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Linux Growth Doesn't Offset NetWare Decline
steveit_is writes to tell us CommentWire is reporting that the decline in NetWare and Open Enterprise sales is plummeting at a much faster rate than their SUSE Linux sales are growing. It seems that the transition is proving to be every bit as difficult as Novell execs originally suspected. From the article: "When Novell last week announced its financial results for the fiscal first quarter ended January 31, the said that growth in its SUSE Linux and related products was decent, but that sales of its NetWare and Open Enterprise Server--a variant of NetWare that uses Linux as the operating system kernel that was announced last year--declined by 11%."
Netcraft confirms Novell is dying. It's been slowly dying for years, and I don't think there's anything to save it. Dunno what will happen of suse afterwards.
Someone has to state the obvious. Past users of Novell aren't going to just switch directly to another Novell product that is completely unlike the other one. Whatever growth of SuSE will be because of the sucess of SuSE to provide a good linux distribution, and not because of Novell's name. We saw this before with Corel; They made a unique linux distribution, and some liked it. Nobody decided to move their department to Corel Linux just because they had been using WP.
"And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the World"
1 John 4:14
That story is phrased so that it might suggest like Linux isn't being a big success for Novell, but that's bullshit. Novell had a cash cow with a proprietary enterprise product. That's history. It's history because the market has changed. There is no reason at all to expect that they will ever do as well with any other product.
The fact that they have been able to turn Linux into a business for them at all is a good thing.
Novell has declared it's cash cow dead (Netware) long before the new cash cow (Linux) has replaced it. Now Novell has never explicitly said Netware is dead, just that the direction it will be taking is Linux. That's a lesson it learned from WordPerfect. Announce the end of the only product making money long before the new product has replaced the revenue. Ah well, at least Novell was able to use something from one of the many companies it bought. Too bad it was rotten business sense.
You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means
They were originally a mainframe company in the 70's. in fact, they were good size being tied to the IBM mainframe. Afterall, back then nobody got fired for picking IBM mainframes. But by mid-late 80's, they were drying up. IBM was killing off its prodigal children that made it money. Basically, IBM would either buy the companies or would put it out of business in many illegal fashions. But Novell did not move. So they brought in a CEO to take them into the ground and get what they could out of it. And that would be Ray Norda.
....
Of course, Ray found that a small group was working on some interesting items and focused the company on it. Of course, they did lay off a large number of their staff. IIRC, they got down to something like 100 employees. But they came back in flying colors.
Novell will go through some leans times, but they learned to jump ship BEFORE it sank completely. It would have been better had they jumped earlier, but
Novell will be around in 10 years. I doubt that companies like symantic, nortin, intuit, and AOL will.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
At $DAYJOB, We've had all kinds of trouble since 5.1. The problems are so signifigant that we've gladly paid Novell to send an engineer to look over the problem at $2,000 per day. To date, the suggestions have been... less than hoped for.
The main problem seems to be memory management in versions after 5.1. The problems are so bad that we are actively looking at moving to Microsoft AD, because it's obvious that Novell can no longer support +15,000 users and +30,000 workstations. Indeed, anything over 100,000 objects in a single container are trouble.
Gee, I used to manage four times that with Kerbros, YP, and rsync. For free. With no trouble. But, hey, Unix is "old technology" and needs to be replaced. So says Management, anyway. I still haven't seen the convergent force field heating systems, so I guess I have to heat my dinner the old fashioned way: wood, coal, charcoal, stove or microwave. Fate forfend that I have to use dung chips. They leave such an after taste.
I have tried SuSE, it was nice, polished interface but it just didn't stand out. Now I am addicted to Ubuntu, it is simple, it does what I want and nothing more, kind of like crack cocaine...
I think he was trying to be sarcastic. Nic
I've ran SuSE in the past, from the 5.x series and lately 9.3 prior to going with Kubuntu. (I'm a old debian user) The things that impressed me in SuSE is the fact that Yast was soooo much better in 9.3, on the other hand I was turned off by the DRM crap, which getting around it was easy enough, but still a PITA. Novell's web site is also a nightmare, still about as friendly as in the early 90's. (hint here Novell, fix it!)
I also never see advertising for *anything* Novell anymore. Humm.
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
I had plenty of experience with Netware up to 3.12 and in the 199?-1995 timeframe, it was, for a lot of people, the only place where they could store their stuff, the only option being a floppy. At my university, an IBM PS/2 Model 95 running NW with the Mac storage option (whatever it was called) with TCP/IP as well as IPX serviced a hundred and fifty machines, a mix of PCs and 80s and early 90s Macs. NW also handled all the printers (5 or so) and even a couple of early model plotters (if I recall, Lotus 123 1a would only print the graphs to plotters, but I may be wrong about that).
