Gartner Group's Neil McDonald ...
"question(s) the viability of Windows 2000 as a solid and reliable upgrade."
Despite NetWare's comparatively slow growth, Neil McDonald, vice president and research director for GartnerGroup's networking division, believes Novell has the edge in the latest round between Novell and Microsoft. Why?
Novell is offering customers a stable upgrade path to NetWare 5 that's backed by system and application support. However, just how much of an advantage this release of NetWare 5 provides remains to be seen because most CIOs have mandated technology implementation freezes until after the Y2K threat passes. The freezes are an attempt by IT
organizations to minimize the impact of Y2K, as well to as keep the enterprise network as stable as possible while making last-minute preparations for the fast-approaching year 2000.
During BrainShare '99 in March, Novell CEO Eric Schmidt said NetWare 5 will produce the majority of Novell's revenue this year. The upgrade, Schmidt said, represents the fastest adoption rate in Novell's history. In fact, it's occurring at a rate two-and-one-half times faster than the transition from NetWare 3 to NetWare 4. Typical annual growth rates for Novell's NOS platforms range from 15 percent to 20 percent.
One of the reasons Novell's customers are eager to purchase NetWare 5 is that the upgrade offers the enterprises a migration path from Novell's IPX protocol to the industry-standard IP protocol. It works more efficiently in wide-area networks and lets enterprises take better advantage of Internet-driven technologies and applications.
Another strength of NetWare 5 is NetWare Directory Services (NDS) version 8, which plays a lead role in the NetWare 5 success story. NDS is considered one of the most solid, robust directory services available-capable of handling more than one billion objects, according to Novell internal tests. Novell has touted the importance of directory services for years and its diligent campaign efforts have finally paid off. Novell reports that directory-enabled servers account for roughly $500 million of its business, up 12 percent over last year. The company estimates that the market for directory-enabled servers is about $2 billion.
"Directories represent the next platform foundation that will support this next wave of Internet technology," said Schmidt in his BrainShare '99 keynote address. "Directory-supported applications will enable the individual, not the corporation or eyeball portal, to control the keys to the virtual kingdom. Directory-based technologies represent the next level of higher evolution in the ecosystem that we are all building in the networks of the world."
Directory-enabled applications are expected by Novell to grow by about 40 percent with sales revenues projected to reach the $10 billion mark in 2002.
The market potential for directory-related solutions has not escaped Microsoft's attention. Windows 2000 (NT 5) will include Active Directory, Microsoft's version of directory services. GartnerGroup's McDonald says the feature is a key reason Windows customers will upgrade to NT 5.
"The addition of Active Directory is a great step forward for established Windows enterprises," he says. "But if a NetWare 4 customer upgraded to NT 5, it would be a step backward. "
Microsoft internal tests show that Active Directory is capable of holding seven million objects, compared to NDS, which is said to hold more than one billion objects. Couple this with the fact that Novell makes a version of NDS that runs under NT and the reason to upgrade, becomes less compelling.
Plus, Windows 2000 is still at least a year away from shipment and is plagued by setbacks. Now entering its second year of beta testing, the development of Windows 2000 is proving to be a painful process as Microsoft tries to iron out bugs across the multitude of implementations 2000 promises to support. Windows 2000 attempts to cater to many diverse platforms, ranging from the enterprise network to the notebooks to SMTP servers. This makes McDonald question the viability of Windows 2000 as a solid and reliable upgrade. By including such a diverse set of functions and supporting as many older architectures-486 included-Microsoft appears to be positioning Windows 2000 as the be-all and end-all for every variant of a network.
"Compromises have been made, and compatibility has been lost," says McDonald. "The NT 5.0 OS is too big. There is too much new code to debug. Microsoft is trying to include too many features. You have to question if some of them make sense."
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