, monitor, etc., and it takes hours and hours of man-work to set up. And even then, it requires routine maintenance, needs rebooting, resetting, and maintenance. They feel cheated, blame their hardware provider, and go storming off to their CEO with death in their eyes.
Novell has a chance still because of this. Novell-lovers will upgrade to a higher version of Novell more than moving to a different OS. Bigger companies, sure, they have IT depts. and need the extra work an NT machine has to offer.
Blog,Twitter
I've been working on hybrid Novell/MS/*nix network for about 5 years and I will claim that there is no substitute for Novell. 1)LDAP and Active Directory are about 5-10 years behind NDS. I haven't found anything half as usefull for network administration as NWadmin. 2)Novell 4.11&up servers are not only way more robust that M$ reboot-"servers" but just about as stable as *nix. I've seen high traffic Novell servers go over a year w/o reboot. 3)Client32 is easier to connect and keep connected than Samba in my experience 4)ZenWorks is a great way to keep users off your back. I've tried VNC, which is cool, and PictureTaker Enterprise, which is also cool, but ZenWorks seems to have the technological lead. 5)I've had an easier time ncpmount(ing) Novell file systems on Linux than doing file-sharing other ways. 6)Contextless "blue-sky" logins are are a great solution when you have a wan. 6)Novell has moved to pure IP and is making NDS run on Linux and Solaris. 7)Groupwise is under-rated. I believe it beats Outlook/Exchange hands down and virus/Trojan-wise its like being a pine tree in a forest full of Dutch elm disease. Well, that is my big promo for Novell, thanks for reading.
It's nota my planet, monkey-boy - Dr Lizardo.
NDS is, and always has been, a great technology. The same goes for most of Novell's products. The problem is that it is a proprietary system, and such things are going away right now. LDAP and ActiveDirectory(yes I know its proprietary too) are taking over for NDS.
Print servers are still very much needed. An organization with many many printers doesn't want to have to change 100 client machines every time they upgrade. They want to go to the print server, change the IP, or LPT, or whatever, to the new one, and be done with it.
Novell itself had everything at one point, but the world has changed. I don't think there's anything they can do but continue to support their current customers. I couldn't care less, as any open system provides me with so many more options than something closed such as Novell.
SpamapS -- Undernet #Linuxhelp
Can Microsoft leverage its OS hegemony to oust NDS in favor of AD? Perhaps. But there are a lot of us Novell people out there who will fight it tooth and nail. We like NDS, and we are not going to let bonehead management get fooled into an inferior system like AD.
Now, if Microsoft loses... First, what makes you think that if MS gets broken up, everyone's going to flock over to Linux? We're still going to have tons of Windows boxes that need to access network objects. And even if everyone does go to Linux, there is not a UN*X answer to the power of NDS. I would say that if MS gets broken up, things would look very good for Novell. Why do you think that NDS doesn't make sense in a Linux world? We will still have desktop workstations that need to access network objects. And NDS STILL is (IMBO) the best way of managing large users, groups, and network objects.
--
"How many six year olds does it take to design software?"
dinner: it's what's for beer
I've been pinging the Q3 authorization server; here's the output (Slashcode's gonna mangle this, but all that counts is the end):
C:\WINNT\system32>tracert authorize.quake3arena.com
Tracing route to authorize.quake3arena.com [192.246.40.56] over a maximum of 30 hops:
1 2 10 ms 3 10 ms * 4 200 ms 80 ms 150 ms 3.ATM1-0-0.BOS-0.WINSTAR.NET [216.172.250.17]
5 50 ms 60 ms 40 ms 9.atm4-0.nyc1-bb1.winstar.net [63.141.227.5] 6 130 ms 130 ms 160 ms pos9-0-0.new-york.winstar.net [63.141.111.62] 7 40 ms 10 ms 30 ms winstar-gw.new-york.savvis.net [216.172.248.154] 8 220 ms 230 ms 211 ms atm9-0-030.CR-1.usdlls.savvis.net [209.83.222.30 ] 9 70 ms 90 ms * idsoft-1.CR-1.usdlls.savvis.net [209.176.32.178] 10 190 ms 190 ms 231 ms monster.idsoftware.com [192.246.40.56]Trace complete.
And, a ping:
C:\WINNT\system32>ping authorize.quake3arena.com
Pinging authorize.quake3arena.com [192.246.40.56] with 32 bytes of data: Reply from 192.246.40.56: bytes=32 time=230ms TTL=119
Reply from 192.246.40.56: bytes=32 time=231ms TTL=119 Reply from 192.246.40.56: bytes=32 time=260ms TTL=119 Reply from 192.246.40.56: bytes=32 time=200ms TTL=119As for the rest of the questions, I'm not the admin, so I'm powerless to change anything.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Again, this could make Netware largely irrelevant, especially now that most network printers are all direct-IP addressable and have little need for a print server (or at least in the concept that Netware/NT have).
Network-aware printers don't make Netware (or any other server-based print management solution) irrelevant any more than SAN hardware makes file servers irrelevant; it's a bitch to manage a medium sized LAN's printing needs without one or more print servers, and effing impossible to do so with a large LAN.
Although it's possible that Novell will go away, or that Netware will go away, network-aware printers will have nothing to do with it. In fact, companies that run server-based LANs are more likely to buy network-aware printers, in my admittedly-unscientific anecdotal experience.
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Having the best Directory Services in the industry didn't save Banyan. Why should NDS save Novell?
If quality of technology counted for much in this business, Windows wouldn't've made it past version 1.03b.
Of course, it might be a good idea for Novell to merge with someone... Caldera, maybe, since they're already related.
Believe nothing, not even if I say it, if it violates your sense of reason -- Buddha
I'm rather surprised by the apparent lack of Novell administrators on Slashdot. I'll admit that I'm not one either, although some of my clients do use Netware, and I do have to do some work with it. Everything I've seen lately from Novelll is pretty slick. Netware 5 is great(once you close all the Java apps that try to make it more like Win2K). ZENWorks is just plain incredible. One of the things that impressed me most was how ZEN Imaging uses linux LILO to set up partitioning, choose which OS gets booted to (works with all versiuons of windows, even 2K), and once you have that on, the (l)user can completely trash their system and the administrator can push a new image and have it fixed without ever leaving his desk. They can do remote admin with it as well.
I admin mainly windows environments (sue me, it's my job, k?) but I'm all kinds of impressed at what Novell has come out with lately.
Swears that IBM is looking to buy Novell...
Of course that still could mean that Novel is doomed.......
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
A couple years ago, it was the Mondo Super Cool Kernel Level Java VM that was supposed to save Novell. No matter how fast & cool your VM is, it doesn't matter if no one is interested in using your platform. Novell just hasn't been innovating nearly as much as other companies, and they're paying for it.
Novell may have lost the race, but it will take *years* before they are completely replaced. Corprations react so *slowly* that it could easily be 5-10 years or longer before most of corperate america moves from novell to something else.
"I don't need a compass to tell me which way the wind shines." - Mr. Furious, Mystery Men
If you think Novell is sitting still, or even deteriorating, check out this link. It's just another example of Novell continuing to find ways to extend their technologies.
I'm not claiming that Novell is preparing for world domination. But Novell's death has been rumored for years. If anything, I'd bet that they would be bought-out by a big player. (Oracle, IBM, AOL?)
I work for a city government. We should keep Novell going for at least another 5 years as much money as we waste on their crap.
Between Netware, ZenWorks, Groupwise, and whatever else Novell has, we buy. But yet we still couldn't do a secure remote login without buying some stupid device that requires you to use some sort of card to connect with.
i read recently that novell has halted development on any further netware releases and will begin to dissolve it's tech support for existing netware versions. apparently they realize they're headed for a dead end and are backtracking by restructuring themselve to offer software services for business (whatever the hell that means)
I work for a city government. We should keep Novell going for at least another 5 years as much money as we waste on their crap.
Between Netware, ZenWorks, Groupwise, and whatever else Novell has, we buy. But yet we still couldn't do a secure remote login without buying some stupid device that requires you to use some sort of card to connect with.
I am a Master CNE, and love Novell's NDS. Novell is by no means dead. They just don't advertise like MS does. And they aren't trendy like Linux is these days.
/.er's are going to slam them as well as the media, but they aren't going anywhere. Novell is rock solid, financially, and they own a ton of patents. If anything someone would buy them, but Novell has nothing worry about. NDS rules, anyone that says it doesn't, either hasn't used it or used it without knowing what they are doing.