Good times.
It seems that, more than any other OS, Netware is something whose time has clearly passed; everything Netware provided is now available on the user's desktop, regardless of what it boots to. If I remember correctly, NW has been expanded to also be an application server platform for databases, web servers (I believe Apache can run on it), but it seems that it's a more radical configuration than the most offbeat Unix platform. A friend of mine described programming NLMs as nothing like he'd ever done, and nothing he'd ever like to do again.
*Troll snagged* I am an OES admin in a 1500+ user environment, and I can tell you that eDirectory on OES Linux is anything but half-baked. It is very, very feature rich and secure. We are having some great successes with the product. Myself (Linux admin background) and my partner in crime (Netware admin background) are very happy with the very low admin overhead we have in a pretty complex environment. Our favorite part about OES is all the services that come bundled with the OS that is included in our MLA. Half the time when we come up with a great idea or our users request some kind of feature we are finding that we already own the software that can make it happen. We are rolling out iFolder 3 and eGuide currently and they are working great. We have moved one of our Groupwise Post Offices to OES Linux and it is running rock solid. I will put my Netware/OES shop up against any M$ or Redhat shop any day of the week as far as labor costs and software costs and downtime. It kills me when I read comments like "Half-Baked" blah blah...But unfortunately as we all know, the better technology does not always win. I have told my PHB that when they are ready to pull the trigger on AD I will be happy to go get my MCSE...hey for me, M$ means double or triple our staff and job security...
tackle the most important Linux problems. The OSDL Linux desktop survey (http://www.osdl.org/dtl/DTL_Survey_Report_Nov2005 .pdf) clearly lists Application support as the first top inhibitor to Linux adoption and Novell's own Cool-Solutions web site (http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/16798 .html) shows that Quickbooks is the most wanted Linux application. So why doesn't Novell sponsor a real OpenSource alternative?
...
No I don't mean to sponsor GnuCash, I mean to build up a cross-platform solution which is able to compete against Quickbooks on all platform (including Windows). I guess it doesn't need more that just a few developers to create an alternative within halve a year and within a year Quickbooks will notice its business diminish. Well lets see then how all the others Windows-Only vendors will react when they see what happened to Quickbooks.
I'm quite sure these few developers have a much more important impact on the success of Linux that dropping another fifty developers into Suse. It will even be better for Suse if these few developers are taken temporarily away from it.
The way to success is quite easy when you follow a few rules:
- don't have unsolvable obstacles
- don't have killer arguments against you
- don't have inhibitors
- do have something valuable the others don't have
- look at our products with the eyes of your customers or users
-
O. Wyss
See http://wyoguide.sf.net/papers/Cross-platform.html
The Directory itself may be fine but the integration in OES is halfbaked compared to NetWare. Example, Linux User Management - when do you need it, when do you not? Notice that there is no corresponding complexity in NetWare - everything just works out of the box. Example 2 - root password is different on every box. Again on NetWare there is no concept of a box having its own administrator outside of the Directory. The post above is not claiming that these things are wrong, just that to an existing NetWare user they look like a significant step backwards and that Windows looks like a more attractive option.
Don't get me wrong - I would like to see Novell succeed but right now the reality is that previously loyal customers are leaving because Novell have forced them to chose between something they have some familiarity with (Windows) and something that one day might give them the same seamless admin experience as NetWare (OES).
Some mods are on crack... If anything this is insighful!
Novell was extremely popular at some point (the netware v3 days, mid 90s), then hordes of people started migrating to NT4 to never come back. v4 installs never were as common, and I've only seen a handful of v5 installs. The Netware days are over, big time. Just like OS/2 (which wasn't a bad OS at all at the time). Every freakin' thing Novell bought or touched since then somehow ended up being a failure in a way or another (if you think Sun missed the boat a few times, these ppl are no better). Their only chance of staying in business is suse, and lately I'm seeing interest in that distro drop a lot (especially with v10). Unless they can manage to suck enough of RH's support business to fund themselves (not necessarily a good thing), I don't think they'll live much longer. Not a bad distro, but not good enough to be worth paying for it when you consider the alternatives, and unless loads of enterprises move to linux and pay mega $ for support, they're done. So essentially, they HAVE been dying slowly.
Whoever modded that troll, lay off the crack, really.
