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%."

Comments

Why make the comparison

[Penguinoflight]

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.

Re:Why make the comparison

[unladen swallow]

I have to agree.

I got started with networks with Novell Netware 2.12.

From there I moved to 3.12, 4.11.

3.12 was rock solid, the only problem was that it was not an application server, it only did file and print (and did it very well). Having PC's/Solaris/MAC/OS2/Mainframes able to access the same files/print jobs was huge.

During the 2.12 and 3.12 days Microsoft (Win 3.11) was making major inroads with applications which IMO killed Novell. Since Novell did not have a App server to counter it (no one was supporting apps at least on Novell). Novell was left with file and print jobs.

Installing shared apps on a Novell server could be a major nightmare.

When NDS came out it was too little too late.

I see no real reason to migrate to SUSE/Novell at this time

I have bought the 9.2/9.3 version of SUSE (need to buy 10) just to help support Novell.

Re:Why make the comparison

[T-Ranger]

Novell did have an app server, it was called "Netware". Oracle ran on Netware. Pegasus mail did too. It was a lack of third party support, not a lack of a valid platform.

NDS, if anything, was too much too early.

While I can see advantages to directory services for a 1 person network, DS is very much influenced by the "network effect". The more you use it, the more valuable it is. The more objects it has, the more usefull it is. Its most usefull for large networks. WfW and later NT workstation and 95, with their built in p2p networking, was, in many cases "good enough". Even for networks that used, and liked, NW 3.11, but translated to "good enough" WfW/95, when they grew, grew into other MS products. Netware 4.x, with NDS, was a race to the top, with the bottom falling out compleatly.

What were you expecting?

[penguin-collective]

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.

Don't kill the cow 'til the calf is grown

[swalker42]

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.

Re:Don't kill the cow 'til the calf is grown

[Urusai]

I thought NetWare was dead sometime in the mid 90s when it was replaced by either NetBEUI, ArcNet, or sneakernet, I can't remember.

Novell History, for those that forgot.

[WindBourne]

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.

Re:Novell History, for those that forgot.

[d.corri]

Novell will be around in 10 years. I doubt that companies like symantic, nortin, intuit, and AOL will. Yeah, people will eventually stop buying Symantic's Nortin AntaVirus.

Re:Novell History, for those that forgot.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong.

Novell was not involved in mainframes.

It started out at the dawn of the 80s making microcomputer trinkets, and eventually became successful selling Netware - which it survives on to this day.

Why choose SuSE?

[drgonzo59]

It is not that they have to compete with major OS systems, but there are also a bunch of competing Linux distributions, some of which are completely free and will even offer many goodies for the enterprise customers (the new Ubuntu Dapper for ex.). It is really hard for a linux distribution to stand out. They better have stellar customer support and hope to land some huge contracts with that. They can and will milk the name "Novel" that many recognize from the early 90's but that will only take them so far...

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...

Re:Why choose SuSE?

[Bill Hayden]

... there are also a bunch of competing Linux distributions, some of which are completely free and will even offer many goodies for the enterprise customers (the new Ubuntu Dapper for ex.).

Sorry, but it is wishful thinking to say that even the most forward-thinking enterprise customers will have Ubuntu on their radar. You can't get the time of day in the enterprise without a well-known name and the ability to offer a support contract. Sorry to say, but Redhat and maybe SUSE are the only ones with a foot in the door.

Ah, Netware...

[wandazulu]

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.

Re:The real problem

[Anonymous Coward]

*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...

No wonder when Novell doesn't ...

[wysiwia]

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

If Novell would open their tech...

[CarpetShark]

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.

Re:If Novell would open their tech...

[Total_Wimp]

If Novell would open up technologies like ZENWorks, they might get some real interest.

This is a great observation. We're migrating off of NetWare because of the hassle of maintaining two directories(We also have ADS), amoung other reasons. We'd love to keep ZENWorks, but guess what? You still have to maintain two directories.

My converstations with supporters of this are almost commical.

