Novell is Dead. Apple is Dead. Long Live Microsoft! Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Novell is Dead. Apple is Dead. Long Live Microsoft!

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To: Barry Nance who wrote (146)	9/3/1996 2:35:00 PM
From: Shibumi	of 238

Regarding your comment that an application server is just a file server on which you can run other computer programs alongside the file server program. Actually, as I'm sure you know, an application server can run file server operations (as Novell is proving through its NDS port to NT) but a file server has a lot of trouble running applications. This is particularly true with respect to trying to make NLM-based applications work -- it's horrible to try to do when you're an ISV. I'm sure I have a lot of failings -- but being overly-impressed with the computer trade press isn't one of them. I don't think this is a big deal because a write says it is -- I think it's a big deal because the folks out there buying servers say that they want to do the EXACT OPPOSITE of what you suggest that they do. Namely, your idea to buy another PC to run other computer programs and dedicate a NetWare server to do its job unhindered doesn't smell very good to the literally hundreds of customers of servers I've had to deal with in my life. The expense of the PC is relatively small -- but when you take the total cost of usage (TCU) of the two devices versus a single device and then multiply it out into a replicated branch environment you find astounding differences due to manageability issues. And the fact is that you need a relatively expensive PC to do the application services as OLTP, data warehousing (through marts, primarily), e-mail, and all these other applications just keep growing in their need for performance. In doing a bit more research on this over the weekend, I found an interesting ratio. 9-to-5. This is the rough ratio of NT server installations sold (over 90,000) versus NetWare servers (over 50,000) in 1995. There's a reason for that -- and it's not wide-spread hysteria over Microsoft -- it's the fact that Novell (and Unix) don't do what customers want them to do. NT doesn't either -- yet -- but people believe that it eventually will. Novell, in order to get healthy, needs a story about the future -- because right now it looks bleak. I think that Noorda hurt Novell at the end of his tenure -- but I think that many at Novell have forgotten that he was actually trying to do something coherent when he bought Unix from AT&T. He was trying to pave some type of future for NetWare in which it could become an application server and a file server combined. Unless someone can convince me otherwise, it looks to me like Novell is a dead duck unless it can figure out how to do something along those same lines. In my opinion the best bet at this point is what Novell is doing -- putting NDS on NT. Perhaps Novell can be successful by strongly defining and defending a file server application niche on top of a general purpose OS. Mark

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