-
Netware: About 40 bucks per user
- MS AD: About 10 bucks per user
- Fedora Directory Server: About zilch.
No matter which way you cut it, I'm going to have to put in a boatload of time refactoring a painted-in-the-corner directory model with about 1400 users and 500 devices in this K12 school district. Add to that the insanity of Netware requiring Windows volumes to be FAT32 formatted (this might be out of date - if so I expect the LARTs to rain down appropriately), I just don't see any chance of going with Netware. It's a real pity, too: I actually think SuSE is an excellent desktop distribution, and deploy it here for LTSP solutions and for my own personal desktop. I imagine SuSE would probably play pretty nicely in an OES environment. But it's too much coin, and the tech just sucks at this point as far as I can see, and we ain't got no money.So I'm stuck trying to decide between Active Directory and FDS. Wait - no I'm not
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
The leadership of Ximian that seems to have taken over the Linux direction is an incredible liability for Novell and SuSE. Ximian was a company and a group that could never deliver a polished product that people would actually use. They really saw Novell as a platform for their own egos, and not really a platform actually to serve people, customers, and community.
.MONO, and you can see why people are not eager to jump on the Novell Linux bandwagon. What is their main leadership qualification?
SuSE was an amazing product and one of the best examples of a fully integrated GUI experience for Linux, where you didn't have to use the command line to use the system. It had polish, and clarity in what it was trying to be.
Compare that to all this Novell Desktop, SuSE branding confusion, coupled with triple alpha software like Beagle, and horrendous monstrosities like
If Novell would open up technologies like ZENWorks, they might get some real interest. An enterprise-wide administration solution (along the lines of active directory) is available in purely Free Software, and it's eventually going to be simplified and packaged for everyone. But Novell have a head start in this stuff: they could make a significant contribution to Linux, and make their own distros famous for enterprise use, if they want to. It NEEDS to be open though, or it's useless to those of us who want to build add-on admin tools and who want to install it across a heterogeneous network.
Instead, they horde their tech, and don't even bother to advertise it much. I'm not really surprised they're failing with that strategy; it has Commodore written all over it.
NetWare vs. Linux:
Okay - I've beat up the Linux/NetWare differences enough, but what about the business differences, and their impact on earnings?
"Adventure? Excitement? A Jedi craves not these things."
Novell seems to be making deals with SuSE.
Swiss Government
Novell is leading linux in china
I mean come on I don't think the Swiss Gov't is going to pick a company that doesn't know what they are doing.
Redhat is a great example of how a linux company can be successful. Novell is backed by IBM, and has partnerships all over the place like Redhat. I think Novell is going to surprise a lot of people.
Hey even their old CEO is now the CEO of Google. They have too many ties to too many power players for them not to be a success.
Dan.
Remember - Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Novell isnt alone with SuSe.
IBM is buying a lot from Novell, and not from redhat.
For example. Novell has this tiny distributions for Point Of Sale Hardware, called Novell SuSe Linux Point of Sal NSLPOS or NLSpos, it depends how you order the words.
IBM has a HUGE hardware POS, and they build IRES, IBM Retail Enterprise Solution on TOP of Novell`s NLSPOS
Also, Novell has support for the brand new OpenPower, Xseries and so on, also redhat, but the difference, is that, Redhat charges you by instance, and Novell charges you by hardware, and since IBM is preaching the "consolidate on big hardware using LPAR (hardware virtualization) on their machines, Novell offers a much more "from the book to the TCO financial benefits...
So I really think that Novell will survive and will have a huge market, more market than RedHat, they are not so cocky about them self as RedHat, Novell wants money, not fame...
Redhat, seems to seek for fame... and money...
Â_Â
I think that they lack in house vision, and they have lost the Suse visionary.
:)
I was a big fun of suse, and I now use opensuse, but the messages that novell sends are confusing. Whitch is the main desktop platform kde, gnome or both?
They have switched the engine of yast (dependencies resolver) to the engine of
redcarpet in beta 5 of opensuse 10.1. I think that there are other examples....
And they have problem in working with community see Xgl vs Xegl or AppArmor vs SeLinux, I haven't the technical skill to decide which solution is the best but these project have no community involvement, in contrary RedHat do everything with community in mind.... and Red Hat is very successful.
P.S.
I know my english is not percet
I just replaced two NetWare 4.11 servers in 2005. They were running just fine.
I was consulting back in 1999-2000 and I never saw any Y2K problems with NetWare.
The problem was that Novell did that back when most people were still on NetWare 3.12 or using a Windows domain model.
