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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: PJ Strifas who wrote (29040)	11/20/1999 1:53:00 PM
From: Chris_Long_NOVL	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Novell Milks Its NDS Cash Cow SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1999 11:11 AM - TechWeb Nov 19, 1999 (Tech Web - CMP via COMTEX) -- Novell, taking its place next to other daredevils likeSun,Corel, and Netscape, plans to open up the sourcecode to select portions of its cash cow -- NetWare Directory Services, sources said. The Provo, Utah company, which recently announced it would publish its own open-source license for its DigitalMe, NDS for Linux client, and the management interface to its Internet Caching System (ICS),is now opening up the source code for select portions of one of its crown jewels, NetWare Directory Services (NDS), said several sources at Comdex. The model will not be similar to Sun's community licensing model, but it will make it easier for ISVs to develop to NDS on certain platforms, the sources said. Novell officials would not comment. "Novell's direction and products focus on the business advantages of directory services, and encouraging the adoption of the directory and other core Novell technologies on the Internet play a major role," said one source familiar with the networking software giant's plans. Novell is not the only major software publisher under the gun to open its source code. In the wake of Judge Jackson's ruling and the rising popularity of Linux, industry leaders at Comdex used the spotlight to apply more pressure on Microsoft to jump on the open source bandwagon. .......... Copyright (C) 1999 CMP Media Inc. from: www.bigcharts.com

To: PJ Strifas who wrote (29040)	11/20/1999 2:01:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

PJ/Scott/Others... One thing I have been waiting for from Novell and I have not seen any real sign of yet is a revolutionary thin client. I am not exactly sure how this would be developed but it would have to have the following: 1) All the required and optional functions that the current Novell 32bit Win9x/NT client has (i.e. full NDS tree authenitication and security, ZENworks, NDPS, etc.) 2) Ability to provide transparent access to NT domains and the resources of NT servers (i.e. file/print) that have been pulled into the NDS via NDSforNT. Example: be able to map a drive from a NetWare server and an NT server. 3) Universal client resource access regardless of client. In other words, access to these resources & services regardless of my location or the actual client portal I enter from. 4) THIN code that is memory resident and optional client demanded code pulled in when demanded by the service. In other words, some form of a full suite of client services in the form of pointers/hooks that the pull in the actual code when the servers requires it. I am not exactly sure how this would be accomplished, but I have seen a need for such a revolutionary client and it has not appeared on the horizon with Novell yet. I would think that it would be addressed via a browser and complicated Java Appletes, Beans, etc. Some of the optional appletes/beans may be pushed from the network/tree just prior ro being executed at the client, instead of having them all pre-stored on the client's hard drive. I criticism that keeps coming up in real life Novell/MSFT enterprise clashes is how HUGE the Novell client has become, how complex the 32bit client has become, how bug ridden it constantly is, and how non-integrated the client is to non-Novell OSes. One good example... We have a large enterprise financial customer that has recently acquired another larger financial entity. Company 1 is Novell centric and Company 2 is MSFT centric. The clients on each of these companies wants to seemlessly access the resources of the other company's servers. The Novell 32bit client provides a lot of enhanced functionality but does not transparently provide access to the NT server resources (i.e. map a drive to these servers). The NT client code does not recognize NetWare server resources unless a dual client config is set up. The NT gateway server for NetWare was setup but is not designed for large NT-NetWare integration. If Novell had a revolutionary client that met the above requirements then both companies could install the universal client and access all the resources of both companies. It would also go a long way to dispell MSFT battle to remove Novell's technology because the answer on the client battle is currently a MSFT or NOVL client line in the sand. What are the comments and ideas or insights from all of you on this issue. Toy

To: PJ Strifas who wrote (29040)	11/21/1999 11:52:00 AM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Hello PJ, > Lately I've taken to looking into learning more about developing > products and actual programming. I'm attending a DeveloperNet > Workshop next Monday in my area. I'm looking forward to learning > more about what is actually going on and it's all your fault! :) Great to hear! That makes me think ... it's too bad that Novell won't give me a kick-back for getting others to sign up as developers ... sort of the Amway Developer Program ... ;-) > I'm keenly interested in working in the PDA area mostly because in > the future, devices will become more dominate as the complexity of > PCs limits end-user satisfaction. I share your interest, but I'm not convinced that I agree with the second half of your sentence. Remember that portable devices (PDAs/Cell Phones) will be used for very different reasons than PCs ... don't expect one to eclipse the other. It's like the difference between trucks and cars ... there might be a lot of cars out there on the roads, but trucks are everywhere also ... and the popularity of SUVs shows that there is value there. > (unless of course they begin teaching basic computer courses > starting at the elementary level). The local high-school here is cranking out students with Visual Basic programming skills ... C language skills ... and each year a dozen or more CNEs!! High-school ... so yes, I believe it is coming ... ;-) > Thanks for the feedback - I didn't know NIMS was a true "ground-up" > product. Nice to know that Novell can work something like NIMS up > from nothing to something and it's a pure internet product. Oh yes ... when people are allowed to do wonderful things, they can. It's too bad that people have to "fight" so violently for the opportunity to succeed inside ... ;-( > I spoke with some Novell people last Monday and they explained > NIMS as "email lite" and GroupWise as "email heavy". > Interesting.... Yes ... I would have to say that NIMS is a fantastic product, which seems to be throttled by the legacy GroupWise product, which has become fairly "bloated" with features, and lacking on Internet standards support. I believe that for the last three or four years the GroupWise development has a focus in the wrong area ... it should have been opening up it's interfaces to be accessible via numerous clients and applications ... like the browser. It also needs significant work in the "supportability" of the product. A couple of ISPs that I worked with now understand just how "heavy" GroupWise is ... > Peter J Strifas > > ps - what else can you tell us about COMDEX? Comdex was really impressive in many ways. I only went down for two days, looking at specific areas of technology, and some specific companies. Portable/Wearable Computers: There were several vendors demonstrating their products in this space. Xybernaut (I'm a shareholder) had a good booth, with constant traffic. They were allowing people to try-on the systems and check out the functionality. Via was also there, and there was another company offering "tablet" computers - I forget the name right now. The interesting thing is that these are all full PCs capable of running Windows, Linux, or other OSs ... with full peripheral support. And they are getting small, and light. Storage: I was looking for large disk subsystems and found them! The specific area of technology I was interested in was the IDE-to-SCSI-RAID subsystems. I found 5 or 6 vendors in this space. These subsystems, IMHO, will change storage system designs. They allow a person to create a huge "virtual" SCSI disk drive out of cheap IDE drives which are protected by RAID 5. I can now create ~120GB SCSI disk drive, fully RAID 5 protected, for under $3000! Cameras: Expect these things everywhere ... people were showing USB cameras that are the size of a book of matches ... and cheap. USB: This is becoming more and more dominant at the peripheral interface. Although Firewire is still preferred in the video markets, USB devices were everywhere. The "biggest" introduction seemed to be USB Ethernet - a way to expand the home PC to Ethernet without opening the box. MP3 Players: These were also everywhere, every-color, every-size, and cheap. I'll try to think of more ... I'm still filing my literature ... ;-) Scott C. Lemon