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

To: EPS who wrote (24065)	10/26/1998 9:58:00 AM
From: DJBEINO	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Santa Cruz Operation (SCOC) 4 1/8: provider of UNIX server operating systems, and the leading provider of network computing software forms broad strategic alliance with IBM, in collaboration with Intel, to aggressively accelerate worldwide growth of Intel processor-based UNIX servers for the enterprise; under arrangement, IBM will make SCOC's UnixWare 7, its 32-bit UNIX operating system for the high-volume Intel-architecture enterprise market

To: EPS who wrote (24065)	10/26/1998 4:48:00 PM
From: EPS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

and things keep getting better...... ............................ With Jini, a network citizen simply posts a message containing its current status, available services, and location to a JavaSpaces bulletin board. Using Sun's lookup service, another citizen could then locate a desired service and automatically establish a connection with the appropriate citizen. If these two newly acquainted citizens do not contain the software needed to complete the task at hand, they simply exchange the necessary code, downloading it as a set of Java classes. For example, if a Microsoft citizen used a non-compliant Java VM that kept it from participating in a distributed accounts-payable application, Jini could download the appropriate classes on the fly, circumventing the Java VM's shortcomings. In short, you don't need lawsuits or the federal government to break Microsoft's alleged misuse of Java. You just need Jini. Building a better toaster A technical and political extension to Java, Jini shoots an arrow right at the heart of Microsoft's big OS, big hardware idea of networking, namely Microsoft Windows 98 and Windows NT. After all, who needs a million lines of Windows code to interact with a network when all you need is a Java VM and 48KB of Jini code? But there's far more to Jini than just anti-Microsoft posturing. If Jini's notion of a federation of network devices and services succeeds, it will fulfill Novell's newly found destiny. Novell, with Dr. Eric Schmidt firmly at the helm and Bill Joy newly ensconced on the board of directors, is beginning to sound a lot like JavaSoft these days. And it's no accident. Since Novell found its NOS numbers plummeting at the hands of Windows NT, the company has realigned itself as an OS-agnostic provider of network and management services, leaving general-purpose computing to Microsoft. Even its newest mantra, "The network ... no limits," sounds a little like Sun's motto: "The network is the computer." But the similarities go deeper. The entire idea behind Jini is predicated on an IP- centric architecture capable of storing and marshaling perhaps millions of Jini objects from place to place, all while providing secure and scalable directory services. Coincidentally, when NetWare 5.0 shipped last month, it provided this very infrastructure. Chiefly, NetWare 5.0 provides "pure" IP support, something greatly appreciated by Jini. Its NDS (Novell Directory Services) can be used to secure, replicate, and distribute Jini's lookup service on both NetWare and Windows NT. According to Novell and the VolanoMark benchmark, NetWare 5.0 will sport the world's fastest Java VM. And by including Oracle's Object-Relational Oracle8 database, NetWare 5.0 can house the myriad Java objects required by a Jini federation. It's almost a match made in heaven. Sun can use NetWare 5.0's infrastructure to immediately realize Jini's potential, and Novell can use Jini to legitimize its view of networking services. But will the two together topple Microsoft's tower of Babel in which the OS is an end in itself? Probably not. It's no easy task to win millions of Win32 programmers. However, more than any technologies before them, Jini and NetWare 5.0 at least have a chance to make distributed computing a household name. At the very least, they will make it easier to hook your toaster up to the Internet. lantimes.com