Hi EKS...NW - NT
Here are some interesting information from our "Mystery Man":
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Salah:
In doing a search of Microsoft's Web site, I uncovered a "Feature
Comparison" of the regular IntranetWare product to Windows NT Server
4.0. I actually found two versions of this document, one dated last
October and a substantially identical version that was "updated
1/27/97":
microsoft.com
In addition, they appear to have promised an "IntranetWare White Paper" as far back as last September, but it has not been posted.
The "Feature Comparison" is interesting because it is closely related to Microsoft's recent notorious posting on "IntranetWare for Small
Business". Except for the misleading price comparison, it contains all of the outrageous lies and deceptive claims that were made in the "Small Business" document - and many more besides!
According to Microsoft, NT is a "Communications Server" but IntranetWare is not! Actually, of course, Novell's networking and communications technology has always been vastly superior to Microsoft's, and NetWare-based communications products such as NetWare for SAA have a far greater installed base than anything Microsoft has to offer. Microsoft further claims that IntranetWare's DNS Server is "Limited" (which it most definitely is NOT!). Microsoft also asserts that NT supports IPX, IP, AppleTalk, NetBEUI, and DLC "natively" but that IntranetWare supports IPX only and has "very limited support for TCP/IP and AppleTalk". In actuality, there is nothing "limited" at all about IntranetWare's support for TCP/IP and AppleTalk, it is fully as robust as Microsoft's support. Microsoft's only "native" protocol, as I have explained before, is NetBEUI - which is obsolete because it is a NON-ROUTABLE protocol. And IntranetWare does support DLC (also known as IEEE 802.2); it is used for mainframe SNA communications by NetWare for SAA (just as it is used by Microsoft's SNA Server add-on product for NT).
Next to "C2 Security evaluation", Microsoft lists "Yes" for NT and "No" for IntranetWare. The facts are the opposite: NetWare 4 is C2 certified as a network server, NT is not. Microsoft claims that IntranetWare does not include a Web server (which it does) and that IntranetWare's "Single logon to network for all services" is somehow "limited" (whereas in fact the single login through NDS is one of the areas in which Novell has left Microsoft in the dust).
Frankly, I am thoroughly disgusted by Microsoft's distortions and
out-and-out falsehoods. One expects that sales and marketing people
from all companies will stretch the truth a little from time to time,
but Microsoft has clearly crossed way over the boundary into a territory that can only be described as dishonest and unethical. Possibly even "actionable" - if Microsoft published this comparison chart in a newspaper or magazine ad rather than on a Web page, it would not surprise me to see them get sued. Of course, being the sleazy types that they are, Microsoft would just respond that some of their claims are "opinion" and that the clear factual errors (such as claiming that IntranetWare does not have a Web server) are merely "clerical errors" or the result of a "misunderstanding".
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Also, here is Novell press release about Groupwise 5.1:
novell.com
Regards
Salah |
