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Novell's Race Against Time
DiamondGeezer writes "The Guardian newspaper in the UK reports in 'It's a race against time' that Novell is on a knife-edge financially and competitively, having placed a huge one-way bet in the success of its Linux strategy. But there's no guarantee of success: its revenue from Linux licensing is puny, and it faces a crowded market of Linux distros. Novell may be getting some positive press now that it's gone full tilt for Linux, but let's remember the reasons why: because of mis-steps of its previous management (especially the disastrous acquisition of WordPerfect in the mid 1990s) and its failure to grow its Netware business (with more than a little help from Microsoft), it's now having to re-engineer itself for Linux."
Is not every company on a similar race against time?
This sig is intentionally blank
Is Novell deserving of the support that the Open Source Software (OSS) community can provide to increase the odds of success regarding its Linux push?
If so, what can the average Linux user do to help (besides switching to Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) or becoming a shill?)
If not, why not?
How does Novell expect to remain competitive in the world of free linux. Especially with RedHat dominating the paid business sector.
They were one of the pioneers of many technologies available today. It will be sad to watch their slow painful death.
--
NoVA Underground: Where Northern Virginia comes out to play
...that made $60 million on their identity theft prevention products?
DBA? Software Engineer? My company is hiring! Click
What Novell really needs to do is merge unique features from Netware into Linux, and license much of Apple's proprietary code at any price. This will allow applications made for the Mac to compile and run pretty cleanly on Novell Linux, thereby differentiating Novell from the other distros.
Netware didn't just fail "with more than a little help from Microsoft". It failed because (and it kills me to say this), Windows NT was a better product than Netware in just about any way imaginable. I remember when I made the switch in my career from Netware to NT. I can't think of anything that Netware did better than Windows NT. Netware pretty much sucked ass...
I must admit that it was very early in my IT career that I made this switch. Perhaps my inexperience in Netware had something to do with my opinion of it.
Whoops, wrong story! /ducks
Last post before the dreaded Slashdot April Fools articles are submitted.
Since their awful work of the past, novell have made a considerable step towards knocking some Microsoft users off. I am an avid SuSE user having tried many other distros.
My Linux - (L)ove (I)s (N)ever (U)tterly eXPensive
I've been thinking for a while, from just before the start of the SCO vs IBM circus, that Novell is getting ripe for being bought out by IBM. Anyone else concurr?
The biggest problem Novell has is attracting the best and brightest software engineers. This is because a lot of Novell engineering is done in Provo Utah. Life in Provo is not for everyone. It is beautiful but it is one of those one company towns. If your job there does not work out then you'll have to relocate for your next job. The cost of living in Silicon Valley is high but a great engineer can find a new high paying job within a matter of days. Provo does not offer that.
While I can't argue much against that statement, I really wish it hadn't been disastrous. WordPerfect has always been my favorite word processing suite, and I wish Novell still owned it, and would give better Linux support than the wishy-washy stuff Corel's been doing.
Join moola.com, play games to earn money.
If there's anything I can't stand more than a badly run network, it's "professional" networking software.
At a previous office, our vendor decided to put a throttle on network clients by sticking some kind of network management software on the main server which could only have clients added by certified technicians (namely, them). So what happens when someone decides to bring an 802.11 laptop to the office to do some work? Well, the server software barfs and starts spewing error messages all over the place until finally the server locks up because the disk is full.
I now loathe networking software that is not configurable or expandable without "specialists" to do it for a fee. I just want to plug in my new computer and have it work with the least amount of fuss.
Novell is dead, not because it's software sucks, but because it does what other (better) Free software does and charges outrageous sums. The user pays for the privilege of having Novell run roughshod over the internal network.
Thanks, but no thanks.
Novell may be facing competition with a lot of other distributions, but I have to say that I don't see Suse fading anytime soon. In fact, in my experience, Suse has been getting more popular as of late. It certainly seems like the most well refined distribution I've used lately. Redhat seems to have left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of Linux users, and I've never heard of anyone using Mandrake on a server, which really leaves Suse as the last of the major distributions with commercial backing (I know there are other commercial Linux distributions, but when I think of commercial Linux distributions, I always think of the big 3 as Suse, Redhat and Mandrake).
YaST is probably one of the best system tools I've used on any Linux distribution, and hopefully we will see some really great things once we see some (forgive the buzz word) synergy between Suse and Ximian.
Famous Last Words: "hmm...wikipedia says it's edible"
Is it sad that I miss my old, university ginormous NDS tree? Everywhere I do, it's Active Directory, which appears to have almost caught up to where Novell was in 1994.
This crazy world makes no sense.
dinner: it's what's for beer
I don't recall hearing that Novell ever intended to make a lot of money by selling a Linux distro. On the other hand, converting their existing products to Linux will save them a bundle compared to developing a completely independent solution. Most of what their stuff does is the same as what Linux does. They can concentrate on the things that make them different to add value.
I bought Novell shares around the time they announced their acquisition of SuSE. At that time, Novell was shifting its strategy into aggressively supporting opensource projects (SuSE, Mono, KDE, etc). Ever since then, their stock has been going in a downward spiral. I guess this is what happens when you support a company based on what you believe in rathar than what actually sells. Sad.
just a thot :D
cheers!
I, for one, hope Novell makes a go of it, but the world is unfortunately a harsh place.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Surely you weren't seduced by the Windows GUI?
... join me and we will rule the network as Icon and Mouse Pointer ...!
You don't know the power of the dark side of the Windows GUI
-kgj
-kgj
I hope that Novell has success with it's SuSE / Novell Desktop 10 line. Already they've got a good foothold in Europe and the release of a distro with Beagle and F-Spot integrated in it should see them doing well. I hope they continue to make money and employ their great hackers.
Maybe Novell should also license from IBM all it can from Lotus SmartSuite, then merge the best of WP, Paradox, (if it still has any rights to WP & Pdx) into SmartSuite and then release the package to compete with OpenOffiice.org.
I am STILL not pleased with the document insert "feature" which, when I insert a document, it goes into a "band", invisibly. When I link to another document and then want to edit from beginning to end, I damn well should be able to SEEEEEEE those linked documents.
Lotus WordPro has done this RIGHT for years. 1.9.79 still makes me go, "sigh.... maybe NEXT version SO/OO.o will pull their heads out and actually BUY a copy of Lotus SmartSuite and start simplyfiying and mimicking stuff that works, instead of coming up with gee-whizz stuff that piles on to the list of features that have to be debugged, making it too resource intensive (on the devs AND the desktop) to be economical to go back and fix those useful features.
I also think Novell could pull a rabbit or two by adjusting the document interface so that a user in a spreadsheet can put the tabs wherever they want, not just get force-fed bottom tabs only or top tabs only. (Actually, I thought GroupWise offered that, or maybe it was QuattroPro...)
If IBM and Novell had some limited thing going on, Lotus SmartSuite could be diffused (not DEfused, mind you) across more Linux/Open Source environments.
I am not at all about "killing off" the various suites that OpenSource devs are making, but christ-o-matic, take a LOOK at what SmartSuite has, and gingerly, without ticking IBM off too terribly, clone some of those features, especially if IBM is not going to get its Lotus camp on the band wagon.
NOVELL, are you leesteneeng? Please, PLEASE, license from IBM/Lotus the Lotus and then uppgrade the Approach database interface, the Lotus WordPro document interface, and the Lotus 1-2-3 interface. They're crisp, tight, concise, colorful, not drab/gray.
At least Lotus isn't busy chomping away and cloning the heck out of ms' orifice. (Actually between Lotus and SourceNext ("Lotus SuperOffce developers/distributors in Japan/Asia...), I wonder what will be the next offerings to Lotus SmartSuite.)
David Syes
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
I'm not trying to troll. What are some key reasons to use Netware in a business instead of Windows Server 2003?