Novell will never be cool, and that is why
LoRider
I think the biggest problem for Novell is 'free' Linux, because it's free... This means that new people entering into the NOS arena start by using Linux and grow with it. When you're familiar with something that works you tend to continue. Now I'm not knocking Linux, I'm just saying that the war for mind-share is being lost due to cost-per-user licensing, not NOS superiority. We use NetWare for our web services (Java based) and we find it much easier to manage and extremely stable. In this environment cost-per-user is not an issue, though we did have to purchase the software. Reduced management costs have more than made up for the cost! We need diversity in operating systems, and meaningful competition. Apple is still around folks, and Novell will be too. (By the way, I think Active Directory is very limited and if you understood NDS better your opinion might change! Novell has a great story here that needs to be more widely understood!) Microsoft has always been good at marketing, but reality is what we need to focus on, not spin and selective comparisons. One size does NOT fit all. I hope Novell, Linux (all flavors) and Microsoft are around for a long time. Nobody's perfect. Not even Linux. So??
yep, novell is dead just like:
usenet is dead
java is dead
unix is dead
etc...
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a funny comment: 1 karma
an insightful comment: 1 karma
a good old-fashioned flame: priceless
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
There are a few facts floating around here that are incorrect.
NDS did not appear until NetWare 4.0 - not 3.x. 3.x did have a utility to sync info from one bindery to another, and later from NDS to a bindery, but NDS did not appear until 4.0.
Several places people ask why use NDS when you can use LDAP, or that LDAP make NDS irrelevant. LDAP is a protocol not an implmentation. NDS is LDAP v3 compliant. NDS implments LDAP. It just also happens to do lots more.
Novell does have a very good web proxy server. It has been a leader in the price/performance ratings for the last serveral bake-offs. But there is more to a proxy than just speed. Setup, administration, etc. Dell, IBM, and Compaq all OEM Novell's ICS (Internet cache system) product.
I have no idea on where the rumor above about Novell and Oracle developing a new OS from scratch for the last 3 years has come from, but I can tell you it is false. Not happening. Don't hold your breath.
HP direct for instance is only usable without a print server in a VERY small workgroup. The problem is that these printers either have no queing ability or extremely limited queing ability. Throwing a print server up makes the situation MUCH more reliable and hassle-free for end users. Novell fits in well here as does NT/2K or to a lesser degree *nix.
Say what you will about Novell but their 3.12 version of Netware was one of the most stable apps EVER.
-ShieldWolf
just = (My)Opinion.toCents();
Mod this shit down... Signal 11 or not.
Cuz moderators have brooms up theis asses.
- Well If you have ever used a Novell product you will notice that they are very robust. It is also worth noting that NDS Corporate Directory and eDirectory now run on linux, as does NIMS (novell internet messaging server).
- NDS Provides a common interface to manage any novell service.
- Active directory is a joke compared to NDS, and another way for M$ to try and squeeze novell out of the enterprise
I would give novell some time before you pass judgement, they don't need to justify their existence with press releases touting linux like the rest.
Before I got into Unix, I used to do Netware installs and consulting. I've always said that the Novell file system is one of the best around, they have had "journaling" for over a decade. And their Software Fault Tolerant system (AKA SFT) that allows two servers to mirror one another is awesome. When they first introduced that feature, they had a great demo at COMDEX Canada in Toronto where they dropped an anvil on a server that was in replication with another, and it took a couple of sections to switch over...but all the applications didn't even notice...they only paused for those two seconds.
I would love to have that SFT level available for Linux! That would be a killer app!
ttyl
Farrell
CAN-CON 2019 - Ottawa's only book oriented Science Fiction Convention! October 18-20, Sheraton Hotel, Ottawa, Canada h
First, NDS is an LDAP based solution. At least if the CNE course material is to be believed.
;)
Second, I've seen Novell's software in use in places since the late eighties, and for the past five to six years I have heard from numerous places that 'Novell is dying'. I'm here to tell you that it is putting up a rather decent fight. Surely since the barrage of Microsoft's NT Server platforms became prevalent around '96, they have had to change their tactics a bit. However, simply saying that they're dying off is ridiculous.
I am very pleased with NetWare as a server OS. I have never seen a single Microsoft empowered server stand up in sheer up-time. In fact our company had a Novell 3.12 Server that had an uptime of well over 18 months. Then a power outage occured that the battery backup couldn't handle...and well, the drives, heh..hmm, let's not go there (it was a sad day all around, poor computer). By comparison, our NT Terminal Server (avec Citrix Metaframe 1.8), needs a fresh boot once every few weeks...our NT4 Server (avec Exchange) about once every two months.
We've got two NetWare servers in the company now, and I'm impressed by the application serving that is going on with GroupWise and such. This shows that Novell has not just rested on their already potent file sharing, but has moved on to compete in the app-server arena.
I think that due to several factors we'll see Novell around for quite some time. NDS, ZenWorks, GroupWise...they've got a few things they can market if they choose to do some porting to other platforms. Whether or not linux and MS are threats, there has been enough of a niche market for years (education, die hard IT guys in businesses), small business alone is a good place for Novell.
Rock hard stability is something that is hard to give up. The expense of a sweeping platform migration is even more deterrent for some places.
In the end, third party application support may be Novell's down fall. This is sad, since it is such a great platform.
ok, I'll end my rambling now
It's alive and well alive I may say. Yes it is not in the tops as years before. But then, the main stream was "File Server War". Microsoft decided to beat Novell and failed miserably then. Yes Novell also made the dumbiest thing of trying to overcome Microsoft. By fighting M$ in its own Motherland: Windows. Novell tried to launch a an Office series that would preform better than M$ Office. Yeah the thing was more innovative then M$. But the launch of Win95 killed the enterprise and Novell had to sell the whole stuff to Corel.
Meanwhile Novell remained the ONE file server enterprise. No other file server system preforms as well and good as Netware. In this point, the specialization of Novell managed to overdevelop this core task. Netware servers are not only fast but highly perfect. They possess a powerful set of tools to help in major and secondary tasks for file transfer and storage. Their reliability is extraordinary if we compare to other systems. In 8 years of work, I had only two serious cases of filesystem crash (!). And one of them was overcome because these guys are excellent developers. Their filesystem is an excellent piece of art. I know this because I had to see a whole GB in hexadecimal to recover it. FAT is a Frankenstein compared to it.
What about NDS? It is GENERATIONS ahead of anyone else. When you have thousands of users working on a a fileserver system it is a life in the clouds compared to the dumb NT file sharing world. And their emulation of 95/NT workstation administration, is several orders ahead of Microsoft. Under NDS you can administer stations, users and several other resources through an easy centralized interface with a level of control much higher than M$. In fact NDS is supposed to center all system administration around itself. And it does this in a way that can be only classified as "highly positive". Maybe it possesses some drawbacks. One of them that NT stations do not work better with it...
In the mean time there are some things that are not well with Novell. First its overlook on Linux. Until now I haven't seen tools and resources on Linux that could be compared to the Windows ones. Things are still too raw here. Second its closed source environment. Sincerly this is what hinders Novell. Developers and experts are few due to this situation. Yes they distribute SDK's, tools, docs and have a powerful support for developers. But the fact that they sell an "extravagant OS" in such way blows the whole thing.
Anyway I would say that this is a closed source OS that deserves a good look. Note: file server services work with the new Linux kernel and things seem not bad in preformance. This is not NFS.
... just think, a DOOM interface for NetWare...
.
Load your NLMs by selecting weapons. Kill user connections by blasting marine zombies. Run DSREPAIR by destroying the Cyberdemon.
It would be like that Jurassic Park scene where the mad haX0r kid runs the park through a virtual reality environment only with much more blood and Spider Masterminds.
Kind of like this: http://www.cs.unm.edu/~dlchao/flake/do om/
J
Strong existing user base. That's an ace in anyone's ... ahem...nevermind.
Yes, it's eroding. Yes, it's aging. But, it is there.
At least Novell made it longer than Bayan Vines!
Now hiring experienced client- & server-side developers
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
This article by Art Wittman of Network Computing might help shed some light.....BTW by experiance is that NDS is WAY ahead of active directory.... http://www.networkcomputing.com/1116/1116f1.html Give it a try Gedvondur
Point well made. I was thinking about that myself. Also I must say that Novell's file system and object security blow any M$ junk i've worked with.
People will continue to use Netware for the same reason that they still use Token Ring networks--It takes effort to change. Effort and $.
But is anyone implimenting NEW Novell solutions? I don't know, maybe in Russia.
I knew Novell was in trouble years ago. Back when they had a monopoly on NOS's they were arrogant and treated their customers poorly. Heck if you had a question, they would not talk to you without a credit card! Look what they did to wordperfect, they nearly killed it also before selling it to corel for a huge loss.
It is a bad idea to keep relying on one product in the software industry. Eventually the interesting features get duplicated in competing products. That's why you have to keep innovating. MS understands this and is moving away from relying on just OS/office sales. They know it is a dying market. Linux and other free alternatives are setting the price for a lot of types of software: free (0$).
I wouldn't go as far as to say that novell is doomed (right now), but if they don't come with something new, they will become more and more irrelevant. Probably they'll be bought up at some time.