Admin'ing an NDS tree is more work and takes more expertise. Novell failed to sell people on the benefits of a directory service.LDAP is also a sub-set of the X.500 standard.
Active Directory can talk to LDAP, but it is not LDAP.
NDS can talk to LDAP, but it is not LDAP. Novell even has NLDAP (Novell LDAP) implemented as a server process.
The problems Novell had were:
#1. They made very solid products. There wasn't any reason for small shops to dump NetWare 3.12 and upgrade to 4.x or 5.x or 6.x now.
#2. They VIGOROUSLY defended their licensing revenue. A NetWare server would broadcast it's serial number and if it saw another server using it, it would kick all the users off of it. Meanwhile, anyone could install 1,000 NT servers with a single license number.
#3. Their servers sucked as application servers. But they rocked as file and print servers. But more and more apps were moving to the server.
#4. Novell tried to buy their way into a fight with Microsoft on the desktop with WordPerfect and such.
#5. Today, they are still back in the early 1990's.
5a. Patching GroupWise is more difficult than patching Win2K or
Debian.
5b. Patching NetWare 6.5 is more difficult
5c. Novell's sales force sucks ass at the small company level. They simply refuse to tell you how to buy their products and even what their products are.
5d. NWAdmin is needed for some admin tasks. Console1 is needed for others. NoRM is needed for yet others.
5e. In order to run some of the BASIC admin utilities, you have to correctly configure NetWare + Apache + Tomcat + Java + LDAP/NLDAP + their stupid Tomcat app + SSL (and I may have left out a sub-system or two). What fucking moron thought that THAT would be a good idea? And the fucking app doesn't even uninstall cleanly so if you do make a mistake, you have to look up how to remove all the little bits so you can re-install it.
5f. Great. You like webservers and such. But why the fuck does EVERY app have to be run via the web with its own fucking ports?
I can go on and on and on about this. Really. Novell has, today, managed to incorporate EVERY bad idea for the last 20 years from every vendor out there.
Seriously. Grab the latest service pack for NetWare 6.5 and make sure you read the install text. You'll have to dig down to a sub-directory to make sure you install 2 sub-items that are NOT automatically installed when you install the service pack but which are required.
Learn from Debian, Novell. Patching your system should be even EASIER than Windows Update.
I disagree. AD is simply painted up better. AD is a direct rip-off of NDS and frankly NDS replicates better.
We did a comparison about a year and a half ago, and the MS licenses (for comparable Novell services) were cheaper - but not by much. It was something like a nine year return on investment (which your finance person would tell you is not worth it).
Of course, what you really want is what the directory gets you: if all you need is login name + password, then it doesn't make sense to pay a lot per seat. If you need more, then it may be worth the money. For example, adding ZENworks gives you the ability to remote-control the desktop, and even re-image the desktop, all from eDirectory. Spending money on Ghost?, Hassling with getting your users to provide you with their IP address (which on a locked down machine means more work on your end) for remote control? It all costs money.
Rather like Metcalf's law, the value of a directory increases with the extended services it enables.
FWIW, eDirectory 8.8 on Windows does now requires NTFS. ... you can install eDirectory only on an NTFS partition. I don't know when that change was made.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
You're wrong.
Novell got Evolution, the email and calendaring app, along with the other Ximian technologies. Now Evolution is compatible with Exchange servers, and almost as goog as Outlook... and there is a Win32 port on the go.
Exchange and Outlook are key components for Microsoft, there are lots of places were they're the only reason to keep Windows Servers. If Novell offer an equal, or better replacement, it will be a cash cow almost as goog as Netware was.
IMHO thats an important piece of software that OpenSource lacks... a complete, integrated Email-Calendaring server and clients... And I have tested most of them, including Kolab, OpenXChange, Horde, etc, etc... none is an Exchange killer.
---- You know how some doctors have the Messiah complex - they need to save the world? You've got the "Rubik's" complex
If you're in it for the money, you can probably better move elsewhere and get some Linux certification (maybe from Novell).
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
Lets get our technical facts straight here. AD is not a "rip off" of NDS; both NDS and AD are proprietary implementations of the same open protocol. Along this line of reasoning, it follows that NDS is a "rip-off" of Vines ...
I have a co-worker who recently went to a Novell/Suse training class, and from what he tells me they were very good at drinking the Kool-Aid. Lots of talk in terms of not "if" but "when you switch your entire company to Suse Desktop", you should have all your servers upgraded within the year, that kind of stuff. Look, I know Novell has to be behind their stuff, but I doubt there are very many companies out there who can just have all their servers upgraded in that kind of time frame, let alone totally drop Windows on the desktop.
