As a CNE, I think the new NT products from Novell are pretty exciting.
I work as a computer technician and network analyst at a community college and we have a mixed bag when it comes to workstations -- DOS, Win 3.1, Win95, and NT. The new NT products -- which include an NT client, NDS (Novell Directory Services) for NT, and an NT workstation manager -- now make NT a viable client platform on a Novell network.
Beyond that, Novell now provides NDS for the NT platform, which a purely NT environment lacks (although they've promised a version of NDS for NT networks for later this year). Novell workstation manager now makes it possible to administer NT workstations across your network something which, up to now, could only be done on an NT network.
The net effect of these products (no pun intended) is two-fold, I think. 1)They make Novell fully compatible with yet another workstation OS and 2)remove several big reasons to install NT servers on your network.
Novell has taken some well-deserved hits in the past -- the WordPerfect buy, sluggish response to the internet revolution, etc -- but they still make a good product, still maintain market dominance and they are still making money.
I think that makes their stock a good buy. |
