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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?
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
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.
Here. The explanations are full of PR twisted nonsense and fake optimism. Doesn't look good.
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.
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
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
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
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.
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...
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?)