If networking software pioneer Novell fails to recapture at lease some of its former luster, it won’t be for lack of effort. The company’s latest plan to reinvent itself kicked off Monday, with the purchase of SilverStream Software, a maker of development tools. Novell Chief Executive Chris Stone sees the deal as helping the company expand into the market for Web services–an increasingly popular way to develop software. If Novell successfully integrates SilverStream into its product line, it could possibly revive interest in Novell’s NetWare operating system and directory services software as a Web services development package.
Will Web Services Revive Novell?
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Eugenia Loli
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No.
🙂
“No.
:)”
Ditto. Nothing can revive Novell. Why can’t we just find the “do not recucitate” order? I know it must be around here somewhere.
Netware is brain dead. For some reason, it just doesn’t realize it yet.
This reminds me of Corel’s last attempt to reinvent itself, by riding the Linux hype in 2000. Except the Corel plan actually worked for a short while, on the stock market anyway.
> Netware is brain dead.
Nope, not yet. The stats, for what they are worth, says they still have 17% of the market. Novell will be truly dead when the last of the Netware gang retires from the work force
i won’t use novell simply because they are headquartered in utah. same thing with delta airlines.
and yes, i have been to utah. and this opinion is a utah-in-general thing, not a mormon thing.
sorry for the off topic post.
That’s the stupidest reason not to use a companies product. Novell is also in Massachusetts, do you hate that state as well? Can’t you come up with some other reasons?
//”No.
//:)”
/* Ditto. Nothing can revive Novell. Why can’t we just find the “do not recucitate” order? I know it must be around here somewhere. */
Theoretically it could recover, but I don’t think web-services are what is going to bring it back. Web-services are not exactly the most stable base for any buisness right now.
Skipp
“Ditto. Nothing can revive Novell.”
Well, I’ll bet there are a lot of hardcore Novell fans that would probably disagree with you. But, of course .. they are probably cut from the same cloth as the BeOS fanatics 😉
BeOS & Novell certainly share a few traits, perhaps less than good management, & facing the beast is enough to bring down most companies. But Novell did enjoy a leadership position at one time before MS took their lunch, & couldn’t figure how to hold onto market share. BeOS never had it’s day in the sun so to speak. If what you say is true, then where is the OpenNetware team?
BeOS fanatic
Remember that last year Novell aquired Cambridge Consulting and over doubled it’s work force in the same year everyone else laid off. Now, with SilverStream it adds more to it’s work force. Not to mention that Novell now has a core set of software engineers with a rock solid NOS with years of maturity and developer support behind it, a large and experienced division of IT consultants, and now a web services outlet, in addition to NDS (arguably the best directory services on the planet – not arguably dwarving active duh-rectory). With all of this, Novell still has $1.2 billion in cash reserves as it rolls out NetWare 6.1 in a few months. These guys are sitting pretty and will come back to take a much more dominant role in the IT industry just like IBM did. Remember, SilverStream is not the first aquisition toward their new goal – it is more like number 5 and their steam pumps are going full tilt. Expect more news from Novell in the next year.
I voluteered for that layoff and got tens of thousands of dollars (woo hoo!)
As I said in a post a few days ago. Novell is dying because many of their upper managers are as dumb as a bag of diapers and their sales/marketing department seems to have the same skills that are passed out to small lumps of ferret poop.
I think that Novell will still go on for a while because Windows just isn’t as stable or scalable and companies don’t want to invest in Sun hardware if they’ve already invested in x86 servers.
There are a lot of good people at Novell, so I hate to see them fail, but it appears that such will be the case.
>> But, of course .. they are probably cut from the same cloth as the BeOS fanatics ;-)<<
Maybe Novell should buy Palm. Then they could integrate all their directory services and funk protocalls and software etc. into the BeOS and re-release it as Novell/2.net.
And then of course they would _have_ to release the source code under the GPL (not really, but I thought I’d go ahead say it before some stallmanite did).
I doubt that Novell is in imminent jeapordy. They’re making money, and there is still a demand for their products. But their 10 year plan is lacking…
Web services have already been carved up between Apache and IIS, so Novell has little hope of surpassing even little Zeus in that market. As nice as NDS is, nearly everybody who’s not going to Captive Directory is going to NDS’ cousin LDAP. And while Novell is tops for file and print, that part is changing too.
The print part of file & print has proven to be unnecessary ever since 32-bit Windows has brought a robust spooler to every desktop. It’s far more efficient to print directly to the printer next to your desk than it is to send the job to the data center and back to be spooled. The authority nazis will still want total control over the process, but in these days of declining IS budgets, there’s usually no cash to support wasteful indulgences like that. So half of Novell’s bastion has crumbled just like that.
The other half, file services has eroded in the face of Microsoft’s f&p. Novell did some innovative things in going for client-less file access, but unfortunately didn’t go far enough. While the web-based client is a nice convenience to those who have seen nothing but drive letter access, the client is awfully weak in comparison to those used by Internet file sharing operations. So it’s too little, too late.
Novell is identified with F&P, and that’s what will make them or break them. If they had come up with a really slick web-based file client with enough security to be Internet-ready, that would have helped. If they had aggressively courted HP and other to have a Novell-branded IP security and accounting, they might have given print services some legs. But now it’s a little late for “woulda, coulda, shoulda” stuff.
When Netware finally does become passe, I hope that the company will bow out of the market gracefully, and make provisions for releasing their products to the public domain.
