OSNews

For Novell, this release needs to be solid so many of the NetWare shops out there will finally take leap...even if it's still a virtual NetWare.

By all accounts, few are going to make that leap. From the people I speak to running Netware, and some of the regulars posting on Novell's blogs and forums, that's something they're not keen on doing. Current Netware customers just don't know why on Earth they should be massively inconvenienced by having to install a somewhat half-baked version of Linux in OES just so they can virtualise Netware on it and continue working the same way they have been doing for years for ZERO benefit. Virtualisation just increases the risks of things to go wrong with no appreciable benefit for these people - despite the hype Novell has attached to it. Novell is just killing their flagship product that brings in the money, and that sends out a bad signal to people.

Novell have failed to sell this to their existing customers, and make it easy and painless. They STILL haven't ported Netware services to a Linux environment and kernel. They have failed to create a seamless plan for moving Netware -> Linux, failed to create straightforward compatibility tools, failed to create quality documentation on moving, failed to sell any real benefits of virtualising Netware to their existing customers if that is their direction, failed to provide easy tools for migrating existing Netware to virtualised Netware and failed to provide sweeteners that would really have helped such as good quality graphical tools. By quality graphical tools I'm talking about stuff that would have been good enough to make a Windows administrator look over the shoulder of a Netware guy and mutter "Bugger".

You see, despite the talk about Linux, Novell's biggest trouble is that they're hemorrhaging Netware customers and money far, far faster than they're gaining any Linux ones - and they're losing them to Microsoft and Windows Server on the whole. Yes, that company they did a deal with ;-). If people are using Active Directory, why do people need Novell? They're just simply not giving their existing customers cast-iron reasons why they should stay with Novell and then build their Linux and other businesses from there.

All that should have been started in earnest as soon as Novell bought Suse, because this was a long-term process started long before then that Linux was supposed to solve. However, Novell didn't understand Linux or open source software from the top down at board and management level. When they bought Suse they simply thought they'd bought Linux...and that was it.