<<PREVIEW: NOVELL NETWARE 5.0, BETA 1
Moab upgrade proves a rocky ride
By P.J. Connolly
STATUS UPDATE
Novell NetWare 5.0, beta 1>>
When I read the above, my first reaction was "the source ?", Joe found it. I think MSFT is scared and they are calling in some serious markers from the people they buy ads from, after all, Win 98 is just around the corner and they'll be spending a lot of ad money. Also, they can't be happy that Novell could slap a directory service on their product before they could. But I'm not in denial, that article does not help, and I would hope Scott and Adrian would alert the Novell group for a FAST response. In the meantime, I look at information like interview below with the CEO of NORTEL, John Roth, to help me keep my perspective -
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Question from Inter@ctive -
You still compete heavily with Lucent [Technologies Inc.]. But many
industry analysts believe your real competition these days is coming out of the data networking world.
Mr. Roth -
That's the next big change taking place. There were two big waves --
first was the growth of wireless, which is becoming tremendously
pervasive. We are still very early in the life of this technology, and
new applications, such as the one we are launching with Teligent [LLC], which uses wireless for broadband links to buildings, is just one example of what is still to come. The wireless segment will continue to be a strong growth component for the industry.
The second wave is the growth of IP [Internet Protocol] networks, which is the protocol used for most PC to PC or PC to server, whether it's on the Internet or just an extension of data over a wide area network. Data has always grown -- ever since people could measure -- about 30 percent per year, but it was always a very small part. Late last year, data traffic became equal to voice traffic on the network. And it grows at 10 times the rate of voice. Data traffic grows with PC penetration, and, with an increase in MIPS [processing power measured in millions of instructions per second], phones grow with people.
A lot of the applications that used to be on SNA [mainframe] networks
and X.25 [packet-switched] networks are moving to IP traffic. That is
the big movement -- we are in that business; Lucent has just announced
that it wants to get into that business, but it is not there today.
The people we meet include Cisco [Systems Inc.] and Ascend
[Communications Corp.]. But this is a new industry -- it's still in its infancy.
If you look at what people call the World Wide Wait, the capacity of the Internet has in no way kept up with the demand. This is a tremendous opportunity for our company to take our skills and help build a network that has more of the characteristics of the dial-tone network than the Web network. I call it the Webtone. You don't have to wait; you don't have a fast busy; you don't get dropped by the network.
If we can do that, the Web will become a tremendous global force.
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I see a place for Novell in the above scenario. I'd be interested to see what Scott Lemon or Adrian think about the above and do the people at Novell see the guargantuan possibilities.
Also, guys, I step up to the plate for Novell on this thread, because I am thinking long term, not trying to trade. I don't even worry about NT 5.0 (whenever it gets released, Spring 1999?). You know what I really worry about from MSFT ? That they have a skunkworks project going where they ARE rewriting their kernel and building a real NOS (probably called "Redmond" or something, I may get a visit from "la famile" for even saying this). The thought sends shivers down my spine because I keep adding to positions in only 4 stocks, and this is one of them. I wish everyone at Novell would work everyday thinking of this possible skunkworks scenario, with that sense of urgency.
jww
(by the way, to answer a question, Lucent can use "pooling of interest" accounting for aquisitions starting in October 1998, I can't believe the great Barrons said "late 1998") |
