Novonix (Steve), Greetings (Scott Lemon), Novell Market Strategy (Jim)
Regarding Novonix that Steve asked me early on Monday:
Steve, its not exactly that mysterious. Novell & Netscape created a new Research and Development company called "Novonyx" some time last year. The objective was for the Netscape Suitespot server code to be ported onto the NetWare 4.x platform. Although they havent really advertised about its progress too much (surprise! - Novell not promoting themselves and their products) the company has been busily porting the various servers to NetWare. In late January, Novell and Netscape re-organized so that Novell takes almost all the activities and roles of the company. Following is the quoted press release from Novell:
"On 27 Jan, 1998 Novell and Netscape jointly announced a restructuring of their joint subsidiary Novonyx. Novonyx continues as a research & development and product management focused venture between Novell and Netscape to deliver the Netscape SuiteSpot servers on the NetWare platform. These products will enhance NetWare and strengthen NetWare's position as the best Internet platform available. All marketing, sales, operations, support, and general administrative functions are now performed directly by Novell."
From my understanding, no ported products have yet been openly released but trial versions are available. If you want to know all about Novonyx, you can go to their site at:
novonyx.com
Hope that helps Steve.
To Scott Lemon:
Greetings! Supposedly I was mistaken for you. I dont know why. Your name sounds familiar, sounds like you might be or have been a Noveller. Glad to hear that you came to Canada to convince Canadian accounts to work with Novell technology. I'm located in Canada myself and work on several enterprise accounts. Today, I just convinced another company to follow a NetWare strategy instead of their initial desire to go NT. Its like shooting fish out of a barrel. Once you explain the differences and remove the Microsoft FUD that has been implanted in their head, it becomes an easy decision for them. Thats two converts in one month.
Hope to talk to you sometime soon. Like to hear what you do.
Novell Marketing Directions (Jim):
I personally have not heard of NetWare referred to as SOS (server operating system). It is very commonly referred to in the industry as NOS (Network Operating System). I agree that Novell does want to focus on internet and network infrastructure products, but, internet enabled Java apps are a key feature of that. Why do you think Eric S. is harping so much on the Java platform that NetWare 5 will have. Java development will likely be heavily demonstrated and encouraged at Brainshare.
From all I have heard from the horse's mouth, Novell does want to reduce its reliance on the NOS providing the bulk of its revenue. It plans on doing that through increased NDS licencing revenue (look at the seat price for NDS for NT - its over priced IMO), new internet/management products - BorderManager and ManageWise/ZENWork, the groupware/messaging product line.
I would disagree that Orion (not called WolfMountain anymore) will not be needed at all. With very large web server/suitespot server farms and Java server applets, Orion will finally be needed to be called in to help out the NetWare platform for more horsepower. I hate bringing up these anti-Microsoft points but, unlike NT which desperately can use an effective clustering technology since it is such a system resource hog, NetWare servers are so much more efficient that the need for clustering is not a must yet. In one of Gartner Group's technical articles I read, it was stated that the performance ratio is 5 NT servers needed to equal the performance of 1 NetWare server. So you could be right, in most cases Orion may be a technology looking for a reason to exist.
But Jim, I do value your opinions and do generally agree with you that Novell's direction is to move to Network Services revenue. I just am a lot more optomistic in Novell's ability to succeed than you. I'm in front of some of Novell's largest accounts every day, I know what they are looking for and what Novell's competition is missing.
PS - I want to confirm with you that I am not a Novell employee - you can ask Quad-K to confirm that. I'm just a person who truly feels Novell has a good future base on how they are meeting their goals.
ToySoldier |
