Novell Inc. is wagering that it can hang onto its much-diminished installed base while attracting new users by offering enterprises a set of network services that’s broad and well-integrated and keeps customer options open by embracing open-source components. Read the article at eWeek.
Novell Bets on Net Services
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Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Novell’s Secure Identity Management (NSURE), iChain, DirXML, and eDir… are the only enterprise worthy solutions on the market. 1 billion plus users on eDir and corporations are just starting to learn about SIM. Only pure M$ shops would even consider waiting for there garbage. IBM is the only company that has a full suite of SIM but it lacks integration and is 10 times the cost. Check Gartner research reports…
eDir, iChain, and DirXML are awesome products, no doubt.
NetWare is still an awesome NOS also though, getting better all the time. GroupWise is a kick-ass groupware app too.
BorderManager is a great product for some things, also – I very much love the caching proxy, access controls, packet filtering and site-to-site VPN. The client-to-site needs fixing though, which they are promising in 3.8 – guess we’ll see…
ZENWorks is _THE BOMB_ there is no better way to manage large amounts of desktops and servers. This is the best product they have next to eDir I think.
Overall I think that they have a great vision – if they truly come through with their Linux integration plans, and expound on them to include the BSD’s, they will have a winning formula.
Novell has been wagering they could save their butt by offering enterprise network services for the last three or four years.
Novell has some great products, but they can’t seem to market any of them. If they want to cobble together a strategy to stay afloat, they should do it in the marketing department.