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

To: keithsha who wrote (24196)	11/3/1998 11:14:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 42771

Hello Kiethsha, I'm very interested in your input and contributions. You seemed to have joined SI and migrated to this thread on the 2nd of the month ... are you interested in contributing valuable accurate information and fact to the thread ... or just FUD? I'll assume that you're on the up-and-up and truly want to discuss fact related to Novell. I appreciate the fact that you want to "balance" the comments being made ... both pro-Novell, and anti-Microsoft ... but let's try and keep FUD to a minimum. > Again a bunch of drivel instead of real world examples. How about > some Internet sites using Novell technology? Hit rates, concurrent > pages access, peak downloads, Ecommerce $ volume would be > interesting if they exist. Heck Novell just converted their own web > site from Unix and Apache this past summer. If you are looking for success stories, I guess that I could spew a couple of examples ... and then so could you. Here's the link: novell.com Then everyone can read for themselves. There continue to be announcements of Internet sites using Novell technologies. I just posted another message a little while ago about MT&T using Novell's technologies for almost all of the things that you have hinted about ... and in ways that are far beyond simple-minded HTTP web service. And yes, the web sites, which have been front-ended by BorderManager for a long time, were running Apache on UnixWare ... a carry-over from the UnixWare days ... but even you seem to acknowledge that they are Novonyx (Netscape's code) on NetWare today. I noticed that Microsoft has removed an easy way to locate the information on how many NT servers (and what type of hardware) it takes to run your web site. Since you are anxious to talk about how these numbers are accomplished, could you guide me to the link that details exactly what runs the microsoft.com site? > As for Border Manager and fake benchmarks, it doesn't even have > basic Proxy performance features such as load-balanced cache, > reverse proxy or host, server proxy or FTP cache. Please ... you need to learn more about the Novell products. Could you explain to this audience which benchmarks are "fake"? I'll assume that you are referring to MindCraft? From recent experiences I don't think they would like to know that you are calling their benchmarks "fake" ... mindcraft.com Obviously this is an old benchmark and we are now seeing numbers in excess of 10,000/sec ... what are the benchmark figures for Microsoft Proxy? As for features, you, and the link that you have provided: > Check out microsoft.com ... are incorrect. You ought to let your folks know that the comparison chart that they have drawn-up has numerous errors. I know that you are interested in being truthful and that you will have this taken care of. Your comments about a "load-balanced cache, reverse proxy or host, server proxy or FTP cache" are wrong. Please point your browser at novell.com ... you'll be using all of these features ... and they have been there since day one of the product. I'm sure that the problems in your comparison chart were a simple misunderstanding of the technology ... or a simple oversight. > BTW, customers tour the MSFT operations center daily. Including SAP > running on NT. Are they any ERP applications for NetWare? I'm curious about the scalability and uptime of these services ... can you provide the real data about how much hardware, software, and real costs to run this? And what about actual load on the systems in terms of users and transactions? I'm just curious about the details ... > Oh and NTS and it's directory service which has over 600 integrated > applications is outselling all versions of NetWare combined by > 50%. Ok ... now you have completely lost me ... you haven't shipped a directory service yet ... what are you talking about? I hope that you aren't trying to convince everyone here that by "calling" your Domains a new name, all of the poor architecture dating back to NetBIOS and MS-Net will just go away? And you're going to claim these as directory applications. Come on ... let's keep this up and honest ... not full of FUD. Everyone knows that Active Directory won't even be complete in the first cut of NT v5.0. I once heard a joke about "How many Microsoft employees does it take to change a light bulb?" The answer was "None. They'll just redefine 'dark'!" ... I can't believe that you expect people to be fooled by renaming Domains. When you ship a directory, then you can talk about directory applications. > NT is competing and winning with current product. Windows 2000 and > AD just broaden the scale and scope. Hmmm ... then what brought you here? Also, I have to ask ... obviously by renaming the product to Windows 2000 you hope to escape the classic ".0" release problems. But are you going to have Windows 2000.0? I think that people will still be hesistant to run Windows 2000 with out SP1 being attached to the name ... maybe even SP2. I know that once you got to SP3 my NT Workstation seems to be pretty stable. > Wake up Toy, become aware that distributed computing requires > scalable directory databases. BTrieve? You have got to be kidding. > I thought it was an internal project called RDP or something. Yes ... and distributed computing requires a stable kernal that can stay up and running also! (Or at least one that reboots faster!) ;-) I'm really curious about your perspectives on this recently published document ... tuxedo.org Can you shed any light as to whether it is an actual Microsoft document? And in either case, maybe you could comment on the statements made within ... I noticed that some of the suggestions at the bottom of the document involve new techniques being used, besides standard business FUD tactics ... are you part of this? This might be better on the Microsoft thread ... but since you want to discuss your company here ... (P.S. I really don't want to get into a massive battle, so if you agree to stick to honest open discussion I'll do likewise. But I do like to fully understand the details of claims and implementations.) Thanx! Scott C. Lemon

