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

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (21904)	5/7/1998 9:01:00 AM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

Paul, I never did say that if a small customer has an NT shop that they would convert back to NetWare. In fact, in the case of small business evironments the same reasoning that companies shouldn't switch from one platform to another, hold true in the NT to NetWare world. But the argument was the stupidity of switching platforms. I agree that the switch for smaller businesses would be less costly or complex, but WHY DO IT if the current platform meets your needs? Even if the costs are smaller than the larger company migrations, these costs are very substantial for the small company. I know! I have dealt with the small companies & organiations several times. These are companies that have trouble ripping a dollar from their hands! Why convince them to switch from a NetWare platform to NT just because its the latest FAD? Unfortunately there are so many vendors that swindle these little customers with FUD and convince them that the Novell world (ahh hell - the entire world other than MSFT) is falling a part and wont exist so they better switch to NT. These small companies have simple computing needs as well. They need a server that is reliable and provides a lot of performance for their limited computing buck. Reliability is even more important to these small customers than the larger companies (and we all know how reliable an NT server is) because unlike the large companies, these small operations DO NOT HAVE DEDICATED SUPPORT STAFF. If anything goes wrong, they could be down for hours or even days. Also, they will have to call up expensive external service techies to fix the problem. I have one small customer that has been running NetWaRE 3.12 for years on an old 486/33 and 16MB RAM. This is the little server that could! I lives in a dirty, smoke-filled, under the desk environment and has not failed yet! In fact, I am trying to pleading with the owner to at least mirror the drive. He wont do it because it will cost the price of a drive! Now explain to me how and why this guy would even contemplate migrating to NT? His current server has been running on a platform that NT could barely boot up on! His applications are still providing him with what he needs (he doesnt need these fancy client/server systems you are talking about). And his NetWare NOS hasn't crashed in years!! Give me one NT shop example that can state that! As for NetWare 3.x and 4.x servers not running client/server applications, let me enlighten you on a fact. As of 1996, what do you think was the largest base of PC client/server systems in the market? Answer NetWare and Btrieve! This is one of the least know facts in the computer industry. So many financial applications run on the Btrieve Database running on NetWare that I would bet it still is a good rival to the NT client/server apps installed - if not still the leader. So you are incorrect that NetWare only runs data repository only applications. That is far far from the truth. So to summarize, a company had better have a GOOD BUSINESS REASON to switch computer platforms! Business should not be switching NOS platforms because NT is the FAD! Thats my two cents. PS: I dont think NOVL is going to be doing any major cuts again. They have been trimmed down to the flesh already. If they cut any deeper it would impact operations and development objectives IMO. Why is Shmidt getting cozy with MSFT? Simple, their is alot of FAD interest in MSFT and the smart competitor sees all the weakness in MSFT products, so be close to your enemies and offer its customers a helping hand to resolve its competitor's weaknesses. (i.e. ohh NT has a shitty Directory Service - lets us help you with NDS, MSFT has an inefficient SW Dist. package - lets us help you with ZENworks/NAL/NDS) VERY SMOOTH MOVE on Shmidt's part. Toy