Jilles
I work in a university environment. We have a mixed environment with labs containing dual boot Linux/Win2K machines and Solaris boxes. We also have some NT 4.0 machines and a bunch of 9x boxes. We have Netware, Solaris, NT, and Linux servers. We are using Novell's NDS Corporate Edition. This allows us to have one account/password for each user that will work on all of our platforms. All of the passwords are stored in NDS and authentication between clients and the NDS servers is encrypted. I am pretty happy with this product. The weakest part seems to be in Novell's documentation (another area that Novell has historically struggled a bit in). NDS seems to be VERY "durable", but it requires a bit of experience to properly maintain.
I also don't think that you can directly compare NDS and LDAP. LDAP is a protocol to access a directory (and is supported by NDS). NDS is a distributed directory service. I know that NDS has been tested with a billion users (granted this was on a real-no-kidding-around server). NDS can also run natively on Linux and Solaris. I have also heard rumors of other platforms being included. There is also a product (I believe developed at Clemson University) called Authserv that will interface with NDS and allow authentication on about any platform you'd like (including mainframes).
We also use Novell's Zenworks to distribute applications to our Win9x/NT/2K boxes. This is a very slick package. The newest version of it supports imaging (side note -- they are using Linux boot disks to do this!).
Netware itself is not all that special. It is very stable -- my Unix boxes and my Netware boxes both stay up unless I take them down on purpose. However, it is just a file and print sharing OS at heart. In my opinion NDS and Zenworks are Novells two strongest products (groupwise is kinda nice, but I don't feel that it is as on the same level as NDS or Zen).
Having said all of that, I believe the company is in big trouble. I would like to see them come out of it, but this seems unlikely. To me the best possible outcome is for a company (hmmm, RedHat for instance) to buy them and keep NDS and Zen alive.
Novell has had a lot of good ideas and sound products. They have done a really lousy job of marking them, however. NDS has been around for years, but there are a lot more people familiar with Active Directory than NDS (even though, in my opinion, NDS is a far superior directory service). Similarly MS started looking at ZEN and seems to be trying to counter with ZAN. Novell starts talking about "One Net" and Microsoft comes out with ".NET". The difference is MS can market themselves and Novell can't -- even after cleaning house in the marketing department. Their TV commercials don't seem to be very effective at describing what it is that Novell can do. It just seems to me to be a case of too little, too late.
I don't think that the company is going to go belly up anytime soon, but with their stock so cheap someone is likely to buy them. I just hope that when they do, they don't screw up NDS. It would be very great if a Linux company did buy them and then made NDS opensource, but that would probably make my life too easy...
All of you have forgotten Novell's ace in the hole: Novell Internet Caching System ICS gives Web managers new power to accelerate their media rich Web sites, secure site access, improve management of high-volume sites, filter Web content, and guarantee site up-time. CNN, AT&T, Akamai, and others use it heavily. Check out: http://www.novell.com/products/ics/ ; for more info
The admins said, "We'll never get rid of Netware! NT sucks." They were half right. Just before I left they started knocking out Netware boxes and installing NT everywhere.
You may be surprised to know that there is still at least one company that makes money by selling and maintaining old PDP-11s. In that sense, there will probably be a market for Netware for a long time to come. Many company's won't want to chuck their Netware boxes just because they are out of style. But how many new customers does Novell get each year? I don't think they will ever bounce back the way Apple famously did.
Jeez, I check /. every day but I read more about Lego's than Novell.
I have to chime in here and say that ZENworks for desktops is one killer app for the Windows world I (and you, admit it) work in.
SnAppShot is in SYS:Public for all your {Windows} software installation troubleshooting needs.
I just finished my graveyard shift of a 48 hour push of a GIG to 450 NT desktops. Try that with SMS or Landesk. The server was coasting at 10% as we ran 10 workstations at a time. (scheduled last week) We were somewhat constricted by what ZENworks 2 has, (eg. the WS has to reboot to pick up a schedule..sux.., we had to make 45 app objects for 45 schedules...) but heck if we didn't hit over 90% anyway, thanks to Zen Remote management and reporting. ALL DONE FROM WITHIN NWADMN32. Bring on ZWFD3, and long live Novell.
---JustaCNA
as a former directory services consultant for a large services firm, i saw a lot of what novell is pushing in the enterprise marketplace. novell is decoupling all of their products from the netware server platform. as a file/print server, netware has dominated the industry in performance. too bad that file and print have become commodities in today's nos market. in reaction, novell is targeting their software at other platforms. just about all of novell's major products (outside of bordermanager) are available for nt or linux or both. their flagship product, novell directory services, is available for nt, linux, solaris, aix, and even os/390 now. contrary to the story above, nds is not obsoleted by ldap. nds corporate edition on all platforms is the fastest and most robust ldap service available. again, novell has a long history of being the performance leader.
i'm still not going to buy any of their stock, but i wouldn't count novell out quite yet.
Most of the threads here fail to mention the product that is responsible for 25% of Novell's revenues: ZenWorks. ZenWorks is an application deployment and management tool. Application management is still a wide open space. Linux wins, something has to rollout all those office productivity apps, OS, and OS updates. Windows wins, something has to rollout all thos office productivity apps, OS, and OS updates. BSD wins...
Novell has been making hideous missteps for a long time. The two biggest that comes to mind is the WordPerfect/Groupwise debacle and buying the Unix license. The problem with these two moves is that they distracted the company from what they needed to be doing, which was making NLMs or a successor platform THE most popular development platform for apps (either that or getting a sales/marketing force together). Killer SDKs, eyeballs and winning hearts is what gets developers creating the apps any OS/NOS vendor needs to survive. Novell didn't see that as a priority and now they are dependent on extant customers and surviving on NDS charity until MS catches up to AD or writes in enough IE/.NET extensions to AD that Novell cannot use. Also note that Novell sat out the browser wars, thus ensuring that it's deadliest enemy had control of the internet clients. The battle now shifts to the home thin client console market for server share. Again, Novell could have been winning this one if it was partnered with Sony to create one-click access apps to serve multi-player for PS2 but they keep missing the opportunities to lead markets. I just don't think Novell has had the smarts to get it done. Playing remora to Microsoft's shark in a strategic area gets you killed. Novell has to get NLMs or whatever else in play so outside smart people can create the next Notes/DB/killer app to move product, or they become just another Banyan.
________________________________________ History Must Not Fall Into The Wrong Hands ___________________________________
quote:
CNN had very specific performance and scalability requirements that NDS needed to meet. CNN needed to be able to service 2,000 requests per second with 100% success. Some of that time would need to be allocated to DNS resolution, wire latency, and injection of personalized advertising, leaving only 250 milliseconds for NDS to do a directory lookup and personalize the content.
With CNN's requirements in hand, Novell headed to its SuperLab for proof of concept. "In the SuperLab we implemented a basic off-the-shelf configuration," says Bourgeois. "No special cards or disk controller caching on the box, just standard NetWare 5, RAID drives, 100Mbps Ethernet, and 1GB of RAM."
The Novell team tested fifty NT workstations each doing ten requests per second against a single NetWare server running NDS. Without taking advantage of NDS replication and multiple servers running NDS, the single directory server handled 500 requests per second with less than 60 milliseconds of latency.
Although you'd never know it from the IT industry trade rags, there are a number of "dark corners" in the industry where technologies that have fallen outside of the hype mainstream continue to be successful for long periods of time without a lot of exposure. The press thrives on controversy- the fate of a company relative to its competitors is often portrayed as an "all-or-nothing" proposition, while reality is quite a bit more complex.
IBM seems to accumulate these dark corners- AS/400 and Lotus Domino spring to mind. There are LOTS of folks using these things, and are very happy with them. This is mostly because IBM and Lotus have focused their product development based largely on the feedback of their customers and less on the strategic hypewagon predictions of the analysts. These technologies don't necessarily conform much to the "mainstream" way of doing things- hands-on Notes experience is not going to transfer to running a sendmail system in any way, shape or form. This means that the communities and the people within them remain isolated... AS/400 companies look for AS/400 administrators, and there's not a lot of cross-pollination.
I think Netware represents another one of these niches. Novell has been focused on meeting the needs expressed by its current customer base, and the technology they have has evolved "differently" because of it. Unfortunately, they don't have the market muscle of IBM to continue this indefinitely... as has been pointed out several times already in the thread, NDS is the only possible strategic salvation for the company.
Unfortunately, NDS is stuck between a rock and a hard place. It can't compete in the low-end directory market because AD comes "free" with NT and does a servicable (if inferior) job for the bulk of the folks that would need it. At the high-end of the market, enterprises are biased towards big-iron / UNIX X.500 directory systems- Novell still brings up images of "lan servers" and 386s in many minds.
So I wouldn't count on NDS (cool as it may be) to save Novell. But I wouldn't count on Novel spontaneously combusting anytime soon either... unless there are major financial issues, they've got a loyal market segment whose needs they meet, and will continue to pay them as long as that remains true. Barring any financial stupidity by Novell's management, they can continue to ride this... and there's always the chance they'll come up with something that will put them back into the limelight.