Besides, Novell's immediate problem is not getting Suse out there to it's customers. It's coming, we know it, and even if we don't like it we're going to move there eventually. Novell's big problem is losing current Netware/GW customers, and attracting new ones.
Open source Groupwise. It seems so obvious to me I can't believe Novell isn't doing this, they're pretty much in the process of abandoning GW anyway. Linux is desperate for a full-featured, one-stop Groupware product. How many Suse servers would you sell if open source GW was out there? How many current Netware customers would you save from switching over to Exchange?
You are comparing different products. eDirectory has a list price of $0.50 per user. Thats right, 50 cents. eDir will run on just about anything, and doesn't need Netware.
What are you talking about? I admin'd a 3.1x site in the early 90's that had Applications running in Netware - MSoft apps, Groupwise (Novell's groupware), and a Dbase database.
They were crushed by Microsoft. End of story. They should of ditched their proprietary Netware long ago - they even resisted supporting TCP/IP for the longest time! How forward thinking was that??
Ten bucks, forty bucks who cares?... c'mon! Clearly you only want to look at TCO, and I have several reports handy here
TCO!
TCO!
...now go buy some Windows servers! Quick!
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
Fedora Directory Server: About zilch.
That's absolutely false! The quote my company recently received was around $10,000+ for starters. That's a far cry from "zilch"! Given the size of the company it was to support, that price will place it as the most expensive option, on a per user basis! Your definition of "zilch" must be different from everyone else's.
The financial figures are frightening. Novell booked $274.4 m in revenue, of which around $56 m was from open source products, of which around $13 m was pure Linux (the rest was Netware OES), of which only $10 m was from SuSE Linux ( a 22 per cent improvement). The article then quoted an analyst who said that Red Hat's Linux growth was twice as large and their revenue from Linux was five times larger.
Put it another way, a couple of years into their Linux story, Novell is turning over around $1 billion of which pure Linux contributes around $50 m, and much of the rest is declining legacy stuff. This is a drop in the ocean, and all the harder when Red Hat appear to be creaming Novell at the sharp end.
$50 m compared to $1 billion. I don't know how Novell is going to get out of this one, but talking about changes to SuSE or Ximian or yet more sugar-daddy spending on open source projects is like the Titanic and deckchairs. It's very hard to see Novell avoiding a break up.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
I guess either me or the mods funny filter is off... maybe it was me.
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
there is a difference between wanting to keep your current job, and wanting to earn more money, in which case you'd probably go to another job.
which is totally what she said
Or it could be that their customers are sick of paying for service and maintenance contracts, ARE using SuSE, but have just downloaded it and wandered off giving Novell the finger. Before, you HAD to purchase licenses, maintenance or not. Now, you only have to purchase if you want service and support and I gather that the big players who are required to purchase those contracts aren't using SuSE and the others just see little benefit, so they just take the free stuff and leave.
But here's my take on it. Maybe somebody at Novell will read this. The admins seem to be afraid to learn UNIX... So I am assuming that Novell charges for the training, the testing, etc. Now our admins, they get Winders but they really don't get Linux or UNIX. I think it would have been in Novell's best interest to eat the cost for training, especially to those who have already gotten their CNA or CNE in older Netware products. I think FUD and discomfort are major factors in hindering old Netware shops from going to Novell Linux.
Another issue that my company seems to hate about Netware (ver. 6.5) is its poor compatibility with Enterprise software and hardware. Netware clustering doesn't play well with Netbackup (it works, but it's very clunky). It also doesn't do well with SAN stuff... I really don't know what the issues are, but I've heard that expressed on more than one occasion. We do some Heirarchal Storage Management (HSM) (HSM essentially is a user transparent file archiving mechanism) which also is pretty klunky, esp. with Netbackup, etc. I have no idea if the Novell Linux works around these issues, but the FUD and discomfort of going to Linux don't help.
Netware 6.5 isn't all that stable. The servers ABEND fairly often. IMHO, they should have gotten off the DOS base a long time ago. I guess if we were running "workgroup" class Netware systems with less "enterprise" features, they'd be a bit more stable, but Netware needs work fairly well in a mid-level enterprise environment if it wants any real respect in from IT departments.
The old IBM adage, "No one ever got fired for buying IBM," seems to apply now to Microsoft.
