[KLUG Members] Novell may nix NetWare development

[Tony Gettig]

Let me preface this by saying I am not a Novell radical, but it is a big part of
my background. I have been purposefully shifting my thinking from NetWare to
Linux thinking since 1998, looking for Open Source replacements and
opportunities wherever I can. Linux is unquestionably the future of operating
systems. (The present for an increasing number of us.)

Quoting Adam Williams <adam@morrison-ind.com>:
> > Wow!
> 
> No joke.
> 
> > http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5060413.html
> 
> "Novell also announced on Tuesday that it would be porting its entire
> GroupWise collaboration software, a product that significantly overlaps
> with Ximian's Evolution client, to Linux. "
> 
> This just makes good sense.  There are alot of Groupwise customers,
> giving them a migration path less radical than going to exchange looks
> like money in the bank.  This may give them a product other than NDS and
> file/print server, which is a very good thing.  I suspect that Microsoft
> could trounce them in those two areas (since it is basically included in
> M$-Windows).

If Novell file and print services, and the EASE of administration associated
with it, were all running on Linux, I would think informed IT people would take
a hard look at it over NT. People with a NetWare background will get it, but the
glut of paper MCSE's will have a hard time comprehending it IMO. Seriously,
their filesystem management, granting of rights, inherited rights, and
everything about it is eDir (NDS) centric and really easy to administer...once
you understand that everything is an object. Granting read/write for a directory
to one group and read only to another group for the same directory and different
access still to an individual user is cinch. Much better than User, Group, and
Others in ext3. Granted, I've not played with the Linux filesystems that support
such ACL control yet, but it's the easy to use tools and shell integration that
make filesystem management a breeze for NetWare administrators. 

For the longest time, there was one main tool for managing a NetWare
network...NWAdmin. But NO...Novell had to get all java-happy on us and come out
with ConsoleOne, a java app built to turn a PIII into a 486. They are moving a
lot of this to a web management interface now. Not as cool as Webmin, but the
same idea. 

> 
> They've still got some pretty stiff competition.
> 
> Novel <-> M$ <-> OpenSource(Free!)
> Groupwise - Exchange - OpenGroupware
> NDS - ADS - OpenLDAP
> Evolution? - Outlook - Evolution
> Mono/Apache - .Net - Mono/Apache
> XD (Bonobo) - Windows (COM) - XD or GNOME (Bonobo)
> ZenWorks(+Red Carpet?) - Zero {NameOfWeek} - APT, Red Carpet, up2date
> ? - ?* - xmlBlaster, Castor, BIE (middleware)
> n/a - SQLServer - PostgreSQL, SAPdb, Thunderbird (**)
> 
> * I know M$ has a product in this market, but I have no idea what the
> name is.
> ** Not to mention commerical DBs like Oracle or DB2

Novell has DirXML, which might be the middleware piece you speak of. They've
always counted on 3rd parties to write DB's though. However, with NW 6.5, they
do include MySQL in the install procedure. Postgres on NW has been available for
quite awhile.

Besides the outward business reasons for Novell to set sail with Open Source, I
have long suspected they have a battalion of developers internally that have
been using Linux for quite awhile.

> 
> Support for LAMP will help them with small shops without back-end
> systems and possibly schools.  But how much for the bigger players with
> complex hereogenious networks?  I suspect not much,
> 
> Does Novel have other products?

Yes, quite a few. The thing about their products is that everything ties into
eDirectory. The Linux parallel is more and more Open Source apps supporting
LDAP. It will be interesting to see how much Novell morphs their eDir to be more
like standard LDAP. AFAIK, if an app can talk to LDAP, it can talk to eDir. But
the differences are still there, as evidenced in the recent PHP/LDAP thread.

Let this be a loud and clear message to Novell fans: Linux is here. Now. If
you've been dabbling with it but not seriously jumped in yet, it's not too
late...yet. Get your Linux skills now or be left behind. Future Novell
certifications WILL require Linux expertise, I have no doubt. 


-- 
Tony Gettig
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