On Wed, 2003-11-05 at 01:06, Paul M Foster wrote:
>
> That's kind of what I meant by "fanatical" Novell users. But if you're
> not using Netware in the first place, it seems to me that you could just
> run Linux and get a similar result. I guess what I'm getting at here is,
> "What is so special about Netware that Linux doesn't also provide, but
> for less money?"
Heh. It's less "fanaticism" and more "momentum."
A lot of banks, healthcare/hospitals, and "stodgy old corporations" run
Netware. Hospitals in particular usually have budget issues that
prevent wholesale migration to a totally different platform overnight.
Banks generally have policies like "If it ain't broke, don't fix it"
that keep their Novell stuff going from year to year.
> What Netware did was allow you to set up a file server; create, change
> and destroy users; attach network printers; and other things like that.
> All of which I can now do _without_ Netware on a Linux box, and a little
> hands on experimentation (and generous assistance from lists like this
> one).
>
> So either there are things I don't understand about Netware, or it
> really doesn't have much intrinsic value, except to those who are
> already locked into it.
Basically that's it, but the momentum that Novell sites have is
tremendous. "Back in the day" Novell was a big deal, but now it's just
this goofy proprietary file server thing that didn't decide to support
TCP/IP until they were nearly out of the game.
> Your comment about "Novell junk" seems to reinforce the idea that there
> isn't actually much outright need for Netware.
There are actually a few services they provide on top of Netware, like
Novell Groupware (?) and stuff like that. I don't know much about a lot
of these application-level stuff that Novell has, but they have
publically stated that they want to get out of the "Operating System"
business and into the "services" business by providing ALL Novell
services on top of Linux. Like Andrew said, that gets them off the hook
for having to support all this fancy new hardware and focus more on just
providing client/server related services and probably widening their
product/service portfolio now that they don't have to support the dang
OS that all this stuff runs on top of.
> I wonder about this. Novell's been diversifying their offerings for the
> last few years, without any upward change in their market share. Linux
> stole the market out from under SCO, and is doing the same for SGI. And
> I rather suspect the same will be true for Novell. And so I wonder if
> maybe they have enough sense to recognize this, and are co-opting part
> of the Linux market (by buying SuSE) before Linux completely obviates
> their existence. I wonder if they believe that when Novell slowly fades
> away, they can still get money by providing Linux support to former
> Novell customers (satisfying the suits). Also, from what I understand,
> much of SuSE's money comes from consulting services, which funds will
> now flow to Novell.
I think that's exactly it. Novell really believes the adage that "The
operating system should be commoditized." They want to be a commodity
provider with SuSE, but they also hope that, by having the commoditized
operating system, they can focus on end-user products and services and
be more relevant.
I'm actually very supportive of Novell. They seem to have the right
idea and the motivation to really try to pull it off.
My one major concern is that Novell is a product of Ray Noorda. Anyone
recall the other company of Ray's that's been making a lot of noise
lately? It's the company that used to be known as Caldera: SCO.
While I know the only relationship between the two companies is Ray's
money, it's still kinda creepy.
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