Netware was very stable, and very easy to manage from a sysadmin perspective. Especially pre-Netware 5. In my experience, it was a robust networking and directory services package that enabled Windows to work (relatively) seamlessly better than Windows could do it. That's the caveat though, Microsoft's networking schema evolved and Windows NT 4 especially was the beginning of the end for Novell's flagship product. Once Windows could natively do what you previously needed a "Client" to do it was pretty much over. Microsoft's transition to TCP/IP was much smoother than Novell's away from IPX/SPX I miss Zenworks and the Novell Application Launcher that could be used as an explorer/program manager replacement, making deployment and managing a ton of computers easy. LANDesk is a lackluster replacement, IMO. Active Directory on the other hand is shaping up to be a very nice way to manage a bunch of computers, mix with Ghost and LANDesk, its almost the same as the old Netware suite. I think this is where Novell could make a real in-roads with Linux. If Novell is successful in combining Linux seamlessly (no "client" needed, automatic domain/tree login with user rights, shares, printers...etc) with the GUI administration tools of Netware, I think they'd have something marketable. Unfortuantely, RedHat's nearly beaten them to the punch. I think Novell is a lot like Netscape. Brand recognition is still there and Novell still has a decent reputation for solid products though the market share has decreased a thousand-fold. If they can bring something to the table that can be deployed easily, with out having to go through lengthy conversion and training processes for the people who have to deploy and manage it, Novell might just garner a bit more attention. Its not a last ditch effort, but its damn close.
I know what you're thinking. Did I forward 65,535 packets or 65,536 packets?
We have a fairly sizeable eDirectory tree of about 100,000 users. We have hundreds of Netware servers. We use Identity Manager(dirxml) extensively. Our entire LDAP authentication runs on eDirectory. I know many other VERY large companies such as ours where Novell plays a very important role and where eDirectory is the central authentication/idenitity scheme. Sure we have some Windows application servers---who doesnt. But I always get amazed at those who predict the death of Novell---because usually those are the same people who have never used any Novell products in their life. Believe me Novell is dominate in every Fortune 100 company out there. They are going nowhere.
At the moment in my place of employment, we want to run Debian on some custom hardware (but alas, Debian won't work on it - despite many hack attempts), because we just find RPMs too hard to manage and apt-get + aptitude to ge great.
Employing someone to waste time trying to install Debian on something which cannot guarantee a pay off is not fun, and is a waste of money as well for the customer.
The thing is, the hardware vendor doesn't take Debian seriously (because it's not backed by a company with resources), so there is no driver disk or hardware support.
What I am trying to say is this:- there is a niche here that needs to be filled. There is a need for companies with the ability to back Linux distros, even if just for customer peace of mind. They will pay money for it. So far, only RedHat is being taken seriously commercially IMHO.
There is no "swamped" Linux market, or at least, not in my situation as far as I can tell. Only blimmin' RedHat Linux is supported and will install on our blade server.....
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
No joke. How conservative can one company be? Where did the conservatism come from? It came from Joseph Smith, folks. That's right, I'm saying Mormonism is Novell's biggest problem, and that won't go away until they get the hell out of Utah. The shortsightedness and lack of marketing come from one place and one place only. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. They're really nice people, but when it comes to running a business, leave it to the cutthroats on the east coast.
So if Apple wants some more serious enterprise apps, all they have to do is aquire Novell in a year...
Novel vs Redhat. In a corporate environment with directory services novel wins hands down. Novel (suse) also has a much much better QA procedure on its Enterprise linux products. I have not seen to date one issue to date (yet) that has caused systems to go down after patches have been applied. However with redhat we see it all the time.
For anyone serious about an enterprise level linux novel is the only real choice.
Novell was successful before Netware, then nearly
died out. Netware saved them, and became a bit hit.
Then, with that dying, it's been directory
services. They can switch to Linux now.
While I don't doubt that Novell has taken a large risk with playing "the linux card", I don't see them in any immediate danger of financial difficulty.
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=NOVL&annual
While their installed base is certainly not what it once was, they have a solid reputation, still significant installed base, and from what I remember, a decent size pile of cash (771,844 at last quarterly report) to fall back on.
In other words, exactly where SCO might have been if they had not made a different sort of bet. (i.e. running a business of making products, selling support and consulting services, etc. Not to start an SCO love fest, but once upon a time they were a well regarded company).
Novell today is far removed from the high tech company that it was 20 years ago. Back then, a file server was considered high technology... and Novell set the standard that everyone else tried to reach. What killed Novel, the high technology company, was the loss of the original very smart designers and the onslaught of suit mentality that ensued. Windows became more popular because it's operating system went far beyond just basic file serving functionality. Novell had no new ideas to incorporate into it's file serving operating system because the smart people working there bailed and were never successfully replaced. This happens to a lot of good companies. They get a little fame under their belts for some successful innovation, the suits tighten the reigns and take over, the company then goes to hell in a hand basket.
Where does information go after it has been erased?
Wait, didn't LDS sponsor Orgasmo? If that's not business innovation, I don't know what is.
Was not about Wordperfect. It was about Groupwise. Novell still makes a huge amount of money on Groupwise, the WP deal was very much a win for them.
Firstly, this fails to take into account the recent Microsoft settlement which brought $536 million into Novell, plus the additional cash they have on hand. They aren't suddenly going into bankruptcy.
Second:
"it is getting excited about the version of KDE that will accompany SuSE Linux 10 next year. This is based on Mono, another Novell takeover, which aims to provide a development environment that will run Java and Microsoft.net on Linux"
KDE has nothing to do with Mono. The author probably meant Ximian Gnome, but that doesn't even make the statement true, and wtf does Mono have to do with Java?
SuSE + Ximian + Mono + Novell = Good prospects in my book. Granted Novell management has a long history of screwing things up, but this product line looks pretty promising. In fact, full disclosure I put my money where my mouth is and purchased some amount of Novell stock.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I might be talking out of my @ss, but the last few days I've been thinking that innovation and customer service have taken a rather bad beating by IP and patent infringement litigation.
If Novell really wants to do something besides take a dive in front of the world, they should take the talent that they do have, add a bit to it, and (as someone else almost stated) create a Linux distro that is not like the rest. A Linux that 'makes it easy' to put it anywhere in your network, run just about _anyone's_ applications, and has simple to use but well behaved patch management and update services.
They could also ship low cost versions of their distro that are tailored for specific applications such DVR, home-based firewall/proxy/mail_filter/u-name-it, game machine, etc...
I kind of hate to say this, but if my aunt Julie got a Novell CD in the mail, and it installed perfectly for her, let her get all her normal home user applications running with ease, they would increase their customer base.
All of the home users that I know of don't want to mess around with the OS on their $500 'Dude, your getting a whaaaa?' machines. They just want to turn it on, get their email, be able to figure out how to easily use their digital cameras, and do cool stuff on the Internet that they hear about from friends and neighbors.
If Novell really wants to be a 'playa' they need to make a user experience that beats windoze and AOhelL for ease of use, ease of adding features, and ease of keeping it secure from spam, spim, virii, and other malicious forms of those 'I don't know what it was, but now my computer doesn't seem to work very good' problems.
IMHO any OS that can build a 'tune-up' kit that my aunt Julie can use will be a bear in the marketplace.
Its not good enough to have a good OS, your product has to be part of a service, and it *MUST* be innovative and include the kind of customer service that people *WANT* to pay money for.
Yeah, I hack together my own machines, and for the most part I enjoy it... but I'm rare... the majority of people just want a computer that works when they turn it on... like their stereo or microwave oven.
They also want to do 'cool' stuff without having to be an MIT graduate (not that being a MIT graduate guarantees that you know how to do _anything_).
