Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rudedog who wrote (11373)	10/18/1998 2:39:00 AM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

Rudedog, I have to give you credit that you were relatively objective on your last posting. Some points were inaccurate though. You are correct that NetWare 2.X servers are non-Y2K compliant and Novell will not be putting out patches to make 2.X Y2K compliant (and there are very few 2.X servers out there anymore). But you incorrect about NetWare 3.X since Novell has make Y2K patches publicly available free of charge to NetWare 3.12. NetWare 3.11 and lower can upgrade to NetWare 3.2 which is Y2K compliant and adds a few minor features over previous versions. Novell has reported a substantial spike in NetWare 3.2 sales - a direct result of these older servers being upgraded. You are correct the Compaq is one of Novell's largest resellers of NetWare. The President & CEO of Compaq recently acknowledged this strong relationship with Novell privately to all his staff via email. It was a very strongly worded email. And you do bring up an issue that Novell has with those selling an NT solution over NetWare. Because of NetWare's extreme system efficiency over NT, it requires a much smaller system resource over NT (there are many NetWare 4.x servers out there that can easily out-perform an NT OS on a large pentium system). Therefore - as stupid as it sounds - resellers and system integrators would rather sell an IT shop NT because they and the OEMs maek bigger sales. The good news from Novell is - again this sounds stupid - that NetWare 5 requires a minimum pentium and 48MB RAM to run effectively (I have installed it on a 486 and 64MB RAM and its OK). this means a lot of system upgrade sales for the resellers, system integrators, and OEMs. The customer is the one that has lost out in this big money grab by the sales channels. I agree with you that NetWare servers are still not accepted by the application developers that want to write custom application executables on the NetWare platform. NetWare 5 has done a lot to address the barriers that have restricted developers on NetWare. Novell has not abandoned the concept of bringing application developers. With NetWare 5 integrating an extremely fast open standards JVM, CORBA compliancy in the APIs, JNDI development integration into NDS, adoption of Oracle's OAS, a free Oracle 8 server licence and code, and development of a common API for many developer languages, Novell has gone very far in encouraging developers to consider NetWare as a platform. Regarding TTS - you are correct and I agree with you there. I'm glad you clarified where in NT TTS like services are integrated. What I was referring to in TTS is that its API's were available for database programmers to perform explicit TTS requests to their database files. I also had to correct Keithsha on his incorrect understanding of what a TTS was in NetWare. As for the Ring 0 - 3 debate. I would rather not get into that discssion. Leave it to say that there are big benefits to both Ring 0 and Ring 3 level applications. NetWare now allows an IT shop to choose. MSFT has stopped this battle of Ring 0-3 with Novell because it was shown that MSFT itself runs many of its services in NT at Ring 0. But since NetWare can operate in both modes, its not even an issue. Regarding Clustering, I hate to burst your bubble on that one as well. Novell is releasing phase 1 of its clustering as we speak (this is to replace the previous versions of NetWare SFTIII). Phase 2 of clustering which will be capable of 32 processors/systems will be released sometime next year. All these releases are based on their Orion technology (previously name Wolf Mountain). There is no way they couldhave abandoned this since clustering is a future need for large scale enterprise requirements. I will also disagree with you that F&P is a niche. The VAST majority of NT and NetWare servers are still sold to provide F&P type services and not for Application servers. This need will not go away in foreseeable future. MSFT has always wanted to downplay F&P as a legacy concept, passing fade, and a commodity. The real world is not proving this out. I live in the real world every day and 8 out of every 10 servers that my group installs for our customers are to provide a F&P level of infrastructure. So I will strongly disagree with you there. But again RudeDog, I have to commend you for being as objective as you can be. Cheers ! Toy

To: rudedog who wrote (11373)	10/18/1998 3:13:00 AM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

RudeDog, Regarding Compaq's commitment to Novell. Here is a letter that went out to all Compaq employees recently.... To All Compaq Employees Worldwide: After all of the excitement of the Digital acquisition and the announcement that Compaq is laying the foundation for a new world of computing, it is time to step back for a minute and reaffirm some of the relationships that have made Compaq what it is today. I am thinking of Novell in particular. I want to update everyone on the importance of Novell and how critical Novell is in helping us make our server and storage sales. First, let me be very clear about this, Compaq is committed to Novell. Novell represents almost $3B in Compaq server and storage revenue, which is today comparable to the size of our entire x86 NT business. In addition, there are over 1 million Compaq servers running NetWare today. Compaq and Novell built the PC networking environment together. We laid down the infrastructure that allowed companies to move their computing power to the desktop in order to have the ability to share information across the enterprise. From that foundation, companies have added additional computing environments, such as UNIX and NT in order to move application processing power closer to the user. But through all of this, Novell has continued to be a leading provider of networking infrastructure. Novell will enhance their leadership position through the use of Novell's Directory Services (NDS) - a unique directory that allows customers to manage their mixed environments. As customers deploy NT and UNIX application servers, they still need a way to centrally manage all the services of a network. Novell has proved with NDS that you can do this from one central location. According to Novell, 79% of NetWare sites also have NT in their environment and the reason for this is simple, NetWare is the network and NT and UNIX are the application servers attached to this network. With over 80 million people logging into the network each day, this represents a large installed base, and an enormous opportunity for Compaq. Compaq and Novell have worked together for over 12 years and have had a formal relationship for 6 years with the Enterprise Computing Partnership. Over the years this dynamic partnership has developed many industry leading products, from SFTIII to Hot Plug PCI, and we are looking forward to developing additional products with Novell. This letter is our first step in re-energizing our commitment to Novell. As you are planning your goals for the next few months I suggest you look very closely at how you can maximize your sales by partnering with Novell. On September 14, 1998 Novell will be announcing their latest version of NetWare - NetWare 5. Eckhard Pfeiffer will be giving the keynote at the launch event and would like everyone to support this event. Our market leadership depends on continuing to supply customers with the best products for their choice of operating system platform, no matter what operating system they choose. Let's make sure that any company planning to upgrade or purchase new Novell products also purchases Compaq hardware. We must drive the NetWare segment as a key focus of our Enterprise strategy in our product plans, our sales efforts and on our communications to customers and analysts. I look forward to working with you on this critical initiative. Regards, John Rose Executive Vice President and General Manager Compaq Enterprise Computing Group

To: rudedog who wrote (11373)	10/19/1998 6:13:00 PM
From: keithsha	Respond to of 74651

Thanks for chiming in rudedog. I stand by my assertion that TTS was a fix to the caching problem I outlined. I was there way back when with this issue. My problem with Toy's contentious attitude is that Netware is actually an Enterprise class product. It is not. Fraught with replication and database corruption problems. Ask any large account that has attempted a single (or primary) tree architecture about declaring a new epoch. Then listem for a moanfull wail of downtime. Although, there are many other expedient hacks in this product that disqualify it for use in enterprise architectures, it serves it traditional niche of small to medium LAN file and print service nicely enough. And I do like the NWAdmin interface eye candy :-) Keithsha