ZENWorks Supporter (SUP): ZEN supports ADS!
ZENWorks Skeptic (Skep): Great! I don't have to support multiple directories!
SUP: Well, actually you do, but they sync, so you don't have extra maintenance!
Skep: Ok, so I get to do all my administration in ADS, right?
SUP: Well, no, you have to use Console One, but they're syncing so you don't have to worry about maintaining seperate user accounts!
Skep: So I don't have to worry about eDir logons, right?
SUP: well, you actually have to logon to eDir.
Skep: But it's clientless, right?
SUP: Absolutely! No netware client, you just have to logon to eDir through the ZENWorks client.
Skep: How is that clientless?
SUP: There's no NetWare client, so it's clientless.
Skep: Um.
Skep: I've had problems with maintaining two seperate accounts in the past. For example, password complexity, expiration, etc are all handled differently in the two directories and this has led to inconsistant password policy.
SUP: ZENworks has some great policy options!
Skep: Yes, I understand this, but how do I reconcile eDir's grace logons with ADSs warnings before expiration? This kind of seems like a hassle to me.
SUP: You don't need to worry, the directories are synced! The syncing is so good, you won't have any problems.
Skep: But I am having problems.
SUP: Those aren't really problems. You just don't understand.
Skep: I do understand, and I also don't want a client that replaces my Windows logon GINA.
SUP: The client is not a problem. You'll like it.
Skep: um.

If ZENWorks was fully integrated into ADS and had no seperate logon, we'd use it. ZEN is awesome. But as long as Novell and its supporters fail to see issues with the things that we think are issues, we're going to seek other options.

TW

Re:If Novell would open their tech...

[whereareweheadedto]

I have been working with Novell for almost four years and have run into many similar arguments. But there are some facts that Slashdoters and others often ignore. And that's a relationship between Novell's products. You can't run ZENworks Desktop management with directories other than eDIrectory. Certain applications work only with other Novell applications, while Novell still gives out as much as they can without geopardizing market shares of their flagship products. Regarding my customer base, it always comes down to sensible advice. Some need MS, others don't. Maybe you needed Novell better than MS? Just an example from one of my clients: three years ago they had some 10 MS servers, 10 Netware, 5 linux servers. They decided to ditch Netware and move to MS. Their current situation: some 40 MS servers, 10 or less linux servers and 7 Netware servers. They still employ eDirectory as their primary directory (they have three), ZENworks. I actually installed a new OES Netware server last week to host their DNS and DHCP services. Will probably be doing 3-node cluster later this year... They took two years of planning the ditch and in the end they have 2 times the servers they did in the beginning. They found no viable option to Novell's services...

Apples and Oranges....

[soren42]

Novell is no doubt more than aware that comparing NetWare to Linux is an unfair comparison, just as comparing earnings from this point last year is. Let's take a quick rundown of some differences:

NetWare vs. Linux:

• NetWare is typically licensed per-user, Linux per-server - this is a HUGE difference! For a large enterprise for, let's say 100,000 NetWare users, Novell was licensing annually on a per-user basis. This could come out to millions of dollars if they even charged $10-$20/user (approximately the list price based on 50-100 user bundles). SUSE Linux, on the other hand, is no doubt licensed per-server. That same enterprise can probably support those same users with far fewer servers - let's use an estimate of 2000. Even at the list price of $899 for up to 16 CPUs, that is still a huge shortfall. So, it a significantly different pricing model.
• NetWare was entirely developed in-house - alright, so it was based on DOS, but for all intensive purposes, Novell had a captive developer community, entirely controlled product direction, cost, support, and other factors. With Linux, Novell has managed to trade some of the cost of development for total control of the product - but they still must support and maintain all those users still running NetWare 3(good heavens!), 4, 5, and 6. So, they need almost twice the support staff, and we already discussed the falling revenue. Plus, they still support and patch some versions of NetWare 6, so they are some developers still committed to NetWare.
• The dynamics of their community has changed - in the 90's, the certification to have was the CNE. It meant something. Novell had a huge community of resellers, developers, support engineers, and other partners - essentially under their thumb. Now, they have to compete as just another Linux vendor. Why be just a Novell partner when I can partner with Red Hat, IBM, HP, and everyone else? Why get a Novell CLP9 or CLE9 certification, when I can get the more recognized LPI certification - or (worse, from their perspective) an RHCE certification?
• Their customers' path away has not been Linux - it's been Windows - Novell has been steadily losing file and print customers for years to Microsoft. No offense, people, but face it: most former NetWare admins moved on to WinNT and Win2K years ago. Very few moved on to UNIX or Linux - there are certainly some, but most people that identified themselves as CNE's moved on to be MSCE's, not RHCE's. The problem is, customers are still moving en masse to Windows, and the Linux strategy from Novell has not prevented that.

Okay - I've beat up the Linux/NetWare differences enough, but what about the business differences, and their impact on earnings?