Well, the reason that RedHat got its customer base is because they more-or-less did these things for the corporate environment. With what is happening on the home desktop, SPAM litigation, the UN wanting to control the Internet... its all too much, the aunt Julie's of the world just want it to work as reliable as their toaster, and without the need of knowing someone in the neighborhood who is a computer genius.
If Novell can do that, they *WILL* garner sizable market share.... IMO.
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
$4.99 novell linux dvd at checkout counter :
best buy ? nope.
frys ? nope.
barnes and noble ? nope.
office depot ? nope.
clearly I am of the opinion that linux can move forward best and fastest via low cost, impulse buy at major retailers.
novell (or?) should attempt this.
One more item for thought: IBM is heavily invested in Novell. I can guarantee you, Novell is going nowhere but forward until/unless IBM gives up on Linux and Open Source technology -- and there's no evidence of this even remotely happening.
Until Microsoft proves it can compete on price and quality, instead of paid "studies" and fabricated "exposes" of competitors, readers would be best advised to avoid their products like the plague.
1. Innovate.
2. Other people copy your innovations.
3. Don't profit.
Debian on the server, and Suse on the desktops/laptops. That'll work for me.
;-)
Or have I just had too much to drink tonight? (I have, BTW...)
"and its failure to grow its Netware business (with more than a little help from Microsoft)"
Microsoft was being shown the door in many many shops because Novell was entrenched. To imply that Microsoft hurt Novell by anything other than building a better product is bullshit. It was hard work by sales reps to get Windows NT into Novell shops. And when they did it became obvious what was easier, faster, more dependable to setup and use.
I welcome Novell's attempt to try and do the same thing back at Microsoft - but their failure to do so is just that, their failure.
They are doing tons of good work for OpenOffice and have a very nice corporate distribution. Not to mention they own Ximian, which made Ximian connector for Evolution. What's not to like?
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
17 just isn't enough. :)
I was thinking about this the other day after watching the BrainShare video.
All the stuff that will actually increase sales is based on Suse (clustering, Xen, etc...).
Why didn't they try to buy Trolltech instead of Ximian.
I just don't see how Mono is going to help the bottom line in the near term.
Heck, I would've have bought Trolltech, and slapped some proprietary apps into Suse. There's got to be a competitive advantage somewhere, and I don't know how just services is going to give them that.
Suse was already pretty much a KDE distro, and buying Trolltech would have given them two things.
(1) The ability to change the Qt license to a more liberal one.
(2) Bring in the talent of Trolltech that is already accustomed to working with Suse.
KDE/QT still has a superior framework to Gnome/Gtk+, but frankly I see the Qt license being the one showstopper that will push Gnome/Gtk+ into the "standard" desktop category, once Linux on the desktop actually matters.
selling a Linux distro. Novell has done some dumb things before, but saying "Hey, I've got an idea! Let's try to get rich SELLING a Linux distro!" would be the dumbest.
My FreeBSD 4.x boxes are over 1000+ days of uptime now with real load with real business logic running on them.
ROFL. Yeah, right, sure. And rocks fall upward, and the moon is made of green cheese...
I administered Novell and NT both back in the days you're talking about. Netware 3.x beat NT 3.x so badly, on every possible applicable point, not even the most incompetent admin would have ever made the claim you just did with a straight face.
Microsoft PAYED my employer a huge sum to partially replace our Netware server with an NT 3.5 server. That little netware server was keeping the office served so far as email, web gateway, and file and print serving without a problem. NT on a slightly faster machine proved itself incapable of handling the EMAIL ALONE for the same office, and this AFTER having guys from MS fly down to work on it every couple of weeks for six months.
On top of lack of functionality and lack of stability, it was also impossible to properly admin. It was a total POS and everyone knew it. Even the PHBs were totally upfront about it - they knew it was trash. But whenever we had a problem, MS cut a check (or something to the same end effect) to more than cover the losses.
That's how they won. Novel certainly made mistakes, but that doesn't change the fact that their product was vastly superior and defeated on grounds other than technical.
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Now, if only the number of users who downloaded and installed it made a commercial difference to the company, that'd matter.
What really matters from the point of view of these companies, though, is what distros people buy "enterprise" variants of, pay for the customisation and deployment of, and pay for support on. That's where these people make their money. I doubt that area has much correlation at all with what people are doing with small edge servers and their desktops.
I found it odd to hear about Windows "N" following reading a day before about Novell and its plans with SUSE/NLD/whatever and it taking on Microsoft Windows with said product(s). Gotta love this Windows N, eh? After all, who is the biggest challenger right now for Microsoft? N! N=Novell.
Nothing like clever naming so the mindless masses are blinded to N=Novell because of Windows N
^^^^ All of the text in this message is in MY opinion and for entertainment ONLY.
Try this approach instead...
1: Invest in companies that are doing very well, and have a stock with strong funamentals.
2: Do not care about whether or not you like the company.
3: PROFIT!
4: Give some of that profit to charitable organizations that you DO believe in.
You won't accomplish much in the grand scheme of things by buying stock in a company you believe in. Unless it is an IPO, you aren't really providing them capital to grow and invest with. You are just buying shares that someone else had before you. Don't mix up business with personal feelings. Make money with business, and satisfy your personal feelings by giving away some of that money.
It may suck, but that's the way the world is...
Geez, dude. Chill out! It's just SOFTWARE! :)
:)
:) Got better things to worry about.
Seriously, like I said, it was a while back, and while I was using the latest version of NT, I might not have even been using the latest version of Netware. Don't really know. Don't really care all that much.
I don't actually get all bent out of shape over software-vs-software battles.
First, I am not sure what your hang-ups are about RPM...second, I believe Suse uses RPMs....
It's nice to have been the first Network OS for PC's. The first guys to implement networks were invariably the biggest companies since they had the most to gain and the most resources to invest in a computer network. By default, they installed Netware. Fast forward 15-20 years and the bulk of these guys are still on Novell for authentication/directory services and probably file and print. Plus, since NDS works with anything, on many different platforms, there has been little reason for big co's to drop Novell - authentication to MS servers has been seemless for a long time.
Further, Novell is currently profitable and has a fat bank account. I think they'll have enough cash flow to finish any transition to Linux. With their brand name and history, they'll easily make SUSE the #2 Linux distro around (with a real shot at #1).
IMHO, what Novell could really use right now is a some really good integration of WINE into SUSE so that their new Server + Workstation bundles actually have a chance of being useful to the average company that has the odd Windows app that they need to run the business.
Ximian went for chump change...well, they were sort of a chump change company, but they did offer integration products (Ximian desktop) which Novell wanted. Nots sure how buying TrollTech would have given Novell an advantage at the user level.
You know that if Novell goes down the tubes, some "industry experts" (read: shills writing for those magazines you get swamped with if you ever answer "IT Professional" on a survey) will surely blame Novell's involvement with Linux. A formerly big, profitable company dabbles in open source...and bites the dust. Therefore, open source is unprofitable. QED.
I had a lot of problems just getting it installed.
perhaps its just because im not the type to use the 'gui' approach to things, not that its a bad thing.
it either didnt have drivers for hardware that we needed to function, or had quirks with those drivers, or needed special treatment.
HOWEVER, that being said i installed it on a plain machine... and the installation was flawless.
I dont like yast, it was good for getting things to work, but I ended up in a console with a text editor editing configs anyhow.
the cups and samba portions in yast are just completely barebones.
the built-in kde conguration tool is far more powerful with regards to samba configuration than yast is.
I dont hate suse, it just didnt fit our needs, and upgrades failed way too easily. these machines we need, they are critical. I could not have a machine fail after an upgrade. after several of these failed upgrades i said enough is enough and switched the suse machines out with gentoo machines.
so, that why I switched it out.
it needs some more polishing, but granted some of my own personal preferences were trampled by it and thats part of it, for sure.