To: keithsha who wrote (24196)	11/3/1998 11:58:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Keithsha, I am soo amazed how you can so openly spew such utter lies and crap. Save yourself some MAJOR red-face!! As for Border Manager and fake benchmarks, it doesn't even have basic Proxy performance features such as load-balanced cache, reverse proxy or host, server proxy or FTP cache Lets help your poor little brain out a bit... Current BorderManager main features... - Centralized Network Administration - NDS with Full LDAP Capabilities - User-Level Access Control (Not Just IP-Level) Services - Circuit Gateway Services - Application Proxy Services - Packet Filtering Services - Virtual Private Network Services - Network Address Translation Services - Advanced Proxy Cache Services - Full Routing and Remote Access Services - CyberPatrol* URL Content Filtering - Netscape Navigator* A few quotes from those that have seen the two and have looked at the MSFT web site (the perfect example of how little MSFT products are scalable)... According to Norvin Leach in his PC Week article, "Web Woes: Microsoft.com's poor performance," dated June 30, 1997, "The sluggish performance of Microsoft Corp.'s Web site and a recent hacker-driven crash of the site points to an ongoing series of challenges the site and the Microsoft technology behind is facing Microsoft attributes the problems partly to skyrocketing usage, which officials are estimating at 88 million hits per day." Perhaps Microsoft should talk to Novell. Novell BorderManager is rated at 290 million hits per day using an Intel Pentium! In the June 23 issue of InformationWeek, James Gaskin says: "...BorderManager promises dramatic improvements in Net access . . . [al]though the Proxy Cache Server is just one component of BorderManager, it may help quiet all those users demanding faster computers to improve their Web access." BorderManager uses sohisticated software techniques to do the job it isn't dependent solely on the performance of the underlying processor. ... Leach's June 30 PC Week article continues: "...for users [Microsoft's] poor [website] performance ...reflects on the underlying Microsoft technology, namely IIS..." ... According to Stan Gibson's May 26th column in PC Week, (and the reader responses on June 16) Microsoft doesn't have what it takes to support scalable mission-critical enterprise systems. novell.com From a recent announcement of SkyCache and Novell... SkyCache and Novell Announce Certification of Internet Caching Solution for ISPs, Enterprises and Web-Enabled Businesses Novell's BorderManager FastCache Now SkyCache Certified ... Leveraging the performance strengths of NetWare® 5, BorderManager FastCache can handle over 100,000 simultaneous persistent connections and can offload as much as 75% of the Web traffic on an Internet connection. BorderManager FastCache provides a strong performance foundation for firewalls already installed in a network environment and can be easily integrated in any NetWare, NT, UNIX or heterogeneous network. SkyCache uses satellite broadcast technology to constantly load the most often requested Internet and Web pages directly into customer-side ICP-compliant caches. In addition, SkyCache uses reporting statistics from customers to build a large cache community for the reactive caching component of the service. novell.com And this is only the current BorderMananger. BorderManager version 3 will be release by Q1 of next year and this product goes even another 10 steps further than anything MSFT could even consider. The other big fact is that unlike MSFT proxy cache technology had has developed its own propriatary CARP caching, NOVL has used the industry accepted ICP. And of course your typical MSFT FUD which puts down all the statistics and performance tests that show Novell's BorderManager products are not only faster than either MSFT Proxy Servers or any of the other competitors, but it leaves them in the dust. MSFT was rated at 500 hits per second where BorderManager was over 4,000 hits per second. NO CONTEST LITTLE BUDDY! Go tell your bosses to sell these solutions to the mom and pop operations because at least the MSFT servers can keep up with these 5-10 person operations. How does Mr. Gates let you on the boards making a fool out of MSFT. You are the best thing that has happened to companies like NOVL because you let these companies counter you with truth and it is not even hard to counter-point you! Toy