I hear alot of people talk about the better stability (uptime) of Netware as opposed to NT. NT on its own is stable. Especially, with the 4 and up SPs. Example, I installed a NT server as a PDC on a 486/100 with 32MB of RAM. It was to be used as a RAS server. I configured the modem and RAS for the single user it would serve (why is another story). After testing, I turned off the monitor and forgot about it. About six months later, I was thinking about it and thought, "That box is probably in dire need of a reboot." I turned on the monitor, logged on, and opened task manager to see how much memory was in use. To my amazement it was not even using the pagefile! It was sitting at about 20MB, IIRC. Needless to say, I damn near fainted. I decided to not reboot that box that day. It was still running when I left the company. My point is, NT servers themselves are stable. Probably not to the level of Linux or NW, but they are. NT servers become unstable due to poor configuration and management (like installing Office or PCAnywhere). You don't see that type of thing happening on NW because there is no sw like that which runs on NW. Linux people just generally know better. IMHO, MS almost made NT too easy to use to the point that idiot admins think they know what they are doing and don't see the ramifications of installing apps on servers.
OK, now that I am done complimenting MS, flame away.
this is a left handed sig
I think one of the reasons we've heard so little from Novell through this whole issue is that Novell doesn't see itself as being a direct competitor of MS so much any more. They've integrated the MS products into NDS, and continue to do the same with other products. If anything, they'll simply migrate the NDS tools and extend the directory to support whatever OSes happend to gain support. MS winning or losing has little to do with it.
Novell can survive without NetWare. NDS is here to stay, and Active Directory doesn't even compare. All of you MSCEs are Microsoft cookie-cutter versions of Hitler Youth that don't know the difference between MS-DOS and Caldera DOS. Have any of you MCSE knuckleheads ever heard of ZENworks? Novell is more than just NetWare. I have to go now, Kernel32 just blew up my workstation... Atleast now my Windows System can't be hacked...
Microsoft loses the case. They get split in two.
Windows is still the dominant OS, and will be for some time. It takes time for the kind of momentum that Windows enjoys to erode.
Novell still has a dedicated customer base, but isn't gaining ground.
Folks aren't suddenly switching to Linux.
Companies can finally compete a little more evenly. An improved Netware could make gains, but Novell focuses on other technologies.
Novell fails to market themselves effectively and falls into obscurity. They rent more of their campus buildings to other companies.
Finally, they get bought out.
That's how I see it playing out.
it would just be nice for a change to see a story saying instead of "Novell Is Dying!!!" or "RedHat Linux .0 is buggy!" to say "Novell is trying hard despite the odds, is it enough?" or "RedHat Aims High but Misses the Mark" ... why is every story posted seem to be a negative post unless its a 'hot' ("Transmeta Benchmarks Dont Add Up, but They're Still REALLY GOOD!!!") topic?
---
Video meliora proboque deteriora sequor - Ovidius
Novell has $1Billion in the bank and no debt (and has been debt-free for quite some time), which is better than most of the dotcoms you hear about every day.
Novell has an HUGE installed base that is generally very happy with their products. Because their products are so technically good, they generally run for YEARS and don't require a constant schedule of patching/upgrading/paying more money for them, which actually works against Novell (in comparison to MS) for revenue.
Most of their current product line is cutting-edge, and often is technically superior to ANY alternatives (including Linux/Open Sourced ones!). Their BorderManager product (cache/proxy/auth/rev. proxy/etc.) is excellent. Their GroupWise product (multi-platform Groupware) has been top-notch for years, and I prefer it to Exchange (duh!), Notes, and POP/IMAP-based systems. Netware 5+ (5.1 was released about a YEAR ago--5 has been around for almost 2.5 years) supports the NCP protocol via PureIP (not encapsulated NetBIOS like SMB) and does it with amazing elegance and grace (using SLP to "find" the NDS tree, then walking the tree for information about resources, rather than using broadcasts). And NDS (renamed "eDirectory"), the jewel in their crown, is beautiful. (They're practically GIVING AWAY NDS for Linux, by the way... It'd be really nice to start MANAGING all of those Linux boxes without having to use NIS...)
Smartly, they're putting more of their focus on developing products that leverage NDS (including the ones listed above). Check out stuff like ZENworks (best desktop management software available anywhere), NetPublisher, SingleSignOn, and all of their public/private key infrastructure technology. Additionally, they're porting practically everything (management tools & back-end server components) to Java (remember Java?) as Netware 5 runs Java faster than just about anything.
Their problems have always been (and continue to be) twofold:
1) They lack the mindshare that "exciting" companies have. Even when they are technically innovative, no one thinks of them first because they're still stuck thinking that they only make "old fileservers." Every time MS forces users to upgrade or releases a patch to fix yet another security hole, their mindshare increases. Novell doesn't have those problems (not as many), and so they tend to fade into the background...
2) Novell has always targeted their products toward the "geeks." Their technology is always really cool and cutting-edge, but it is often too complex to easily explain to CIOs/CFOs and other cheif decision makers who rely on traderags and full-page ads to make their choices. I've been working with NDS for about 5 years--5 years ago, it was very difficult to convey to people what a directory WAS, let alone how NDS could save a company tons of money and time. It's hard to capture that technology into a short blurb or advertisement. So the geeks continue to love Novell products, and the CIOs/CFOs continue to steamroll over Novell's stuff with MS's stuff...
Even with all of that said, they'll be around for a while... I was once concerned, but realize there will always be a market for their technology.
(What the hell is up with this micro-sized editor window?)
After years of dealing with them I had come to the conclusion that Netware servers were as reliable as my refrigerator. Then the refrigerator broke.
I was quite sad to see Netware 3.x go out of production this month. Novell won't carry it anymore. Sure it lacks NDS, but it was a fast, easy solution to offices that needed a small fast, closed network solution. It was easily installed and configured.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
A lot of you slashdotters are missing the point. Novell has the most scalable, most full featured LDAP directory in the world. Any company that supports millions of customers across dozens of products has to have that if they want to get serious on the Internet. AD won't do it. Microsoft says it will, but I don't think it's there yet. Slapd and Slurpd might, but the front end toolset to manage them isn't even close to being in the same league as NDS' ConsoleOne or even NWadmin. Novell's XML implementation, DirXML, seems to be pretty robust. Combine that with LDAP V3 updates, Novell's excellent partitioning and replication, and I think you've got a pretty convincing arguement for making an NDS cluster the center of your LDAP strategy. If you have a homogeneous environment, i.e. all Linux, all *nix, or all NT, then a single LDAP solution is feasible. However, if you need to address an LDAP environment that needs to be coordinated between multiple platforms, then NDS cross platform capability looks even better. Now think about policy based management. Why not use an LDAP directory (like NDS) that is specifically built to support it?
I was recently the target of a Novell market research team, who wanted to talk to me specifically about my experience replacing Linux Servers with Novell servers. They wanted to know what services Novell could produce that I would be interested in purchasing, and why I was de-comissioning Novell servers in favor of Linux.
Of course, my answers were: 1) NDS for heterogenous (Linux/Novell/NT) server rooms with universal authentication managment; and 2) Money, because a Novell license is too expensive.
But you should e-mail them ... they want to hear from you!
-TheFuzzy
With the number of major companies that are already using netware I can't see novell falling apart very soon. I work part time for Disney. (gets me into the real world once a week) And they use netware on all of there office and minor backoffice machines. They have a pretty good size staff that are novell people and have had alot of applications writen specificaly to run in a netware environment. Some of the things they have done would have been much easier and/or more efficient on a differant platform but they used netware and with the fear of software upgrades that companies like Disney have I dont see them letting go of nevell soon!
Novell may die, but it won't be because it's market share is eroded by NT/2000 or Linux.
...light on facts about Novel and have user - if any - experience with novel.
The people who have written something on this article that have provided (+1 Informative) information seem to have a clue as to how Novell works and what it is useful for. The people who have written (+1 Interesting) comments saying that Novel will be replaced by zillions of other available systems, seem to be
Lets set some things in perspective. Novell is very powerful as internet and intranet construction. It is *surprise* not intuitively obvious to use effectively. It is not useful for setting up a personal dorm room LAN, because it is designed for much larger businesses - not 4 or 5 computers. The price tag to accompany this software which will be used for 4 or 5 computers makes it equally useless to the average college student. Some students will wind up working for a campus computer center, but very few will actually have any interaction with the servers. For this reason, few college students (and even fewer high school students) ever have an interaction with novel above and beyond the [CTRL+ALT+SHEEP] sign to log in.
So, your print server for 9,000 students at a state institution seems a bit slow during peak hours? Hmmm... thats like at least 8,000 people more than the majority of businesses have that use Novell. I'd argue just about anything is slow when 9,000 people are all trying to do it at the same time.
Let me skip back to something I mentioned earlier. Some college students do get Novell administrator duties at colleges - and do get experience. I remind you though, they are getting experience. That means, more than likely, they're screwing up the network (accidentally) and getting the experience from someone who *may or may not* know how to fix it. Have you ever considered how little state institution employees are paid? and how little educators are paid as well (in comparrison to PhDs in the workforce)? IT workers who usually work at a school do it for some combination of the following three reasons: #1 they enjoy the people they work with, #2 they went to the school and can't leave yet (afraid of the real world), and #3 the other jobs they qualified for involved flipping burgers. I'd like to think most people fall into the #1 category, but lets face it there are a few who obviously didn't...