But the training is probably the best thing they can do to keep the momentum. I think SUSE, although I haven't used it in a long time, and Linux in general, can and does operate well at the enterprise level, but for non UNIX people, it takes a lot of faith to trust in it.
But that's my two cents.
-Jim
-JM
Those numbers are 50 Million a quarter from linux. 1 billion a year total. So Novell makes about 200 million a year on Linux related products.
When Novell chose to throw all their eggs into the Linux basket, they took a huge risk. The problem is they didn't really throw all their eggs in it. Here, imho, is what Novell must do to succeed:
1. Give away Zen, or at least parts of it.
Many of the features in Zenworks come part and parcel with active directory. There could be a Zen-lite that does the same things that AD admins can do through group policy. Include the ability to do similar tasks on Linux machines and Novell can go back from "keeping up with Microsoft" to "staying a step ahead of Microsoft". While they're at it, Novell needs to work include support for every aspect of Firefox, including a list of supported plugins and extensions, to amke it manageable through Zen. AD admins can mange the IE settings across their network with GRoup Policy, Linux admins need to be able to do the same thing.
2. Do the same thing with Red Carpet.
Novell either needs to give Red Carpet away or have a limited version that operates the same way SUS does. They could have a professional version that will also use a push architecture in addition to a pull architecture. Personally, I loved Red Carpet when I first heard of it. Patch management for my windows machines and my Linux machines? Score. Here's the problem: I can get patch management on all my windows machines gratis with SUS / WSUS. I've got less than 20 Linux servers in my environment, about 200 windows servers, and around 3500 windows workstations. How could I possibly justify $18 per seat for Red Carpet when I can run SUS for free and just have our admins manually patch the Linux Servers? Yes I know Microsoft is the source of the vulnerabilities in the first place, yes I know Novell shouldn't have to give away a product that cleans up Microsoft's mess for free. Y'know what though, money talks. By having to pay extra cash for Linux patch management, that adds to the TCO of Linux while Windows' TCO stays the same, giving Microsoft marketing more ammo to work with.
3. Improve the Yast firewall interface and add remote management via Zen.
For that matter, everytinhg you can do in Yast needs to be accessible remotely via Zen. In an AD environment I can manage the Windows firewall on all the machines in my domain via Group Policy. I need to be able to do the same thing in a Linux environment. And the Yast firewall interface is the only one I've seen that actually sucks worse than the Windows firewall interface.
4. Ratchet up support for Wine. Partner with Codeweavers, or acquire them.
Novell's Linux support needs to embrace Wine or another emulator to assist with Linux migrations. Their current approach of "Run a Terminal Server that hosts the Windows-only application" isn't going to cut it. Users want icons on desktops that run their applications. Clicking an item on the linux desktop, then logging into a termserver, then clicking an icon on the termserver, then logging into an app, isn't going to fly. If Novell really wants to be successful in migrating companies to Linux, they should partner with or acquire one of the Windows emulation projects, and offer "take your POS custom app that you bought from a vendor or coded in house and make it work on Linux" as a service with a one time fee and optional support.
I think what Novell's trying to do is great, but I see them hanging themselves with it if they don't stay a step ahead of their competition.
Yes, my only tool is a hammer. And you're starting to look like a nail.
No, you are incorrect. That is what I originally thought. It is +/- 56 million a quarter from their open source stuff, but of that 43 million is the Open Enterprise Server Netware replacement stuff. Pure Linux is only 13 million of which they say SuSE and co is only 10 million. That is why the figures struck me as pretty scary and why they quoted that analyst saying Red Hat were five times ahead. At least, this is how I read the figures.
Las qué passoun
tournoun pas maï
The guy mentioned K12, educational pricing can be a funny thing.
*deploys cluebat* Installing FDS on Debian for how much money? Oh, right, zilch! If I had a dollar for ever time some idiot company or admin tried to buy his way out of a problem, I could own the company. If you guys seriously entertained that as a real possibility and it didn't occur to you that "Hey, it's GPL software, all of it, we can freaking rpm -i it ourselves" then I feel sorry for you. We have no money to buy a directory system, but guess what, that's OK!
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Erm, perhaps it's not all GPL, but it is all under some version of a free license. Details here. Free (as in beer, etc) download of FDS (Binary RPMs for you redhatty folks!) right here. *puts away cluebat*
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Example 2 - root password is different on every box. Again on NetWare there is no concept of a box having its own administrator outside of the Directory... ...they look like a significant step backwards and that Windows looks like a more attractive option.