I will try it again in the future, I keep my eyes on most ditros, except for micro$oft linux. (redhat)
but between debian and gentoo and upgrading, I think its a tie. both do it very well, and with very little pain.
suse left me hanging more than once with a trashed system. either it didnt boot or it was really b0rked.
I say, give it a shot. it works fine as long as you dont have like bleeding edge hardware.
(like some sata controllers, ect)
"Microsoft technically still owes them royalties on every XP disk sold, but Novell isn't forcing it anymore"
If you're running a company looking wildly around for new revenue to replace the dying Netware, I'm skeptical that you'd overlook royalties on one of the most-used pieces of software on the planet.
All the comments on how Netware was so great make me laff. Read "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters"
by Merrill R. Chapman, to get a good feel for why Netware went by the wayside. Its wasn't the 'suits' that killed them, it was the engineers. They had a bunch of egotisical engineers who refused to build what the market wanted. Yes, it is/was a fast stable file server. But thats about it. You couldn't really run apps on it. And when the clients of the world are all running Windows, and Netware is expensive and difficult to use with Windows, there you go.
I noticed more and more people in Utah (where Novell resides) even are moving away from Novell to Microsoft. For example, the University of Utah is implementing Microsoft Exchange to replace its aging email server. Utah State University is slowly dropping Novell too, to Microsoft Exchange due to license issues with Novell.
Why would IBM want to buy a loser? They've stated in the past that they don't want their own distro, because it would interfere with their strategy of "buy IBM hardware, run whatever you want on it". I'm surprised they still make AIX.
Novell made a bad bet. Red Hat owns business Linux, and let's face facts; paid Linux is a niche market. The main attraction of Linux is that it's free as in beer. When it's all said and done, SuSe would have been better off as an independant company. Novell would've been better off buying Red Hat. Just one more disastrous business decision in a history of disastrous business decisions...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
As a former CNE I don't understand all the fuss about Novell. Their technology stopped providing value to companies and therefore stopped paying my bills long ago. Do any other former CNE's list that on their resume these days? Not me, there's no net gain from it. I always did like Novell, Gateway and others but time marches on.
I never saw Microsoft give away NT Server or Windows Server back in the day or now. The MS server OS's are pretty expensive, when you start counting client licenses. They pulled that freebie thing with Netscape but not Novell. Yes, they were cheaper than Novell but thats because Novell charged too much for Netware, not because MS was giving anything away in the server arena. And the core software they are selling now (Linux) is free to Novell. So they should be able to undercut Windows Server pretty effectively.
Having done some research on Novell about 6 months ago, there's some things that are not pointed out in the article that relate directly to cashflow.
It is true that their share of server sales has dwindled from a high of 80% down to low double digits. You can actually see that the impact of the introduction of WinNT. Over more recent years, the decline is actually due to Linux. What people frequently misunderstand is that this relates to NEW server sales.
What is not mentioned is the actual installed base. In this arena, Novell is huge. IIRC, a study that I saw put it at something like 3 to 5 million machines are running Netware.That's far more than all *nix combined, and was only matched by Windows.
Installed base == support/maintenance/upgrade revenue - ie services revenue. Novell has a cash cow there, that's for sure. Check out their 10Qs. And I should note that all their other 'businesses' - be it identity or ex Collabra or whatever are basically immaterial in comparison to their "software division formerly known as Netware".
But that revenue is still not sufficient. It was clear that if they didn't buy SUSE, they would lose their installed base to Linux for file/print services over time. And BTW, the Linux NEW server sales have been increasing rapidly. I always see that Linux is increasing at the expense of Windows and/or Unix, but never Novell. That is what surprised me most in my travels....
Obviously, migrating existing customers from Netware to Linux doesn't prevent leakage to either Windows or other Linux flavors, but now, they at least have a clear path for customers, and it will probably be the easiest path for their installed base.
Anways, that's my rant. And I wish Novell the best of luck. Successful linux companies will mean even better corporate acceptance.
So does Anonymous Coward have good karma?
Redhat is fine for servers (although I've had my share of problems with RHAS3, mainly NFS), but Novell offers something that RH has NEVER offered: out of the box Flash, Mpeg, Java, Real (yeah, I know - they're supposedly evil). These things are actually important for a desktop users. True, you could go out on your own and find all thiese things and install them yourself, but for a corporate "Give me a decent out-of-the-box desktop setup", Novell does nicely. And in my experience, Wireless as well as ACPI just work with MANY more laptops than RH.
If Novell really wants to make money, what they really need to do is come up with a good Linux certification test. Put some good marketing behind the certification, and make the test really hard, so that people need to take it multiple times. Sell some books that explains how to pass the test, even...but include questions on the actual test that aren't covered in the books.
In the end, Novell makes money, and the employeed people who are Novell Linux certified are actually happy that they forked over hard earned money to Novell. I think they call that a win/win situation.
But seriously, a good Novell Linux certification would be good for Linux.
Usurper_ii
www.quest4.org/ccna/
.
Ron Paul
I expect you're trying to be funny. But just in case you're not -- why then, my friend, you are caught in what is called (by author Harry Browne, first I heard of it) the "previous-investment trap".
OK, so you bought a bunch of Novell stock at $X, way back when, and now it's worth $Y (where Y << X). You could say to yourself that, well, it's really worth $X, and you'll sell it all (with great relief) just as soon as it gets back to $X. And maybe it will.
However, maybe it won't. To be in the previous-investment trap is to believe that it's "really" worth $X. In fact, what you have now is a bunch of Novell stock that's worth $Y, today, right now. You could sell it for $Y, and have $Y worth of cash in your hand.
So, the way out of the previous-investment trap is to ask yourself, "If I had that $Y, in cash, in my hand right now -- is buying $Y worth of Novell stock the single best thing I can do with my $Y?"
Maybe it is -- maybe the thing really is undervalued, and there is good reason to believe that it will return to $X, and even more. If so, relax, and enjoy the ride.
But if it's not, then the only way out of the trap is to bite the bullet: sell the Novell stock, take your $Y (and your hard-won experience), and spend the cash on something better.
(Obviously, this applies to a lot more than just stock; details are left as an exercise for the reader...)
First of, I used to be a big RedHat fan, but once I fired up my first copy of SuSE 8.2, I was impressed enough to look more closely. When I started working with SuSE 9.0, I was hooked. The engineering that has gone into SuSE Linux just simply rocks, particularly when compared to RedHat which *still* lacks a Yast-like toolbox and *still* has its head buried in ext3 fossilware.
All that having been said, one of the things I *LOVE* about RedHat is that nearly 100% of the software they sell is open source. That's why you can now download clone CD & DVD images of RHEL from CEntOS.org and WhiteBoxLinux.org. They compiled the entire OS from the source code RedHat makes available to the world for free.
I'm glad to see Novell taking on Microsoft again. The competition will only make both companies better. However, I am concerned that one of the best Linux disros on the planet is now becoming laced with proprietary software that encourages vendor lock-in and requires per-user licensing costs.
So, what's this? I'm going to be REQUIRED to pay a per-seat licensing fee for desktop & server OS software when 98% of it is open source? RedHat may be behind the engineering curve, but at least they aren't infecting their main product with proprietary code.
Don't get me wrong. I'm excited for Novell, and we'll likely consider their offerings! Personally however, I'm rooting for Debian/UserLinux, particularly now that Yast has been GPL'd. (Thanks to Novell, BTW) Open Standards, Open Source, no vendor lock-in.
- CLC
If you look at its fundamentals Novell is in very good shape. It is a company that wisely invests in the future and not just lives for today. Novell's strategies are right on and its committment to Linux is already starting to pay off. In fact, their stock is a bargain at the moment so most likely I'll buy some more shares.
It's not just open source stupid!