So, for the most part academia networks are set up by a bunch of idiots leading around snot nosed kids who screw things up. You wonder why your print server sucks?
Now we'll actually touch the print server issue. YES, the PRINT SERVER IS ANTIQUATED. That does not mean that it is no longer used, just that #1 people can't afford to switch it over to a better system immediately, #2 it is too low a priority to switch it over immediately, and/or #3 they do not know how to switch it over. 'Nuf said on that topic.
However what has this all meant? Students who have not actively sought out good experiences with novell will never really understand its full merrits. Therefore, they will not make the effort to learn it, and when they are actually designing IT architectures, they probably will fail to include it as a product.
The old guard (and by that I mean over the age of 25) who have had experience with novell, will eventually get a higher paying job, or change fields, or retire, or what have you... basically be put out to pasture... Regardless, their experience will probably not be spread as widely as more companies start up "Novell Free" and it is slowly avoided as the college and hs students of today become the managers of tomorrow.
So, rather than say "Novell sucks... so its going to die." why don't you learn it and recognize its power? Novell is no longer frontline news or cutting technology, but it certainly needs to be recognized for what it is and what it does better.
You say you want a revolution?
One thing Novell has going for it is a huge installed base. Especially in higher ed institutions. This gives Novell a lot of inertia. While they can go only so far without some serious innovation, they can coast long enough to find a new niche, or perhaps, even a purpose.
Novell does indeed have an ace in the hole, several in fact: Sheer distribution. Novell services dominate the medical industry, insurance industry and law offices. A brand name. Novell actually has technical support and a corporate name. A non-repudiated licensing structure. Cost. It costs millions of dollars (for large insurance companies) to roll over to a 'freeware' OS from Novell. Yeah the license is free, but that's about it. Man hours in migration, configuration and troubleshooting are massive. Putting all the beans in a row, linux will not topple client-structures that are already using Novell (or any other solution). The only hope for linux is fresh meat. Fresh, thrifty meat. As a PKI engineer I see tons and tons of sys admins who /like/ linux, but very few who have the cojones to design a proposal to replace or implement a linux-based /anything/ (save for maybe firewalls).
[Disclaimer, I work for Novell]
.com's you know and love.
Novell is not Netware, although Netware is still important to us and our customers. Here are some interesting things that Novell has going for Linux folks:
eDirectory for Linux
eDirectory (NDS) is powering the new RedHat network in Red Hat 7. We also have a cool new technology called DirXML that synchronizes directory attributes through XML with other apps.
NIMS
Novell Internet Messaging Server has been ported to Linux. It's a standards-based, very cool mail server. Check it out at myrealbox.
Novell Portal Services
An upcoming product that provides a servlet-based interface between eDirectory and our portal technology or other portals.
JustOn
I'm told that JustOn is one of the biggest sites for trading Porn movies on the internet. How cool is that? (grin)
There is other stuff, but you get the idea...
Anyway, you guys can flame all you want, I love my job. I get to do very interesting things all day long. I have a Debian server at home that I really enjoy working with, and we're a heck of a lot better off financially than many of the
-Todd
- "When you want something with all your heart, the entire universe conspires to give it to you" -Paulo Coelho
Novell should create or enhance a Linux distribution ("Novell Linux"). They would then port NDS, ZEN Works etc to the platform. These might (ZEN) or not (NDS) be commercially purchased products. Novell used to make a lot of its money from support and they could certainly do that as a Linux shop. They should be developing something to port or provide runtime emulation for NLMs to run with Linux beneath them. Microsoft is the only remaining company that can sell a proprietary OS to a large market (and its days doing that may be numbered). Look at Banyan VINES, SCO, OSF-1, OS/2, CP/M. All dead. OS's that come bundled with a vendors hardware is another matter as it is a captive OS sale (Mac OS, Solaris, HP/UX, MVS, OS/400) and it should noted that HP is emphasising NT over HP/UX and IBM is widening support for Linux. The world will always have niche OSs but there will be only 2 widespead OSs in the near future (Windows and Linux). That does not leave much room for Netware. Novell talks about becoming a network services company. Well, they can have a "reference" platform for their goods and it should be Linux.
I'm scared of world leaders who think locally and act globally.
Since Eric Schmidt became CEO of Novell there has been a change in strategic direction in the company. They are moving to pure IP and putting very heavy emphasis on technologies such as Java, LDAP, IMAP, and HTTP, etc.
Netware 5 has Xwindows built in and as they beef up the Java ConsoleOne admin application, it will become the standard way of performing admin functions. No more need to config from a workstation although you still can if you want; just redirect the x display to an xserver on your pc. And unload the GUI when you don't want it sucking up mem and proc resources. You caN'T do that with NT.
"So, Novell finds itself in the unusual position of hoping that MS wins its anti-trust appeals, since Linux could very well make Netware irrelevant"
He suggests that Novell would rather be sat upon by an 800 pound gorilla named Microsoft rather than get a second wind while a benevolent little monkey named Linux tries to put on another 750 pounds.
And what does IP addressable print servers have to do with anything? Netware does IP now. NDPS adds value to the antiquated print services that he evidently remembers. When using direct IP addressing, can you manage a queue that sits in a buffer on an HP print server? Can you control access to a queue using any directory service on an HP print server when printing direct IP?
Novell does need to make changes to ensure that it will be around for a long time. But as for an 'ace in the hole' I believe that the most important thing for them is not some particular piece of software but to make their code and their organization as configurable as possible so that strategic changes can be made easily, orderly, and in the shortest time.
In Business as in Biology, the companies which can adapt the quickest will survive and flourish.
TOTAL=3449.95
PERIOD = 1
DO 10 WHILE (MICROSOFT:SUCKS)
- crash(hairLoss,sleepLoss,faceLoss)
10 CONTINUEupgrade TOTAL=TOTAL + (1+interest*PERIOD)*TOTAL
wait (PERIOD)
Evil indeed. Just thought you would appreciate another perspective as much as I did, oh child of SATAN.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
About a year ago, the responsibility of running the Novell implementation for my workstation group fell in my lap. As a tried and true UNIX admin, I wanted nothing to do with any dinosaur from the early PC era, but I decided to take a look for curiosity's sake.
What I found was probably the purest implementation of a network server I've ever seen. Since its heyday in the late 80's, Novell has packed in all sorts of features that haven't even been addressed in other NOS camps. You could think that UNIX excels as an app server, but only if you've never used Netware.
Like automated application deployment through Zenworks. Very cool. To put a new app on all your users' desktops, you install it once on the server. From that point on the user gets a icon on his machine for it. The first time her runs it, all files and registry settings are cached on his machine. From then on it runs with hard drive local speed. Until you want to update it. Then the next time he runs it he gets the new version.
Per user central configuration is nice too. you control on a per user and per workstation basis which applications are offered, in a way that to the user is identical to him running them off his harddrive.
The filesystem is great, very sophisticated ACLS. The volume management is the easiest and most robust I've seen. Of course everything is logging based and speed optimized.
Everything is controlled through the NDS directory. It is LDAP aware, making synchronization with UNIX machines a breeze. You can even get NDS PAM modules and authenticate your UNIX users out of there. Controlling the filesystem through the directory is in particular a nice touch.
Clustering servers for failthrough is easy. IPX is long gone, unless you need it, but the Service Location Protocol makes it easy for clients to find new servers with no hardcoding.
I really hope Netware isn't dead anytime soon, because I shudder at the thought of the work it would take to run my current NT labs without it.
The company for which I work has heavy investments in Netware. Technologically speaking there are few reason to want to run file/print serving from any other NOS. Our 30 or so fileservers running Netware versions 4.0, 4.11 and 5.1 have all achieved near-100% uptime, and one of our old servers was running non-stop for 986 days, and it was only turned off because they were demolishing the building which housed it. I'm positive we could have achieved a few more years of uptime on the box! So, why use anything else, eh? Answer: A reality in corporate computing is a vendors public image within the computing industry. How many top executives (or even some IS Dept Heads) hear ANYTHING about Netware in these Microsoft times? Fewer every day. If technological superiority were the most important factor in choosing a NOS, who would still be running NT? With LiUnix/Netware around, nobody. The motivation behind implementing an increasing percentage of MS products is a lemming effect. Novell is not off the hook yet however; The problems with declining market share of Netware is partly the result of complacency on Novell's part as well. If they had shed the early cockiness when NT started to take hold, and kept their customers happy, they may not seem so doomed at this time. Up until roughly 12 months ago, we did not see a Novell representative for at least 3 years! No matter who you are, that should never happen. In that period of time Microsoft signed us up for a Select agreement, offered to assist in the 'migration' of our environment to NT, etc... It was ONLY our love for Netware's reliability which kept it's presence here. Almost nobody is buying Netware to install on a *new* environment. But, there are lots of people who upgrade and continue to use it. If Novell is unable to keep the existing user base happy, then market share will surely dwindle to nothing. I think the old rumours of IBM acquiring Novell will eventually take place, and IBM will dissolve Groupwise (as a competitor to Notes), and they will possible keep NDS, and a few other nuggets of coolness. As much as I hate to say it, the Novell dynasty is long over. Too bad too, because about 5 years ago Novell was just starting to get interesting. Eventually even silicon-monkies get tired of swimming upstream. If you want to keep your job, run Linux or NT, and piss on the rest. If you don't agree with, email me.