FYI, in the Windows world all servers except domain contollers have a sperate "root" account on each server. You can use your domain credentials for all member servers, but you still must maintain a seperat Administrator account on each server.
This is not necessarily a bad thing either. It has it's uses.
TW
*deploys cluebat back* Last I heard, the software was proprietary and is most certainly not GPL'd. Again, that's the last I heard. Besides, having an LDAP server in of its own, doesn't get you much. After all, OpenLDAP already exists. It's all the tools, templates, utilities, etc...that adds value.
;)
*breaks cluebat* Next time, hit yourself a couple dozen times with it when you get the bright idea to use it.
Hmm, my guess is that it just validates Linux.
... hmm, Linux, if Novell is using it I should seriously look at it.
There is still the remains of the generation of network admin types that know Netware has the server OS to end all server OSs. As they see Novell adopting Linux, people start thinking
Now if Novell is using Linux, and I want to use Linux, do I have to use Novell's Linux. Ahh, I have the choice - I'll use Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian etc.
So to me it seems realistic to expect the numbers to be unbalanced - there is more choice in the linux market.
It's funny but I never considered Novell to be a major player in anything. From the early 90's with DOS Netware, up to 2004 the last time I logged into a Novell network, there's always been an element of disdain in using Novell software, something bloaty, unpolished, baroque about it. On the surface it almost looks like a "networking for dummies" product, yet it's not.. or at least it doesn't try to be. They're trying to hold a seat in a market that is dominated by Windows on one side, Unix on the other.. in both situations it's TCP/IP and we don't need Novell's help.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
http://linux.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/03/08/ 2046224
Actually, let's get our technical facts correct here.
AD is *somewhat* a rip-off of NDS - in that NDS predated Active Directory, and in fact it's what Microsoft itself has compared Active Directory to. Neither are proprietary implementations of the same open protocol, they're proprietary implementations of open standards.
eDirectory is based on the IETF X.500 directory model. No vendor implements all of X.500, but many of the ideas from X.500 find their ways into almost every directory server on the market.
Active Directory is also somewhat based on X.500, but also throws a lot of LDAP into the picture. It doesn't follow standard naming conventions (from the standpoint of object uniqueness is not per-container, but per domain).
Active Directory is young technology; it has problems with scalability partly because of the way some of the FSMO roles are implemented; for example, the use of a Global Catalog is something that inherently does not scale to very large implementations. Novell tried to do something like this years ago with their Catalog Services component for NDS8, and found the same thing - dredging the directory doesn't scale.
Active Directory lacks flexibility in the area of partitioning; the smallest unit of replication is the domain, and each DC can hold one and only one domain. Redesigning a forest takes a huge amount of effort, and on a large scale, Microsoft has not recommended using ADMT for that, but rather purchasing a third-party product in order to do this.
Monitoring is essential for any directory service - Microsoft offers MOM, which provides a very good function set, but at a hefty per-processor price.
eDirectory (a product Microsoft refuses to compare AD to, and rightfully so, because eDirectory is a very mature directory services product. All of Microsoft's competitive literature refers to NDS) includes iMonitor, which once you learn it (and yes, there is a learning curve) provides you with a great amount of detail on your eDirectory environment. And if you want to hook into a monitoring product, eDirectory is SNMP enabled.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
It is not Open Source, but is relevant to Novell - check out Groupwise. It really gives Exchange a run for it's money.
I stand corrected on using the word protocol where I obviously meant standard. This stated, however, your supporting facts (though detailed enough to appreciate your position) do nothing to debate my original statement ... AD is not a rip-off of NDS. I have no intention of a feature-by-feature, implementation-by-implementation comparison of the two products. I was only motivated to comment on the fact that I am tired of the age old argument by staunch Novell diehards that NDS is "da bomb" and that AD is just a poor copy. I love an educated debate ... I hate emotional, factless comments tossed around by so many people.
While I am a Novell die-hard (I in fact work for Novell), I have extensive experience with Active Directory, particularly in large scale designs and deployments. I also have personally met with and discussed Active Directory with Microsoft's product management and engineering managers, and a good friend of mine was in charge of the team that instrumented Active Directory for WMI (which is how Active Directory is monitored by MOM). Incidentally, that person used to work for Novell.
Simply put, I do not come from a position of ignorance on either product, but rather from an in-depth knowledge gained through detailed discussions with the people who have worked on the design of both products. My comment was neither emotional nor factless; it was based on my experience and discussions with people who know.