... scalability, database size, license cost, standards based transactions and data handling...
And I say that with total humor.
I prefer to see more Novell in the marketshare whether it's open or closed source. Hopefully Linux users support will push them to open more technology like some companies have done, but overall Novell products are a lot better than there rivals. The eDirectory platform is better than Active Directory in many respects, including but not limited to security, cross-platform support (duh) and reliability
You get the picture.
If you were a Suse fan, stick in there. If you are a developer help out, open communication with Novell. Ignore the articles and push through the filter. Find situations where it works and implement it. I belive that eDirectory combined with what is now the Novell Linux Desktop will someday be a force to reckon with in the enterprise space.
If you've managed or designed a network you appreciate the technology Novell can offer you. I know many system administrators who would love to return to a day where the enterprise desktop isn't anything but an interface to work applications. I'd prefer a Linux desktop I could roll out with the features and security measures I want and be able to manage all the functionality at the server. It's the current Windows server sales pitch, but Novell's is better.
But then again, technology doesn't win in the board room. If it did Novell wouldn't be in a cash crunch now. But then again, I'm becoming a shill and ignoring some of the bad decisions Novell has made - either way, support them.
Taking on SCO would help their cause quite a bit as well...
Get your Unix fortune now!
...especially when that directory services product runs on multiple platforms and can contain a billion objects. Who needs Windows 2000 or 2003?
Signed,
Huge Novell Fanboy
Get your Unix fortune now!
For Novell, I think the biggest challenge is to keep revenue stable while customers transition from NetWare to Linux, without losing too many customers to Windows in the process.
NetWare is still pretty expensive on the server. A 50-user copy is about $150 a seat on CDW retail ($7,500), about $50 a seat under a licensing agreement ($2,500).
SuSE is $999 per server with no client licenses fees.
Figuring NetWare to be about 50% of Novell's one billion in revenue, that means Novell would stand to lose more that 25% of their total revenue assuming everyone switched to SuSE. Novell might make this up with SuSE/Ximian desktop revenue, but I see large amounts of revenue from Linux on the desktop as being a long time in the making.
The estimates for SuSE revenue for 2003 were for about $40 million in revenue. As near as I can tell Ximan never really made any money to speak of.
So, if I haven't bored anyone to death yet, Novell NetWare is a $500 million revenue stream, SuSE is a $40 million revenue stream. Novell needs to very carefully transition from NetWare to SuSE if they want to keep revenue even. They can also grow by taking customers from Microsoft or Red Hat. But, it appears to me that Novell will have to shrink about 25% in size in order to remain profitable in the short term. Red Hat, with a more mature Linux strategy, only made $100 million in the last four quarters.
None of this is a bad thing, and I wish Novell the best of luck. I used to work there, and I still have friends there. Just doing the math though it seems like they will need to get smaller before they get bigger again.
'I am become Shiva, destroyer of worlds'
I have Lotus SmartSuite on my OS/2 machines, and yes it does word processing all right. It doesn't set my teeth on edge like Open Office does.
SuSE comes with several other nice word processors; I'm happier with them than with Open Office.
(Heavy sigh)...
But what I would really love would be WordPerfect ported to Linux. For my money, the best thought-out and useful word processor ever is WordPerfect v6 for DOS. From its Reveal Codes to Flush Right, it has always been the cat's meow for me. Its implementation of styles is more flexible and much nicer to use than that of Lotus WordPro. Even though it can't see the system clipboard or understand long file names, it is still the word processor I use most.
Microsoft first gained my undying hatred by its burying of WordPerfect. Of course, it didn't help that WordPerfect Corporation spent so much effort and took so long in making its Windows version. What a terrible, terrible waste!
true.
m l
http://slashdot.org/articles/01/04/10/1846258.sht
$ uptime
15:05:29 up 434 days, 23:02, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
$ uname -a
Linux medea 2.4.21-0.13mdksecure #1 SMP Fri Mar 14 14:10:36 EST 2003 i586 unknow
White box. Sitting undisturbed inside an office tower in the Perth (Western Australia) CBD running four services.
Come to think of it, I'm not sure why it's running an SMP kernel; maybe because the drive was originally set up on a P4 box?
Anyway, the only things which bring my boxes down are power failures and hard drive failures (oh, and one client who keeps filling the PSUs with cat hair, long story).
Telstra had a network of ~4000 of the suckers. One of their biggest support blunders was switching from them to NT. Took several times as many machines and several times as many techs per machine to do the same job. Not sure why they changed.
Similar story switching their web proxies from Unix to NT.
Lets not forget the high quality identity management package and tools novell sells. These products bring in good revenues and have sizable market share. Hell novell created the original DAP implementation if I remember correctly and their LDAP stuff shows their experience in Directory services. They make a good product and hopefully can continue.
Funny, Microsoft is a bigger dead-end than Novell!
Even in a supposedly clean room, they're going to be accumulating dust after 3 years.
It is now official - Netcraft has confirmed: Netware is dying
Yet another crippling bombshell hit the beleaguered Netware community when recently IDC confirmed that Netware accounts for less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of the latest Netcraft survey which plainly states that Netware has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Netware is collapsing in complete disarray...
Oh wait, something's wrong here...
> Novel vs Redhat. In a corporate environment with directory services novel wins hands down. Novel (suse) also has a much much better QA procedure on its Enterprise linux products. I have not seen to date one issue to date (yet) that has caused systems to go down after patches have been applied. However with redhat we see it all the time.
For anyone serious about an enterprise level linux novel is the only real choice.
That experience is contrary to mine... how to handle kernel source dirs changes within a release, the initial SLES9 died on most Dells (due to broken megaraid driver), having a myrinet card inside makes ethernet not work, kernel packages are handled weirdly, especially on IA64 where the files aren't owned by a package or have any version info in the file name. SLES9 isn't as bad as the really, really bad SLES8, but they sure have a lot to make up for - while RHEL3 and RHEL4 just work, and work well.
"OES on SuSE changes everything. You get all of the Novell tools, all of the open source tools, a worldwide developer base, plus the goodies from Ximian. It's a huge win. Not only do I get Linux, from the servers to the desktop, but I get the tools to manage every box."
Novell is to Linux, what Apple is to BSD.
After all the latest OpenOffice/Java debate, could be a winning strategy for Novell to focus primarily on making an open (beer+speech) version of Wordperfect and donating it to the community?
I'd love such a thing.
Maybe get some more packages. More, and more frequently, packages come out for the other two.
But were SuSE excels compared to the other two is polish. It just looks like someone sat down, and actually though about the design.
it either didnt have drivers for hardware that we needed to function, or had quirks with those drivers, or needed special treatment.
So maybe that's why all the enterprise distributions (even microsoft's server os's) come with a supported hardware list.
Next time, buy your hardware to go with the software you want to use.
4 years ago, when MS started talking about Active directory, they announced they would make their solution free on MS, and charge elsewhere. Great. So now they encouraged everybody to go to MS as being the cheaper system to run. And that worked until MS got their AD into place to take over. Now, Novell is being kicked out slowly due to costs.
It remains to be seen how Novell will come out of all this.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Selling a Linux distro certified to work with Oracle is something one actually can make money off of. There are only two, and the other one's more expensive and (IMNSHO) technically inferior.
Services.
If Novell turns into a huge Linux tech-support company, I bet they'll earn MILLIONS. Or maybe not, but think about it. It can become the #1 company in helping companies migrate to Linux.
Just think about it. With the increasing Linux market, they'll be VERY busy.
Setting up Samba? No problem. Recompiling the kernel? Our staff will go to you. Considering options between software? There we are.
"Novell. The Linux company."
But now, if Novell wants to survive SELLING SOFTWARE, then they should just forget about it. The FOSS is taking everything by storm - so they better adapt the service model (instead of the product model), or die.