I heard from a reliable source that Microsoft once again thinks that Novell is a threat to its income stream. Whether it's the ASP market, directory market or the other miscellaneous products that give them this distinction I'm not sure, but they are on the MS radar again.
The antitrust case is irrevalent. This is because the case will take so long that MS will be done with Windows and IE before anything is decided. This is evident from MS's continued brazen behavior.
What I wish Novell would do is figure out a little bit about marketing. This is where they have always sucked. MS has often been technologically inferior to Novell but the MS marketing department makes Novell look like idiots time after time. This has to change. Novell also has to have a long term stategy again. They spent too many years focusing on this quarters earnings instead of long term goals.
What I could really use from Novell is NDS for small companies. I would love to see a package that would allow me to administer my Windows and Linux servers and clients from a single system - especially one that can scale like NDS. I don't know why I can't log onto the CompUSA website and purchase a 25 user pack for NDS that will easilly install on all my current systems. What a concept, "I could sell what I've already developed." Instead I think Novell is only selling NDS to large corporations that got into bed with Novell in the Netware 2.x and 3.x days. That's not selling. That's slow death.
NDS will likely fail to become the defacto directory because it is an extra cost add-on to Windows 2000, which already has a directory built into it. Shops that are all Windows 2000 will be unlikely fork out extra money for something that already exists in Windows 2000 -- the fact that NDS does it better, more completely, etc will be largely irrelevant.
Places that want a directory system above and beyond Windows 2000 (for Solaris, mainframes, etc) may buy into NDS, but those places won't be enough to guarantee NDS ubiquity.
ADS may be an inferior product but by the very virtue of its ubiquity it will be sucessful and cloned or have other products made to successfully interact with it. Look at Samba vs. MARS-NWE.
I often wonder if NDS supporters (like me) really want NDS per se, or just a good directory solution. ADS seems to be weak relative to NDS, but I keep asking myself what the cost buying into NDS will be 2 or 4 years down the road, especially if Novell's business suffers and NDS gets bought out by a third party.
Art Wittmann of Network Computing had a similar epiphany back in September. In a nutshell, he speculates that sometime next year Novell will either be acquired by a heavyweight (IBM and Oracle are mentioned) or go under completely.
How about a real answer. This'll never get moderated up to the point where you'll see it, though, because I posted it too late.
NDS is a strong, LDAP & TCP/IP based directory solution directly competing with AD and X500. It is extensible and more robust than any other currently shipping complete solution (which is not the same as saying robust). NDS is a port of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' "FLAME" database and as such has some odd features based more on religious faith than technology.
NDS is multi-platform (including linux and nasty old solaris) and scalable. Like, really, really, really, scalable, literally billions of user objects have been demo'd at Brainshare in Utah. I saw it with my own eyes, as did thousands of other beer-deprived Brainsappers.
NDS and the ICS caching solution are the products intended to keep Novell on the map. Unfortunately for them, a couple of Novell renegades have set up Timpanogas group to create MANOS which is to be a drop-in netware OSS clone. The CEO of Timpanogas, Jeff Murkey (rhymes with Stef Mirkey) is reportedly a gifted coder and was at one time developing native NDS for linux. He got in a spat with Alan and Linus over kernel debuggers, though, and took his football home with him.
Anyway, Novell is in fine shape if Timpanogas can be kept from releasing true NDS clones under a GPL. If not, they have a long time to get a new product going, because of their large installed base. High-end sites will prefer ICS to squid for performance reasons for some time to come, and the Groupwise product (one of those bloated total office solution thingies) hasn't yet alienated their entire customer base.
--Charlie
For that matter, most Unix versions may be doomed as well, though most UNIX flavors are manufactured by the server's manufacturer and this does provide a failsafe.
I think that Linux is simply underselling the competition and will continue to do so. It is now the #2 NOS in terms of new server implimentations last year, and will probably continue to do quite well. Perhaps it will even start to take NT/.NET's marketshare... Furthermore hardware manufacturers may find that Linux makes their systems more competitive by reducing the R&D for the OS and eliminating licensing fees for the manufacturer, who makes money regardless of which OS runs on the server.
What is however holding Linux back currently is its supportability. For all you business-minded folks who want to do Linux a real favor start outsourcing firms and help businesses to maintain their servers, offering 24x7 support, etc.
Best Wishes, all!
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Anyway, some of the missing tracert hops read no connection? Also, I checked the backplanes myself; they are true Cat5.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
M$ isn't going to suddenly disappear if it loses against the doj, especially with respect to the server market. so, i don't think novell is going to be affected positively or negatively one way or the other. they seem pretty much screwed in this market regardless of the antitrust suit, though other posters have indicated that netware is no longer their focus
Anyway, here's what my reply should've read:
I said that Slashcode was gonna mangle the tracert! Bender must be on a bender right now! hehe.
Anyway, some of the missing tracert hops read (less than) 10ms. Also, wouldn't mouse-chewed cables result in no connection? Also, I checked the backplanes myself; they are true Cat5.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
Unfortunately for Novell existing Netware installations don't really help them out. After all, they have already taken your money. If you continue using your DOS solution forever then you might as well have switched to another operating system as far as Novell is concerned. Linux may be able to get by on sheer market share, but Novell needs to make new sales to stay in business.
Besides, while Netware makes a great file server, and their directory is nifty, it's not what people are using to develop the next generation of software. Eventually your supermarket is going to want to upgrade to a new accounting package, or a new point of sale system and that new package is not going to run on Netware. So you will either have hire admins who know both Netware and something else, or you will have to ditch Netware and use your new OS for file and print as well as application serving. I think that you will find that every OS in the world does an acceptable job at file and print serving. Netware has specialized in a field where just about everyone has an offering that is "good enough."
Novell is also losing the training war. It used to be that Novell's army of CNEs were their biggest salesforce. Nowadays these same people are MCSEs, and are actively campaigning to yank out Netware (because it makes them money).
Novell is dead, it's only a matter of time.
The last Novell thing I ever dealt with, was IPX in Doom2.
Get Doom III production rolling, and gentlemen, we have ourselves a saved company.
-f
L is for lightweight in the protocol, not the backend. And the lightweight is only in comparison to X500.
:)
Dave
I write a blog now, you should be afraid.
Sure, the server version could use a little work, but then that's why they developed Windows 2000 Datacenter Server.
"Ancillary does not mean you get to rule the world." --U.S. Circuit Judge Harry Edwards, speaking to the FCC's lawyer
The difficulty with a topic like this, is that there are many points to make. I will try to be brief.
- Novell has BEEN, the industry leader in network/file printer servers for a long time. Whilst it would appear that they are now slowly losing this (what with linux now becoming the 2 most abundant server OS) they still have a place in many corporations around the world.
Whilst I am a strong advocate of linux/freebsd, I must also realise for the Companies that I support, that there must be a level of "allready working" in what solutions are applied, and that can't be taken away from Novell.
- The difficulty that Novell is facing is that there OS doesn't do what the other server OS's do, and that is "other things". Worst comes to worst, you can run a word processor on the server, at the console. A dedicated server has removed the ease with which you can do some things from its competitors consoles, linux and NT/2000.
- To say Novell is dead because IPX was beaten by IP is not in my opinion, a valid point. There was a day when Microsoft installed by default Netbui and perhaps IPX. Both these protocols have certain advantages and disadvantes. IP wins because of one point, and ONE point alone. Scalability. It can run a network, world wide, where the others cannot. Microsoft changed their default protocol, have not yet attempted to claim it as their own, and will march on as if nothing happened.
Novell can do the same, the choice is theirs, they have already implemented it in 5.
- One also has to look at backup application support. Someone mentioned the proxy. Also the management utilites. A server OS is useless if you do not have good utilites to configure the server with. There comes a time even with myself, where I get tired of editing configs, and just want to do it with a high level config util. There is a balance between the use of the two, and Novell has had in past good management utilites to get things sorted. Microsoft continually changes thier GUI, and *nix/linux/bsd platforms et al, have an ever evolving set of different utils, thanks to the open source movement, and peoples desire to attack this problem.
The conclusion:
Is Novell dead? Not yet. It is based upon how they think from here. An acceptance of where the direction the server market is heading, and an "adaptive" approach, will surely see them around for some time to come. They DO have a market, and it is bigger than the average SOHO user may think. It is probably a radical change in thinking that is required, which at that level is more unlikely than for a smaller company, so one can perhaps calculate they may be doomed. But, as with anything, you have to consider the whole picture to create a valid conclusion.