:As nice as NDS is, nearly everybody who’s not going to Captive Directory is going to NDS’ cousin LDAP.
Um? LDAP isn`t an actual product. It`s a directory standard of which both Active Directory AND NDS/eDirectory is based on.
Oh joy, another moron who just has to prove what an idiot it is…
First of all Mong, nobody was claiming that LDAP was a product, so you’re wrong about that. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And while NDS and LDAP are both subsets of the X.500 protocol, NDS is not “based on” LDAP! Wrong, wrong, wrong, Mong!
So thanks for letting the world know that you’re too lazy to research the matter, too stupid to realize that you know nothing, and too jerky to keep it to yourself. Weeeeeee!
Speed, with all your knowledge and your skills, you’re a disgusting man. I don’t see any reason to call Mong a moron and an idiot just because he made some mistake. I do not doubt you’re a very social guy, or should I say child (your post sounds very childish), but I think you should have some Human Relations training.
So if nearly everyone who isn`t using ADS are going to use LDAP, how exactly are they going to use it if it isn`t a product?
I think you need to lay off the amphetamines. They seem to be making you paranoid.
Uh, is there any possibility of making comments on-topic and putting these stupid arguments to one side? Perhaps you should exchange addresses and continue your “debate” in private.
Netware is still working in many organisations, but I can see it disappearing in time. My uni has just installed Groupwise (email, calendar and other kinds of Outlook/Evolution stuff), so it is still thought of (at least by some people) as a viable option. What the future will bring I think is less clear, but I cannot see web services helping in any way considering the competition (MS and IBM, maybe even Sun?)
well TCP/IP isn’t a product, but I would say it’s used to a certain degree 😉
LDAP is a standard with several different implementations – take your pick.
ZenWorks!
This is the future of desktop management and nobody has any product that matches is power, integrations and features.
Agreed. NDS and ADS being two of them.
Manik, before you go off blaming me for everything that you don’t like here, consider this. I since I made my very first post here, someone…often times several people have replied in rude and intentionally demeaning ways telling me that I was all wrong and that they were right. And to boot, they turned out to be wrong!
I didn’t create the culture here, but I’m playing by its rules. I’m a joiner! If you don’t like the fact that every other post is clueless and aggressive, you find your way of dealing with it. Mine is to send it right back at them. So you stop pretending to be God, and lay off the judgementalism.
Novell practically invented the commercial directory serivice, years before LDAP or Active Directory. Now, with novell’s directory service having 10 years of evolution under it’s belt, not only is it the most stable and feature-full directory out there, but it is also the most complete and standards compliant LDAP compatible directory out there.
Ha. Not only that, but web services development on NetWare and eDirectory is very slick. Novell will be around for some time to come.
Will web services save Novel?
That really all depends. The term “WebService” is really generic. A lot of businesses are using web services for integration, which, I think will be very successful, and be where web services will be used the most. So, that is the enterprise side of things.
Others want to try and use web services on the consumer side of things, and have people “rent” them. This is where I think web services won’t work. The internet has been “free” for too long, and people are expecting to get things for free more and more. If some company starts charging to use part of application, I just don’t see people paying to use that. Especially, if it something that can be found for free else where. I could be wrong, and no one will know for sure until someone tries it, and either fails or succeeds.
So, when you say Novel is now going to support Web Services, well, they probably always did. I mean, how hard is it to listen/post on an http port, and parse an XML message? The harder part is in the implementation of the actual message processing, though, that can be easy too.
I just think this whole WebService thing is hype, and not much more. The only place a really see it succeeding, as I said, is in enterprise data integration projects, due to its platform independence. But, that’s just me
When Netware finally does become passe, I hope that the company will bow out of the market gracefully, and make provisions for releasing their products to the public domain.
Not me. I want IBM to buy them so my stock will be worth something (unless the stock goes PackardBell/NEC. Down the toilet).
You had mentioned some cool F&P services that may have helped Novell. Actually, they have some very cool Internet enabled, secure file services and a really cool print service. In fact, they have a lot of cutting edge, awesome technologies. The problem is that, as I said earlier, Novell’s sales and marketing department is lumped on its side at the bottom of a ferret cage.
Camel, I hadn’t really thought about a buy-out when I posted that. I agree that would be the best outcome for the company. But at some point, good old Netware will become passe. When that time comes, I’d like to see it live on as freeware of some sort.
While my Netware experience has been primarily focused on 3 and 4, I have had some opportunity to play with 5 and 6. My last employer even sent me to Netware 5 classes. I see that they’re adding come cool new stuff. But I feel that what they’re adding isn’t really any better than similar stuff that can be had for free. I was really disappointed with the web services for that reason.
The print services are a nice try, but they miss the mark. The leader in direct printing is HP JetDirect, and that product stinks! IMHO Novell should have come up with a printing solution to replace JetDirect, and wasn’t just a tie-in to other Novell technology. It shouldn’t have been part of the Netware client at all! If you’re 100% committed to Netware, then their print solution was a gimme. But to everybody else it was a pain to deploy.
It doesn’t matter how clever or well-executed a product is, if it isn’t relevant it’s not going anywhere. Novell has some interesting technologies, no doubt about it. But it’s going to take more than boffins and fanboys to turn that into a profit. Now that Novell is no longer the king of the LAN, I think they need to concentrate on smaller, purpose-driven solutions.