"If you're just doing the manual anaconda graphical install, that's makes it all pretty damn simple. And I'm sure you could install RedHat easily on twenty thousand servers pretty damn easily if you use a kickstart file, and have a powerful FTP server available to handle the beating it's going to get."
Try UDPcast
The rest is simple planning.
From TFA:
Novell executives gave the impression that the Gnome and KDE open source desktop environments are not quite up to competing with Windows, but it is getting excited about the version of KDE that will accompany SuSE Linux 10 next year. This is based on Mono, another Novell takeover, which aims to provide a development environment that will run Java and Microsoft.net on Linux.
Oh dear, I hope smeone has told the KDE team that they've dropped Qt...
Technical validity of the article just went down the tubes.
David
I installed this (off the cover of a mag.) I was very supprised for a desktop distro how it just worked. I couldn't get over how even my bluetooth USB dongle was detected and worked. Setting Samba and VNC up was done and the firewall set to let connections through. Updating the system just worked. I've tried Mandrake, Slackware, and Redhat, and i'm going to stick with Suse.
I hope Novell the best for this, when i have some spare cash i'll be purchasing it to show my support. I think that MS have a bit to worry about on the desktop front.
"[insert corporation here] failure is their own fault... "
While [insert individual here]'s failure to quit cold-turkey illegal filesharing is [insert hated corporation here].
Interestingly enough, if the subject matter is outsourcing then it's:
1-[Insert hated country here]
2-[Insert hated PHB here]
3-[Insert individual here] that's a failure because of [insert weak reason here].
Oh please. My slide rule has a much higher uptime with real engineers running on them.
IBM don't need to buy Novell. They are huge corporate allies, and while IBM will make damn sure Novell never go under, they have no interest in owning the company outright.
IBM have been very careful to keep an appearance of having a platform agnostic view. They ostensibly funded the acquisition of SuSE Linux because they didn't want one dominant player in the Linux market. In reality, IBM owned much of SuSE behind the scenes already, so it was money out of the left pocket and straight back into the right. At the same time, they assured that SuSE became a very competitive player in the Linux marketplace.
IBM have their finger in many pies. They have very profitable businesses based around Red Hat Linux, and Windows. Don't forget that way back when they dumped support for OS/2 in favour of Windows when they realised which was the more profitable business.
They don't own Microsoft. They don't own Red Hat. They don't own SuSE, or Novell, nor will they ever need to. Won't stop them far outlasting all these companies.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
Dumb like the Red Hat?
Moron.
"The dew has clearly fallen with a particularly sickening thud this morning"
...was Windows 95 client support. It sucked so bad that most corps gave up trying to use Novell's client and went with MS' instead.
The biggest issues with the MS client were:
- No NLM support at all. Sure, you could use Novell as a fancy file directory, but no apps for you...
- Password synchronization issues. For too long this was a real problem. We won't even go into the myriad integration issues with NT's domain system.
So if you were a shop using Novell AND using MS' 95 client, you really weren't able to use the full power of Novell because you were still chained by MS. And MS offered lots of migration options to get you to 'join the Dark Side'. It was simply too easy to switch to an NT-based Domain back then and a lot of shops did it just to avoid the BS.
Novell should've been a lot more careful with their initial releases of their client - but I wonder if they were at fault there. Maybe MS didn't provide enough resources to them? Anyone out there know the truth?
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
you can't hold it against Novell that they screwed up once. Novell has good products and while it may seem that they are ditching MS they are actually playing both fronts. The linux distro is mediocre at best and has bad hardware support but then again this is only their first entry in the distro market. What Novell has that msot other distros don't is the corporate look and a fresh start. If they manage to release a very stable and very feature full distribution then they will win the gaim and get a lot of love from both the corporate market and the linux community. However, so far there are no signs that any of this will happen and sadly enough Gnome 2.10 would be challenging to integrate into any distro without breaking the usability. The half finished menu system was one of the biggest mistaked in gnome's history and will be remembered for a long time. As far as I know many of the Gnome developers are working for Novell so it would be easy for Novell to improve the quality of the project. Also Novell has started to put together SDK for the system which is an essential part of any commercially supported OS. Novell is also pushing Mono and trying to speed up / improve gtk. All these are worthy causes and I respect the company for doing what thet do. After all this is the first company that has pretty much jumped head over heels in the OSS pool. I really want them to succeed because if they do this will bring a lot of other previously closed source companies and would mean that there is a bright future for linux and will mean better hardware support and a lot more drivers plus faster driver releases which is the weakest link in linux (no pun intended). If they fail then linux will be pushed in the corner again. After all Novell is a big company but if their Linux project fails they will go under.
I think that the strongest product that novel has is SuSE. SuSE, unlike redhat, offers *FREE* security and bug updates, and allows you to easily mirror their update server with wget/ncftpget or whatever, and point your servers at an internal update host, for FREE, unlike redhat, which charges for RHN. This, paired with the fact that SuSE has the benefit of numerous third party certifications, like IBM, oracle, and mysql - it's a no brainer. I'm really surprised that more businesses didn't move over to suse instead of red hat enterprise. Great on desktops, by the way.
RandomAndInteresting.comdefending the world from stupidity since 1979
...if Novell is catering to destop users they have definetly found an untapped Linux market. My colleague is a Linux user/geek who gets a kick out of demonstrating to me (the only one of three OS.X users in the building who happens to have a desk near his) that his Linux laptop works just as well as my PowerBook. After trying a few distributions on three differnet laptops he finally settled on installing SUSE on an IBM box and then spent a week downloading software, tweaking the OS, flashing a whole range of firmware and opening up his IBM laptop a few times to muck around with the internals he finally announced: "See my LINUX laptop can do everything your PowerBook can!". Well of course it could. I never claimed Linux couldn't. My point, which he had once again missed completely, was that my PowerBook did all of those things from the time I took it out of the box and pressed the power button and the same applies to the Windows laptops the rest of the firm uses. That more or less sums up why people use Windows and OS.X. Things just work out of the box. and when it comes to my personal laptop workstation I simply do not have the time or the patience to spend a week or more trying to get everyting to work. If Novell can eventually deliver a Linux distro that enables me to install it on a laptop/desktop computer and just go to work without any further hassle I will use their distro whether irrespective of how evil they are supposed to be (they'll have a tough job out-eviling Microsoft anyway). And that concludes my rant.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Not to mention the fact that Novell's SUSE Linux server has about twice the performance of Windows Server 2003...
When you start running dozens or scores or hundreds of servers, that kind of performance difference starts to matter. Not to mention the license fees savings - but they are not as important as the ability to run half as many servers - which means fewer admins, less infrastructure costs, etc.
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I'd realy think that if Corel, Novell and Borland would do a combined effort to move to Linux, things could change very fast. Between them they have a very large and broad spectrum of commmercial grade high quality software. Their combined portfolio is huge and without much overlap. All of them have tried in some half-harted way, only Novell now seems want to go all the way.
- Operating system: SuSE
- Directory Services/Network management: eDirectory, ZENWorks, eXtend
- Office productivity: Ximian, Groupwise, OpenExchange
- Office suite: Wordperfect Office
- Developement environment: JBuilder, CBuilder, Delphi, Kylix
- Graphics: CorelDraw, Photopaint, Ventura, Paintshop Pro, R.A.V.E
I own WP12, CD12, CBuilder, Kylix, SuSE 9.2, but they do not work together well. Some run have (older) versions running on some versions of Linux (WP8 and Kylix run on older versions of SuSE)
I think the real problem none of their ported Linux versions caught on, was that they didn't appear at the same time, weere only supported for1-2 years. They therefore operated essentially in a vacuum. I think Novell should try to get Borland and Corel on board, creating a landscape of high profile Linux apps, and offering them in a combined comprehensive marketing effort, that assures customers that support will not be dropped again in 1-2 years.