First off, NDS is an old Novell product; the current product is called eDirectory. So let's start by debating the proper products here. This is a myth that Microsoft continues to propagate even today with their competitive analysis; they refuse to compare to eDirectory because they know that in a feature-by-feature comparison, they lose. They prefer to compare to a product that had limitations of around 5000 objects per container, rather than one that supports millions of objects per container without breaking a sweat.
Coming back to the point of whether AD is a knock-off of NDS or eDirectory, though. It would be fair to say that one product released after another product that competes in the same space is going to incorporate design decisions that make the products comparable. I seriously doubt that Microsoft did their development of Active Directory without looking at the products it was intended to compete against. From a business standpoint, it makes sense to look at the market and make decisions based on what potential customers like about the leading product in the market and then to try to emulate those features that seem most important.
Microsoft already had a replication engine - the one used for replicating the address book in Exchange. That's what Active Directory is largely based on - so in that respect, it's also a knock-off of the Exchange address book data store, too. It uses many concepts that Exchange does - bridgehead servers, for example, allow for highly configurable (and thus also fairly managment-intensive configurations in larger environments) replication patterns. This is a concept Microsoft introduced originally in Exchange.
Microsoft also came from a master/slave replication model from the Domain architecture in NT3 and NT4; this particular type of background led to the introduction in AD (which is multimaster) of issues on Windows 2000 Server like the improper replication of group membership data when two DCs have a change introduced in the same replication cycle. In a master/slave design, all modifications enter at the master (the PDC in a Windows domain structure), so pushing the entire group membership from the PDC to the BDCs doesn't introduce the possibility that it might overwrite a list item that entered the domain at the BDC, because Microsoft prevented changes from entering through its "slave" domain controllers. With Active Directory, they originally kept that behaviour, but if you added a user to a group on DC "A" and another user to the same group on DC "B", the last change wins and the first change is discarded.
This behaviour was corrected in Windows Server 2003's version of Active Directory. A lot of things were fixed in "AD version 2". Some of the things they fixed are things Novell discovered almost 10 years ago with the first versions of NDS, however - so to that end, it's also fair to say that Microsoft didn't learn as much about directory services as they could have from Novell.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
Call off the dogs man ....
If my last post was not clear enough, let me point out a few things. My comment of, "I hate emotional, factless comments..." were not directed toward you. On the contrary, in my second sentence I indicated that your facts were clear and thorough. The "I am tired of the age old argument by staunch Novell diehards..." comment was a general reference to the great majority of posts from Novell admins and engineers who really have not taken the time, or have the ability, to objectively compare and contrast the technical differences (implementation and design) between NDS and AD, yet feel the need to toss their opinions into the mix with no supportive basis of fact. Your background and depth of knowledge with NDS is recognized.
I'll end my consensus with this; Yes, eDirectory is a more mature product (I felt the need to state this because you mentioned the product twice). It would be irresponsible (as well as ignorant) to make a deliberate statement to the contrary. I dont see anywhere above where this comparison was introduced.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but the post that I replied to was one of those unsubstantiated comments.
"Re:netware is no good(Score:2)
by jav1231 (539129) on Wednesday March 08, @04:49AM (#14873697)
I disagree. AD is simply painted up better. AD is a direct rip-off of NDS and frankly NDS replicates better."
Unlike your posts, his (or hers) contains no supportive arguments.
Clear enough?
I think we're both "suffering" (not really the right word here, but I can't think of one that fits better here) from the same thing - being tired of uneducated points of view (no, I'm not saying yours is - I've reread the comments and - mea culpa - I misread the direction of the discussion). We both seem to share the same intolerance for ignorance.
My bad - please accept my apologies.
Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
None required but thanks for the offer. As previously noted, I dig a good educated debate. Though a bit off topic, this sub-thread has been the light of an otherwise dull day :-) Differing perspectives (Ford or Chevy anyone?)is what this medium is all about. If I need a qualified eDirectory SME, I know who to call :b
Umm ... huh? I'm going to have to pull your punk card here; if you're capable of dissecting the individual technologies of a suitably deployed AD, as well as their holistic impact to an organization, please post something more significant here and we can deliberate on this comment.
Oddly, you seem to have failed to read the link I provided, so here it is in plaintext: http://directory.fedora.redhat.com/wiki/Licensing
Either which way, downloading and using for free is a long way away from five digits of USD. Sorry, your cluebat remains pristine.
Cheers.
political_news.c: warning: comparison is always true due to limited range of data type
Keep in mind that to the layperson the term "DOS" is an alias for text mode. That's just the way it is.
You completely missed the point. Which isn't exactly surprising.