• One year ago, the Microsoft settlement boosted earnings - if you don't get this one, RTFA. The MS settlement was a nice temporary earnings boost, but Novell knew that. Why the market glossed over it still amazes me, but then, it's the sort of thing tech investors tend to do.
• Novell has matured in the past year - I know there's been a lot of negative press about the leadership changes and departures at Novell - especially here at Slashdot, but let me tell you - this is what a company undergoing a major merger integration needs. Especially one changing it's fundamental vision and product focus. Some of the losses were unfortunate - Chris Stone, for example. Some just underscored the growing pains of a company merging several cultures at once - open source and proprietary, US and Germany, GNOME and KDE - too many for all the chiefs to stay and agree. However, IMHO, the current leadership and vision at Novell is remarkable. Novell has done a superb job of selecting the best and brightest from their talent pool to lead the company, and their corporate vision and strategy demonstrate that.
• Novell has strived to maintain product continuity - even at the expense of earnings. Doesn'

Not quite.

[khasim]

I hear that Novell was pushing really hard for IPX/SPX to be the protocol for the internet, which was silly and impossible because it's a broadcast protocol.

No. They were pushing for IPX to IP gateways/proxy servers so that a local network could run IPX (far less configuration than TCP/IP back then) and still access Internet services, securely. Don't forget that back then people were still selling 3rd party TCP/IP stacks.

Then they put off implementing TCP/IP for a million years, while the internet (and networks connected to it) were taking off on TCP/IP.

On the client, it wasn't very difficult to run IPX and TCP/IP. What they did not do was offer their NetWare file system access via TCP/IP until the 5.x series.

I also hear that Novell put a lot of work into Directory Access Protocol (DAP) for network management databases.

In a way. They focused on using the X.500 standard for their NDS product.

DAP grew and grew and was too bulky to be popularly used.

No. X.500 was designed to handle just about everything in the world. Novell implemented a sub-set of it.

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.

Somebody made up Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), which is now used by Microsoft for Active Directory.

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 ... come on! Debian's solved that problem years ago! Learn from them.
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.

Re:Not quite.

[Hasai]

Much as I hate to, I have to agree with just-about everything the parent states, particularly regarding Novell's Marketing department. Nowhere have I seen such incompetence last so long (except perhaps in the White House).

Patching a Novell server is not trivial, topped only by GroupWise patching, which I look upon with dread. And God help you if you left out a package on install and now want to add it to a patched server.

Novell used to have an excellent administration model, where you went to a single program (NWAdmin) to do just about everything that needed to be done. Then Novell jumped onto the Java bandwagon and out stumbled ConsoleOne; the slowest, most bloated nightmare I've ever seen. Then even before all functionality could be ported to C1, here came the web interfaces; the most fragile, most confusing mess on the planet. AND THERE'S STILL STUFF STUCK ON NWADMIN!!! They've gone schizo at Novell, I swear it.

Now there's OES, a cross between NW6 and SLES9. If you've both Netware and Linux expertise in-house, it's a quite attractive server package, but if you've only Linux people, or you're pure Netware, or (most likely) neither, you're lost at sea. To top it off, I have been waiting since the release of OES to see a training package for it. I'm still waiting. I suspect I'll still be waiting for quite some time. Hey, Novell: do you really think I'm going to put a system into production that I have NO TRAINING FOR???

There are only two reasons that I haven't jumped-ship yet: the first is NDS (what those Marketing losers call 'eDirectory'), which makes AD look positively pathetic in comparison; the second is server stability. If those two points go the way of everything else, I'm outta here.

'Nuff said.

Give them Groupwise!

[jayhawk88]

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?

Re:IBM and Novell

[Erwos]

"IBM is buying a lot from Novell, and not from redhat."

You're joking, right? This statement alone disqualifies whatever else you have to say, because it's obvious YOU HAVE NO CLUE. Red Hat and IBM have a close partnership. IBM constantly plays it up whenever they come with the sales pitches. You can get RHEL on practically anything IBM sells. You're going to have to quantify your statement with hard facts before anyone believes it. You can do that, right?

Note that I'm not arguing IBM doesn't have a close relationship with SuSE (Novell, now), too.

"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..."

That's a laughable assertion. You don't think there are huge egos at Novell? The reason you keep hearing about Red Hat on Slashdot is that they're continually giving to the community. Aiglx, GFS, scheduler enhancements, gcc development, etc. - if Red Hat gets fame and ego boosts like that, they're A-OK in my book. The folks at Novell are starting to realize this - which is why you're seeing them open-source more and more stuff, and backpedal somewhat on their "hybrid open-source proprietary" philosophy they were pitching shortly after the merger (it didn't win them many friends).[1]

You obviously have some rather pre-conceived notions about Red Hat and Novell. Sorry if the facts get in the way.

I think SuSE is a fine distro, but Novell is flailing about to a large extent with regards to how to evolve itself. They'll probably survive, but it's going to be painful.

-Erwos

[1] I received several sales pitches from them.