Maybe these have had their greatest glory days, in the days before Windows95, but I think they could dominate a commercial desktop/corporate Linux environment. I think people would buy if it just worked, was well supported, and out of conventience and to have someone to yell at if stuff breaks.
Somewhat unrelated: I still lament the demise of Loki Games, still own their Civ:CTP for Linux.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
I remember those times very well, because I was one of the zealots advocating "stay the away from NT." Yeah, with much the same arguments. "Netware is more stable." "Netware doesn't need that ludicriously much memory." Etc.
As usual, we nerds missed the RL point by a mile. We were so focused on arcane technical merits, that we missed the real point.
The invariable actual answer was "Yes, that's true, but NT is cheaper. Even when you factor in the more powerful computer, the extra admin time, etc, NT is still much cheaper."
The Real World was and still is all about TCO, rather than about technical merits.
For most small businesses it was damn hard to justify the price of a Netware license, when NT essentially did the same thing. Sure, it may have required a reboot now and then, but then it's not like you lost millions if one of your 20 employees waited 5 minutes to upload a file. Sure, it required a few extra minutes a day from your admin, but it's not like one or two admins for 2-3 servers were overloaded to start with. Etc.
And it became even harder to justify when you factored in that Netware didn't even offer an upgrade discount. If you wanted to move from Netware 3.x to 4.x, Novell expected you to pay the full price. (I won't go into _why_ would someone want to upgrade each time a new version is available. Cluelessness was a big factor, I would guess.) I personally know people who switched to NT over that. It was cheaper to buy NT _and_ a new computer than to upgrade your Novell server.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Agreed.
1 755222). Here's another interesting link http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;16020781 22;fp;16;fpid;0
Being Novell they have street cred. Netware gives them a wedge into big businesses which no other Linux distro has. And I think they know and understand the businesses' needs better than any of the others, and have the tools to complement Linux to cater to those companies (Zen, identy management and such).
I think Novell and SUSE make a good fit. SUSE now has a desktop platform which they can work WITH, and not AGAINST.
They're clearly aware of it, and their CC EAL4+ certification was part of their plan, a certification which I think only SUSE still holds (among the Linux distros).
What the article could have mentioned is that Novell is proving to their customer that they can do without Windows, migrating internally to Linux desktops (see Joe Barr's http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/03/23/
2k ... 2k4 was a small turnaound
Presumably you mean to express 2004 with 2k4. Well, 2k4 actually means 2400. There doesn't seem to be a shorter way to write 2004 that to write 2004.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
But there's no guarantee of success: its revenue from Linux licensing is puny, and it faces a crowded market of Linux distros.
Doesn't matter. Most US federal agencies still run Netware and they've pretty much all accepted the theory that the next server upgrade will be to Netware on SuSE Linux Enterprise Server. That's the only Linux platform that Netware will be "supported" on.
Remember: supported doesn't have to do with whether it works. The Feds don't care if it works. Supported has to do with whether the company says it'll stand behind it. Novell has thoroughly pumped this angle: "If its in SLES9, we're supporting it for the next 5 years."
You havn't seen it in Novell's numbers yet because the government has an obnoxiously long deployment cycle. But you can count on it. The senior folks at the federal agencies have a big investment in their Novell certifications. They're not going jump the fence for Microsoft, not when Linux is better and cheaper even at Novell's price tag.
With the huge federal market almost a guaranteed buy, Novell has a very solid base to work from.
Its not yet time to write Red Hat's epitaph but it might be a good time to buy Novell stock. Make no mistake: Novell is going to win this one.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Definately. I've run Oracle 9i and 8i on SLES and it's sweet. Faster than running the Windows version on exactly the same kit. I've noticed that when I attend user group meetings and presentations where the presenters are demonstrating something using Oracle installed on their laptop virtually all are running it on SLES. 3 years ago they'd have been running on Windows.
Stephen
"Don't write down to your readers, the only people less intelligent than you can't read" - Sign on Newspaper Office Wall
It got be an Aprilfools joke! With the lack to links to other news sites, everything points in that direction.
There was always going to be a big test of the free software ideal in the business world sooner or later. After all, despite what some evangelists may choose to believe, it's clear that most of the major development work on most of the big FOSS projects is still done by a relatively small group of people working for a relatively small number of sympathetic companies. Most of the funding comes from elsewhere in those companies, and they support the free software development for commercial/economic/PR reasons.
The catch is that often, those reasons don't seem to be well-understood or fully thought through. While it's not free-as-in-speech software, Sun's continued support of Java is an excellent example of this. These are still businesses looking to make a profit, so if they don't see a return on their investment, they are inevitably going to kill the project (or stand by it and lose money, which is not sustainable).
So, at the risk of committing Slashdot Heresy(TM)... If Novell do fail because they couldn't support a business model based around Linux, would the precedent really be "dangerous", or simply realistic? It's funny how when we're talking about things like the **AA losing out to P2P, there's little sympathy for a "doomed business model", yet when we're talking about a company trying to sell free-as-in-beer software and (perhaps unsurprisingly?) not making much profit, the spin tends to be rather different.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
NDS kicks the stuffing out of Active Directory Services also.
It's not obvious on small projects, but as you scale up you can see some pretty nice things on NDS.
eric
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1778147,00.as p?kc=EWRSS03129TX1K0000616
Put on your boots and pinch your nose, it's going to get even deeper and smellier from Redmond for a while...
Thanks. Didn't know that, but I think we can all rest assured that Novell will be around for a long, long, time, now. :)
Usurper_ii
Ron Paul
Not an urban legend. We (IT) lost track of a NetWare 3.x server used by a small (less than 100) department in a large (more than 20,000) entertainment company.
When it was time to upgrade the department's LAN from TokenRing to Ethernet, we couldn't locate this server. The clients had no idea where it was. They only knew that the all-important J: drive on their PC was there before they were.
It turns out that there used to be a janitor's closet behind shelves, and a large desk pushed up against the shelves, that no one in that department had ever remembered being opened. Certainly no one had the key for it. When it was finally opened, there was the 3.x, chugging away without a care in the world. I don't remember what the box was, but I doubt it held more than 16 megs of RAM.
By that time, the company had pretty gone the Microsoft route, and we were all weary of dealing with the christmas lights like nature of a WindowsNT based network. Needless to say, we were amused and more than a little impressed by this little-engine-that-could.
= 9J =
Did anybody ever read "the adventure of the orange pips"?
It's not Novell, it's the market (actually it's YOU dumbass). You bought when Linux was the BUZZ.
;-)
I (also DUMBASS) made the same boneheaded move with AAI but you know what. It's a good company and I'm still buying.
Novell is at the bottom right now and if you don't buy the same $ of more worth as you did when it was high, you're gonna be kicking your own DUMBASS while I'm wiping my brow that NOVL gains saved my as on AAI losses
Have fun!
the distro companies have to get a really kick ass upgrade plan for these corporations -
I recommend they adapt apt-get to do live upgrades.
I put debian/ubuntu on my servers just because of this - I can upgrade a server in california when I am in florida without anyone being at the server.
Now maybe they have adapted their zen stuff to do this on linux but I know this is one thing that is missing from these "corporate distros"
sun has live upgrade - which rocks - and apt rocks but I think these "corporate distros" need to get behind this so upgrades are a no brainer for the corporate bloaks.
As I alluded to when responding to another response to my post, I'm aware that's a factor. It's not, however, what pays the bills in the short/medium term.
I also tend to view the situation with "creative" apps as quite different to with OSes. It's much easier to just use whatever Linux distro is currently in vogue and looks attractive for your needs; they just don't take that much distro-specific learning. The same is not true of desktop publishing or high-end web authoring packages.
