Rat speaks his mind on mental state of ardent Novell faithful in Utah
Packet Rat R. Fink Rat speaks his mind on mental state of ardent Novell faithful in Utah Once again it was time for the Rat to live high on the old per diem, and where better than Salt Lake City? Well, maybe there are better places, but the cyberrodent had skipped Novell Inc.'s annual BrainShare conference for too many years.
Packet Rat Once again it was time for the Rat to live high on the old per diem, and where better Well, maybe there are better places, but the cyberrodent had skipped Novell Inc.s NetWare has always been dear to his heart. Didnt the ratlings cut their teeth on Nowadays, Maybe I should bring extra, the Rat mused, just in case theres Ray Noordas old shop does have some mental energy left, though. NetWare 5 is a Novell has bought into Javano surprise considering that former Sunster Eric But it appears that some of Novells customers have dug in their heels and are You just cannot drag some folks away from bindery emulation, the Rat So, as Schmidt tries to prod the Novell faithful into the brave new world of Java, Lotus Development Corp. faced the same thing with cc:Mail as it triedand is still Novell has foot-draggers not only among GroupWise 4.x and WordPerfect Office users, but Novell has succeeded to some degree in winning the enterprise directory war in terms of Sure, NetWare 5 comes with Oracle8 and Netscapes FastTrack Web Hes managing to do with Linux almost everything he used to do with his boxes The Packet Rat once managed networks but now spends his time ferreting out bad packets
R. Fink
Rat speaks his mind on mental state of ardent Novell faithful in Utah
than Salt Lake City?
annual BrainShare conference for too many years.
old NetWare installation diskettes? Isnt the Rats broken desk still propped up
by ancient study guides from his Certified NetWare Engineer exam? But everyone knows what
rats do on sinking ships.
the trim of Novells ship of commerce seems to be improving, and it may even be
building up some steam. Even so, the Rat prepared to hop on a fast pipe to Utah without
expecting to find many brains to share at BrainShare.
not enough to go around.
tempting package. The Rat hears that Novell has several other new things up its
sleevefor instance, an Internet appliance developed jointly with Compaq Computer
Corp. and using Digital Me privacy protection software.
Schmidt is running the store in Orem, Utah, these days.
refusing to go gently to NetWare 5. Thats the only explanation the Rat can come up
with for NetWare 4.2, a continuation of the classic network operating system.
reflects.
Internet solutions and standards-based networking, the cyberrodent wonders whether the
customer base will hang on like grim death to what it already hasa common fate for
popular legacy products.
tryingto corral users for Notes and Domino. Santa Cruz Operation Inc. has the same
situation with its OpenServer Unix line, as it throws development efforts behind UnixWare.
also among a vast array of other users, including some in the government who still run
NetWare 2.x. Thats right. Not 4.x, not 3.x, but 2.x. Talk about legacies.
mind sharenot too hard a task, considering that Microsoft Corp. still has not
fielded the first generation of its Active Directory. But Novell lacks the manic
community of developers that Microsoft has bought and paid for. Novell and its ally,
Netscape Communications Corp., need to face up to the fact that its not just a
two-horse race with Microsoft anymore.
server, mutters the Rat, but so what?
under NetWare. In fact, theyre pretty much the same old boxes that used to run
NetWare 3.x, but theyre on the bleeding edge because they run Linux now.
in cyberspace. E-mail him at rat@gcn.com.