What ever happened to them, and can we dig up their source code? VINES used to run on some Unixy sort of thing, could some Bright Boy port it over to Linux? I'd buy/use/recommend that in a heartbeat!
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
Don't discount the humble printer server yet. The fairly expensive IP-connected printer my company has, uses a dodgy implementation of TCP such that when it is receiving a print job, it stops listening on the lpd port. Printing a document then becomes a hit-and-miss affair.
We once installed a HP hardware print sharer box for a customer. Unreliable as hell, and probably for the same reasons.
I suspect that other embedded-TCP devices use similar "cut-down" implementations. The APC masterswitch is vulnerable to ping-o-death and probably other attacks, such as synfloods. TCP is best left to "real hosts", IMHO.
One good example of such usage is CNN, which uses NDS for user tracking ("personalization") on their web site. CNN paid nothing for this; Novell gave away the product purely for marketing purposes. (The site used to have "powered by Novell" on every page; I can't see it now.) CNN has pretty stringent requirements for performance. This document has some interesting technical details, such as about scalability. For each user they store a unique ID, a set of indexed attributes (for fast lookup), and an XML stream consisting of user metadata. So they use LDAP mostly as an ID-to-object mapper. For the gory technical details, see Personalizing and Customizing Web Content utilizing NDS eDirectory at CNN.
NDS scales extremely well. Core to its scalability is its flexible multiple-reader/multiple-writer replication system, which supports disconnected operation and grafting multiple trees into "forests" like symbolic links.
NDS is expensive. Unlike NDS Corporate Edition, which is the network-oriented product, NDS eDirectory is not off-the-shelf software -- depending on the application, you pay at least $20K -- although, to be fair, that includes dedicated, on-site consultants and hand-holding all the way. User licenses, on the other hand, are quite cheap.
Unlike SQL and RDBMS technology, NDS/LDAP is actually a much more focused system for the kind of database systems needed by today's web sites. Relational databases are extremely good at large, repetitive result sets and table joins, but web pages typically only do "short-burst" queries that return just a few results, and often an RDBMS is turned into a glorified ID-to-object mapper. This is precisely what LDAP (and NDS) excels at. (It doesn't hurt, either, that LDAP queries are intrinsically hierarchical.) Site builders should look to LDAP for a more suitable, and much faster, database paradigm.
AC, you must be a troll. First you say that Novel is expensive, then you say it's free beer.
Where on Earth did they find One Billion users? There are some 125 million net users in the US. Did I miss something in China or India? Did every computer user in the entire world log on? Did Novel simulate 10 users on every US computer for a minute while I was not watching? Did that server just imagine a billion users while overflowing?
Novell can only be doomed by marketing and buyer perceptions, not by Linux or NT. Let me elaborate:
1) NetWare is still hands-down the fastest and most robust file-and-print server for Windows-based networks. Despite its cost, Linux cannot obsolete NetWare in this area until it can compete technologically. This is not to say that Linux does not blow NetWare out of the water in other areas (Web serving, for example).
2) IP-based printing is a piss-poor idea for most networks. I know it is effective with CAD stations, but the average NetAdmin would hate the idea. First of all, you have limited options for remote management. Secondly, you need to have a lot more memory on the printer. Thirdly, it lets the user's individual system spooler send the jobs, which is too big a bottleneck in the average office PC.
3) Microsoft's Active Directory sucks compared to NDS. Try both systems and then tell me that MS can put Novell under the table.
Marketing and money, however, bring a lot more into the discussion. Microsoft can and has succeeded in changing the public perception of Novell, and Novell's marketing efforts have been notoriously half-assed and ineffective. Were this not the case, NT would never have made it out the starting gate...
~wmaheriv
~wmaheriv
"Shema Yisroel- Adonai Elohenu, Adonai Echad!"
Yep sad but true. :-)
I have kinda given up on Novell now. I am sick and tired of hearing from all different Novell 3.12 customers that thinks that the next logic step is NT and all those stupid people at sales that don't give a f... about what would be best for the buyer, the just always sell what know can't hurt them.
No one gets fired for choosing Microsoft.
--------
Is Novell doomed? hmm I wouldn't really bet the farm on that one. Especially when alot of the big boys lease or contract Novell to write their network setups. Why is Linux held the pentical of all operating systems reigning terror upon all that may stand in its way? Novell is very solid technology based on a very stable parent operating system. Some of us like to call this parent os BSD. Believe it or not Novell even keeps up to date with the relevant changes from its predicessor. This is why it was a sticky matter when Novell bought AT&T Unix. Alot of people where asking if it was right for a Novell to be selling Netware(a gutted and optimized BSD Unix) and sell AT&T Unix. So they sold it to SCO which is even more evil. SCO in the late 80s or was it early 90s was bought out by....(drum roll)... Microsoft. Anyways sorry for the babbling. The real point is that a large portion of linux users are ranting and boasting how some day they will rule the earth. With Open Standards why does anyone OS have to rule the earth. No Netware isn't exactly the #1 selling NOS anymore but than again will linux ever take this spot? What is Red Hat 7.0 the great sign that proves how wonderfully stable the distro's are. I think Netware has a deffent solid place in the schemes of NOS's. And like all NOS's and OS's it too is growing just like your beloved linux. BTW: FreeBSD tromples all over the autistic pengiun. =) I felt compelled to throw out my opinion since everyone else was.
The company's recent announcement of a partnership with Red Hat Software on further development of eDirectory for Linux and Red Hat's commitment to using eDirectory on its forthcoming Red Hat Network is an interesting development. At the press conference I asked Schmidt whether any merger or acquisition discussions were ongoing between Novell and Red Hat and was told (per Securities and Exchange Commission rules), "I can't talk about that, either to say yes or no." After a short pause, Schmidt added, "We like them a lot."
Their Internet Caching System.
Novell figured out several years ago that their BorderManager server scaled better on static page serving via its caching services than most web servers did. They placed two BorderManager servers in a reverse-proxy setup in *front* of their own web servers, and watched their web servers be able to serve up DRAMATICALLY more pages than they could alone.
They created a development effort to strip down BorderManager, rebuild the file system into a BTREE, and parlay this caching service into an integrated, vendor-only hardware/software solution to leverage into a platform. They have largely succeeded.
We have two Compaq boxes running Novell's Internet Caching System. ICS is not something you can just buy off the shelf. It's heavily engineered for the systems on which it runs. Let me share some statistics.
One of our web sites has, historically, run over 4 million hits per day (www.excitestores.com, if you're interested). ICS reduced our number of Apache processes running from about 30-60 at any given time to *7* (that's 5 base HTTPD processes, plus two). The memory load dropped tremendously, and ICS achieved a 94% page hit ration in this reverse-proxy setup, with a 57% byte hit ratio. This means that our e-commerce setup, which heretofore required 10 web servers to service, now only requires TWO, plus two ICS boxes. And the load on the ICS boxes has never passed 5% CPU utilization.
ICS also does some other pretty amazing things. It can "SSL-ize" content, so you store your certificates on the cache server and you don't need to compile mod_ssl for Apache (which, in case you didn't know, is a HUGE hit on your CPU). You can arrange content delivery to remote sites (ala Akamai's service) and have enormous bandwidth savings. You can leverage the ability of the box to intelligently handle your traffic and scale to over 100,000 simultaneous connections (Our Apache daemons, at about 10 MB each on a box with 2GB of memory, are far more limited than that).
Suffice to say, I believe that Novell has a long and prosperous future ahead of it. We evaluated many different caching technologies, and chose ICS over Squid and several proprietary solutions; even in our UNIX-savvy environment (all our production services run on UNIX except the caches), ICS won out. Novell has already learned the lesson Linux is starting to: success comes, not necessarily in being the best at what you do, but being darn good at an awful lot of things. Their recent staffing cutbacks reflect the changes in strategy from a "software company" to a "solutions company".
DISCLAIMERS:
I do not work for Novell. I have just purchased their products because of technical superiority. Novell is fighting an uphill battle to get into a company dominated by Solaris and Linux. So don't assume I'm a troll because I like what I see : )
Matt Barnson
Matthew P. Barnson
I learn what I think when I read what I write
hopefully!
// what do you mean that was the only copy...
i was all excited, during a football gmae the other night i was watchin this groovy commercial with all these cgi fish buggin around, i though wow that's pretty hoopy and all, and just about deficated when i saw it was a novell add!! now if they'd just take a little more money and make some new functionality. i really miss novell.
Well, if you made an ass of me like this, I'd probably quit dealing with you in the future. Looks like that's what happened with Novell.
The only one who makes themselves look like an ass in this situation is themselves. Businesses have no place pirating software even though it is rampant in many shops. I don't have any pity for anyone who gets caught pirating.