Because of this, I don't think mind share is really that big a deal with Linux distros. The chances are the PHBs will make the distro selection anyway, and they'll probabably just pick the most familar sounding name / the lowest price / the one that offers them the best kickback on the deal.
You can configure just about anything in Samba with YaST, are you sure you thoroughly checked out the Samba Server Module ?? There is even an Advanced section that has a drop down list of *every* possible setting for Samba. For further reading check out this article which covers setting up SLES as a Samba with LDAP controller (all by just using YaST) for Windows Networks.
Working with over 5000 redhat boxes I see it across the board on many different platforms. I have not used SLES8 however Ive expereinced no problems with Dell 2650 or 2850 or 6650's since our install with SuSe. However with redhat we have had ext3 corruptions plus a list longer than slashdot will let me post of other issues ranging from an update disabling services from starting to not including particular packages within a package update. for example update mysql without including the -server release.
At first I was very pleased that Novell picked up SuSE. Since they had Ximian, now I thought that we would be getting a better product but I am very dissapointed with their handling of SuSE and linux in general. They may be doing the right things inside the Linux community but as a client who shells out cash for upgrades and distributions instead of downloading ISO's, I feel they are not upholding their end to me as a user very well.
My first problem is with support. Navigating around Novell's site trying to find a SuSE forum is painful and getting SuSE infomation is difficult at best. I find myself staying away from Novel and looking elsewhere. They need to seperate Novell's propriatary software from SuSE searches and set up a SuSE only support area with forums.
Next, I have a real problem with their custom setup for Apache. The documentation offered is the Apache Org docs for configuration which has nothing to do with what SuSE does. SuSE seperates the http.conf file into many many smaller files that are called from the main file. It is very difficult to navigate and remember which file something needs to go in. Apache consolidated their 3 setup files into one. SuSE does the oppsite and makes it a dozen or so files and then does not document it. I don't want to consult a map to figure out where a directive goes. This is dumb. Stick with the standards.
Next is my problem with Evolution and its support of Palm Pilot. They claim support but then do not supply conduits for the calendar or address book. Huh? Red Hat does, Mandrake does. SuSE owns Eximian and they don't. Really ignorant and frustrating.
Anyway, this indicates to me that there is some sort of breakdown at Novell with SuSE and Linux in general. They seem to not have figured out how to both serve the SuSE linux community and integrate this into their other offerings.
I love SuSE mainly for YaST and the workstation look and feel. But I am probably going to return to RH and Fedora because I just don't think Novell understands linux yet. They know they need it but they don't know what to do with it.
SUSE just needs to get corporate buyers to buy them instead of RedHat. There are only (2) distros that I would implement on a mission critical machine. Novell SUSE, and RHEL. Currently I use only RHEL, but I would be willing to consider SUSE.
Now for the zeolots, I'm not saying other distros can't be used on mission critical, I'm just saying without the corporate backing of a major player... (Oracle cert for RH, NetVault cert for RH, etc) Not on my database servers...
btw, I run Fedora FC3 also, just not on mission critical. I could use anything on those machines, but I choose Fedora because it supports the latest and greatest awhile still being pretty stable on most hardware and software functions. (Dell PowerEdge servers, and postfix, mysql, apache, etc)
Consider the alternative...
Lost in space at an early age. Survived the vacuum. Now rebuilding castle in air.
Always wondered what a suite without crap like AmiPro and Quattro Pro would be like... WordPerfect, 1-2-3, Paradox and Organiser - could have worked!
Obviously, migrating existing customers from Netware to Linux doesn't prevent leakage to either Windows or other Linux flavors, but now, they at least have a clear path for customers, and it will probably be the easiest path for their installed base.
This path thing you talk about is very important. We're a mostly MS shop (lots of databases on MS) but 60-80% of our files services are on NetWare. We've been kicking around getting rid of NW over the last couple of years to simplify things for both our IT department and end users.
Our most recent decision to wait was directly Linux related. Our customers are asking more and more about running our products on Linux and we have a couple of test setups, but nothing major. Our CTO pointed out that IT would have to support this if we went whole hog in that direction and the absolute easiest path for IT to gain experience with Linux would be to migrate our NW servers into OES servers.
We're still on NW and we're moving very slowly on Linux, but NW will stay, for the moment, simply because we can see that migration path and want to have the option of traveling on it. In our case, the Linux-future at Novell is probably the most important difference between us staying a customer and not.
TW
I will assume by your use of '$' for 's' that you are l33t at freequest.org, but indulge me a moment and explain how a company that has contributed mountains of code to Linux, and given Linux its strongest brand in America (and probably the world), can be equated with a company reknowned for extensive abuse of its monopoly position. I'm not new to Slashdot, but RedHat hating in miniature (without explanation) is so prevalant I assume I must have missed something since I started wasting my time here in ~2000.
Since SUSE is the most common (and most supported) distro on IBM big iron, I think they pretty much bought an already stable customer base when they acquired SUSE. If all you are looking at is desktop distros then you are looking in the wrong place for SLES. Novell was not looking to create another desktop, or home server distro (no profit in it), they are looking to put SLES into the big enterprises.
When I try to explain to youngster network admins the wonders of NDS, their eyes just gloss over.
"Look," I tell them, "imagine one logical grouping for the History department. They can have History file server volumes scattered across multiple file servers, priters assigned to History, and users assigned to History who each can have his own personal drive mappings, History department drive mappings, and drive mappings inherited from Humanities, one level higher in the tree. Users or user groups from some completely different part of the NDS tree, say in ITdept, can then be given administrative rights over History. Or over Humanities, in which case that user will also have rights over History..."
At this point their eyes glaze over...
dinner: it's what's for beer
I've been trying to apply for a job at Novell for quite some time through their website. I have a CS degree from Virginia Polytech and have donated tons of code to open source and worked some some pretty big projects I've used Linux for the last 10 years and they won't even give me the time of day.
The only thing wrong with Novell's purchase of WordPerfect was that
a) they were going up against M$ at the height
of their strength/momentum (can you
say "Netscape"?), and
b) their marketdroids couldn't market their
way out of a wet paper bag with the
help of the Terminator
WP was a *vastly* better prodocut than Turd for Windows, and if they'd get it back out for Linux AND SUPPORT IT, I'd dump OO.o in a heartbeat.
mark "can yuo say 'dog'?"
This probably paints a fairly vivid picture for you, but I will elaborate. There current offering of products will allow them to move into many offices and replace MS Exchange servers used with outlook and windows XP. Novell is nowhere near dead, nor have they been. They do not have to beat MS to stay alive either. They just have to get enough of their business to justify the software development and deployment. Since most of the software that they will be deploying is free like Linux and PostgreSQL, they do not require as much revenue.
Nothing compares to LYX... NOTHING!
Inexperience clearly explains your post. I started out as a NetWare 4.1 admin and was migrating servers to NetWare 5 when the suits at my office decided to migrate to an NT architecture. It was the biggest mistake they ever made. Not only was NT more costly (in terms of both seat licensing and staff overhead), it was incredibly unstable. It took twice as many admins to manage the same number of servers, and the servers had to be re-booted a minimum of every four weeks. Sometimes more often than that. Even when we upgraded to Win2K, things didn't improve all that much. Between February 2000 (when Win2K was launched) and December 2002, Microsoft released over 200 critical security patches for Win2K. During the same period of time, Novell released a total of 5 security patches for NetWare.
Do the math.
I have always wanted to get a definitive statement on how long each FreeBSD release is supported after it comes out, so even though, this is off-topic, I thought I'd ask somebody who seems to have boxes that must have received at least a few years worth of security updates.
Thanks.
Pragmatism as an ideology is not particularly pragmatic in the long term. Keep it in mind when you dismiss Free Software
SUSE now has a desktop platform which they can work WITH, and not AGAINST.
....
Dang, I meant Novell