They have a right to enforce their license. I disagree with the notion of licensing software but as long as it exists you should play by the rules as much as you can. You can;t afford not to if you are a business
this space for rent
Novell actually has a very aggressive team of piracy sleuths. I know because they tried to cherry pick me back in my Utah Valley day.
Please excuse this post if it is completely assanine as I am basically a Mac weanie eagerly soaking up as much unix as I can - lurking on Slashdot helps.
Would there be any interesting synergies if Apple were to acquire/merge with Novell? I am ignorant as to the respective market caps of the two companies as well as the merits of the technical match-up.
What I do know is that Apple would like to go into the enterprise market in a big way with OSX but that they face a slow uphill climb gaining marketshare. Novell, apparently has some excellent, platform neutral tech that has the respect of enterprise and education customers but they lack glitz.
Seems like a good match.
"The world is a construct of forceful imagination. Those who don't know walk around in the reailties of those who do"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I really hope that Novell is not doomed... I one of many administrators that are presently employed here in Australia by the Government public health system... Our organisation has approx 30000 PC's at this point in time (and still growing), and presently I am responsible for the administration of 2000 of them, spread across 30 seperate LAN segments, located in many different towns... Having worked in both MS and Novell environments, I would never consider running anything but NDS (now E-Directory) to manage this many users... We are a full Novell shop, with Groupwise 5.5 as our messaging solution (perhaps Novell's real snake in the grass product, watchout for Groupwise 6), as well as Zenworks for Desktops to manage the PC configuration... The integration of the Novell product range is second to none... Just about every product now is managed through either Netware Administrator or Console One.... The ability to partition and replicate portions of the DS for speed and fault tolerance is perhaps the strongest feature of NDS, that and the fact that Novell have already demonstrated an E-Directory with over 1 billion objects.... It is the only DS that can scale to the size we require... Netware the OS, well it's days maybe limited, although it still is the fastest file and print OS on the planet (hence the speed of the ICS product from Novell... Everyone elses solutions are let down by there disk access speed). At some sites within the organisation we have 1500-2000 users connected to a single server for all their file services, and it does so with the greatest of ease.... Netware may not look pretty, but it does what it does better than anyone else.... NDPS (Novell Distributed Print Services) are something we have only just implemented, and the auto loading of drivers, accounting, and central driver database is a feature that has cut our Helpdesk calls by 10%... I believe Novell are going the same way as Betamax video cassettes.. Superior products, but hobbled by a poor marketing strategy.... Come Mr Schmidt, get it together....
Listen, the one thing most (notice I say most so don't bother with the exceptions) computer companies do wrong is branch out in too many different directions instead of concentrating on what it does best.
Netware is dead but maybe not Novell. They nearly died by screwing around and branching off into groupware and office suites for awhile while Mickeysoft sucked the core of their business from them. However, the NDS product really does rock.
If Novell can concentrate on networking products that do not necessarily depend exclusively on one OS or another then they have a chance. There are two keys. Neither one Novell is usually very good at. They need to market themselves like mad to the right markets and they need to figure out how to make profits with NDS in a big way until they can bring more quality products to the forefront.
My company uses NDS and I have to say that it honestly rocks.
ACK
Novell suffered from its founder's desire to beat Microsoft at the desktop. Ray Noorda bought UNIX from AT&T and WordPerfect. Novell couldn't create a competitive desktop and ended up selling both at a loss. Now Microsoft owns a big chunk of Corel. Who even thinks about SCO much these days?
/.ers, Microsoft sold a UNIX-derivative operating system in the early 80s called XENIX. Don't fool yourself for a moment that MS "doesn't get" the power of UNIX or the threat of LINUX. What it's been waiting for is a real indication that LINUX can become a viable desktop competitor.
If not for the DOJ investigations, Microsoft would have bought Novell years ago. History has an ugly habit of making sense of how and why things happen.
Listen,
You don't become a behemoth by being stupid. Watch the PBS special "The Rockefellers" if you need a clue. Bill Gates has already started giving his billions away and Paul Allen's been doing it for years.
History will remember Bill Gates as a great man of his time, even though people of his own era eschewed him as the Anti-Christ. They did the same to John D.
Where does Larry Ellison spend his billions? On himself. At least we have Steve Jobs to thank for "Toy Story".
"He that breaks a thing to find out what it is has left the path of wisdom."
Må jeg få en tjener? www.nine9.ukshells.co.uk
Well this is what i know, My brother in law Used to work in the novel office in Utah. He was told by his boss that anyone who stays on for the next 2 months will get a raise if novell doesn't go go out of buisness and if they do then they will recieve and very good severence package. So this looks like to me that not even novell now what is going to happen.
That is not true at my company. I'm the only employee though...
-- Spammers: My E-mail server is in California. Consider yourself warned.
Lightweight Directory Access Protocol.
It is NOT a directory, but a method for ACCESSING one. Being LIGHTWEIGHT, it means some features required of a full DAP are not implemented.
NDS is accessible via LDAP, as are numerous directories availalbr on Linux (including NDS), AD, Domino etc. etc.
I would love to see a port the Novell Utilities to Linux.
Also GroupWare.....
Just in case anybody in IBM is Listening......
Yes I can not spell...Wait....for a second there I almost cared.
Let's see, product that works, superbly documented, support site and line that actually gives a flying fuck about solving problems and support for every desktop platform you're likely to see in service. And lo! It's cheaper than running an NT shop, and everything in it is (or can be, at least) worked with open standards etc.
I grant you, I ain't running a particularly big network with it (three servers, prox 70 hosts of various kinds) but if - like me - you've got another job to do when you ain't fixing, it's a godsend. I'd have bought it at three times the price.
Classic example of why I like Novell so much: before I arrived, the network had run three years with precisely zero maintenance and a configuration that was an absolute disgrace. In that time, it had had one (1) outage. Nice.
Maybe, if I was doing the systems full-time, I'd want to be working with a Unix set-up of one sort or another. That's a hypothetical, though - I haven't any need for that kind of power and felxibility in an environment where all I need is a really, really reliable file server or three.
That aside, I'd rather bite off my own genitals than use any other NOS. I should imagine that there are a lot of other guys running networks in small business environments who feel the same way
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
This is, albeit on a larger scale, my experience. It works, it keeps working, and you can bolt anything you damned well please onto it. As long as they keep making those sales, Novell will keep going.
I don't think the Apple comparison is as near the mark as it could be. Novell haven't made half as many major strategic blunders as they could have done, and the one they did make (hanging on to IPX after it outlived its usefulness) they seem to be dealing with rather effectively. Novell's problem is Microsoft's sales force, who are rather better at their jobs than Novell's crowd. I've had six sales pitches for NT in as many weeks from people I called for advice on wholly different topice. I'm discovering that there's a limit to the number of times I can say "been there, done that, don't want it again" without resorting to violence.
-- AndrewD
A Maze of Twisty Little Laws, All Different.
> LDAP based solutions.
That's a classic 'apples and oranges' statement. LDAP is a protocol to access a directory. NDS is an implementation of a directory. To say NDS is losing ground to LDAP is like saying "sendmail is losing ground to MAPI". Doesn't make any sense. NDS supports LDAP just as nicely as any other implementation, so if you need LDAP, then NDS is still a valid option for you.
> could make Netware largely irrelevant,
> especially now that most network
> printers are all direct-IP addressable
> and have little need for a print server
You don't work in a big office do you? I don't know too many printers that have gigabytes of RAM or disk space in them, and yet many office printers have many gigabytes of print jobs queued up to them constantly. Plus, allowing everyone in your organization unblocked access to the printer IP opens you up to all sorts of denial of service attacks on the printer.
No, print servers are not going away any time soon. Sorry.
I'm not sure I understand your argument vis-a-vis MS antitrust at all, but I can't offer anything that hasn't already been said here.
FYI: Caldera was built out of a division that Novell sold off in 1996. Novell also used to own UnixWare until it was sold to SCO, but then SCO sold a bunch of its business Caldera.
Caldera and Novell are based in the same city and already cooperate on a number of Novell-related Linux initiatives. So look to Caldera to do what you suggested.
First off, you have to seperate old Novell from new Novell. The old Novell from the crunchy 4.x and earlier days bears little to no resemblance to the latest release. New Novell is a pretty slick package and if more prople knew about it
Novell isn't irrelevant and probably never will be. It really isn't so much a server OS as a network OS. It's LDAP compliant and much more. Rumor has it that with 6 due out quite soon (before the end of the year) that the pricing structure will change considerably.
It has user management feature which puts Windows and Unix/Linux to shame. It's network security is unmached. It's stable and reliable. It's web server (in 6) can serve up approximately 10 times the number of pages that a Linux/Apache box can on the same hardware. It's easy to mange. It comes with a whole host of applications, like ZENworks, GroupWise, etc that let you pull off some really slick techo-magic with minimal effort.
If you ignore the price tag, it's nearly perfect. However, due to Novell's pricing structure there are LOTS of networking folks out there who have not had any recent Novell experience. Like me, they are slow to recommend what they don't already know and love. If Novell follows through and restructures their pricing, they may well have a very competitive product