Novell’s management has changed from the early days when it flubbed its Unix System Labs and Word Perfect acquisitions, notes Meta Group analyst Earl Perkins. “The team in place now knows that there is too much at stake not to do this one correctly.”
Novell: The New Linux Superpower
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I just hope that they market thier final product correctly to thier target audience, or else alternative OSes to MS Windows will get a bad reputation for lack of support, lack of applications, etc.
They got SuSE, Ximian,and their own Novell product line. The best thing to do is to merge all these into one tight product which can supply the needs of most big companies. SuSE the OS running Ximian’s Gnome with the abilty to use Novell’s tools and product line out the box coupled with either StarOffice or OpenOffice, Mozilla, and Evolution will be a force to be reckoned with. They must speed up the development of Gnome IMHO and get it to the point where most if not all the bugs are worked out and make it feature rich in terms of the control panel options and GUI config, etc… The little things like a menu editor, changing font colors, etc….most not be allowed to become road blocks. They should solve most of these small nagging issues quickly and still keep the over-all Gnome design tight and as close as possiable to the HID protocals.
<quote>The little things like a menu editor, changing font</quote>
my gut feeling is that yr going to be disappointed. novell will probably put most of its effort into trying to stake out some real-estate on the server front (sorry, meant to say “enterprise”… ). obviously a solid gui is important, but i don’t think tweaking it for the nicities you mention are going to get major priority points.
if all they wanted was server/enterprise market… they wouldn’t have bothered acquiring Ximian.
Novell: The New Linux Superpower
Don’t they have to prove themselvs first? Or do they deserve to be #1 based on a press conference and a brand name from a decade ago?
As I was traveling in the local train from the center to out home, we met this guy whom we talked about trends in industry. We started discussing business-to-business solutions based on Internet. I explained him how Novell’s eDirectory can help in B2B applications, and he was amazed. As I saw him amazed, I was cursing Novell and the bat fate (’cause that plays a role, too) that NDS/eDirectory didn’t get much more visibility and fame.
If Linux will be graced by eDirectory’s power in any way, it would make it a 22nd century software. Now, there’s that “if”….
> If Linux will be graced by eDirectory’s power in any way, it would make it a 22nd century software.
Yes if “linux” gets e-directory and not just SuSe. Novell could have owned the net had they opend thier protocols instead everyone used standards. The zealots will have a field day if Novell trys to close ppl out in anyway. Take this quote from the article:
For example, it will not change anything that SuSE is doing, except rethinking distribution of its products on Red Hat after some time period, according to a brief by Aberdeen Group analyst Bill Claybrook. [1]
If Novell thinks vender lockin’s work they’ve got another thing comming. we don’t want SuSe closing things, then Redhat will do them same then whats the point of ‘open standards’ anymore?
[1]Maybe I misuderstood but it seems to me like a “we have it you wont” comment
SuSE is T H E KDE distribution, while Ximian has always been a heavy promoter of Gnome. I wonder how they will integrate the two.
All I can say is, Novell & Co. better not F#*$ this up! I have a lot of respect for SuSE and for their contribution to Linux. They were my main distro until I switch to GNU/Linux Libranet. They HAD the market before Microsoft Windows NT came along and for some odd reason they literally gave it to Microsoft. Than they purchased UNIX (R) and did nothing and sold it the SCO.
Lets hope this time around they learned their lesson and actually market SuSE Linux right and becomes the commercial GNU/Linux of choice.
They HAD the market before Microsoft Windows NT came along and for some odd reason they literally gave it to Microsoft.
This is a common misconception. They had the market more or less even when Windows NT 4 was their primary server OS for a long time. In fact, many went back to Netware after having downgraded to Windows NT 4 due to the incredible bugginess and instability of Microsofts product. They certainly never “gave” the market to Microsoft.
Lets hope this time around they learned their lesson and actually market SuSE Linux right and becomes the commercial GNU/Linux of choice.
And this is EXACTLY what Novell has to do right and is, in many peoples eyes, the reason that Windows was able to displace Netware as the most used Enterprise NOS.
All I can say is, Novell & Co. better not F#*$ this up! I have a lot of respect for SuSE and for their contribution to Linux. They were my main distro until I switch to GNU/Linux Libranet. They HAD the market before Microsoft Windows NT came along and for some odd reason they literally gave it to Microsoft. Than they purchased UNIX (R) and did nothing and sold it the SCO.
I’d say the situation is rather different to the circumstances that stuffed up UNIX. SuSE and Ximian are finished products that only need a small amount of tweaking and integration. The problem with UNIX is that there was ALOT of work that needed to be done and unfortunately at that time Novell was low on money, the losing marketshare so basically they gave up without even punching.
The only problem with Novell is their crappy marketing, however, it is rather humorous to see that the NZ operations have been growing. Maybe they should find out what their NZ operation has been doing that the rest of their business haven’t.
I’ve been in NZ, and noticed that Novell is, in fact, doing fine in the larger enterprises there (can’t name names, as I was on expedition there). I dunno what you kiwis are doing, but it must be something right.
However, I think Novell deserves a little bit of credit, as they did manage to have an overall positive cashflow situation during the downfall. Unlike many other industry-heavy companies (companies that produce for the industry rather than the consumer).
Personally i think it would be a good idea to keep NDS unique to SUSE or Whatever they call it after this. It would make their linux more desirable and foster hefty competition from the other linux distros. It would serve to advance linux beyond the Toy OS standing it has with a lot of IT professionals and bring make NDS a viable option compared to Directory services from Microsoft. Consider me a pessimist but i do not think Novell has what it takes to be competitive they still use the old business model that Oracle uses.
SuSE is T H E KDE distribution, while Ximian has always been a heavy promoter of Gnome. I wonder how they will integrate the two.
SUSE is more than a desktop, Its a distribution with netotk tools, firewall, etc.
When Novell supports Linux, they are right when they have you use SUSE when using it specifically for their Novell services. This will make it much easier to support their product. We are talking SERVER and SERVICES.
It would make no sense for Novell to insist on SUSE, as they already support Red Hat as well. For clients ei desktops that would be different again.
When I read the papers on the Novell site, I get the distinct impression that prices are for the support of Linux servers. The price that is mentioned does make little sense for desktops. The problem that I think Novell needs to address is how to support Linux desktops cost effectively.
Another thing they may want to adress is how they are going to integrate GRID technology; SUSE does already support this. It will be interesting to see if and when Novell starts to move into this direction. It will be one technology where I think Linux systems will be having a big advantage over Windows systems.
Thanks,
Gerard
to develop SUSE as a Novell server solution and to integrate all the connectivity tools into Ximian Gnome so that companies can run any Linux distribution on their desktops and buy Ximian for the interface which gives them a well integrated workstation with all the connectivity tools needed to log into groupwise and eDirectory built right in. it will give a sense of integration that was never possible before and allow Novell to support any Linux Distribution that can run Ximian Desktop.
lets just hope that Novell makes connecting to other servers easy so that a company does not need to choose Novell or nothing.
lets just hope that Novell makes connecting to other servers easy so that a company does not need to choose Novell or nothing.
Novell has been excellent at interoperability. Too good for it’s own good, in fact. NetWare offers name spaces for WindowsNT/Win2k, Mac, UNIX, OS/2. NetWare supports IP, IPX and a host of other network protocols. It used to support even AppleTalk and DECnet! (DECnet might sitll be supported). It also supports that IBM mainframe-specific network transport whose name right now escapes me.
Novell provided clients for Windows 3.1, OS/2, Win95 and WinNT. MacOS was supported, too.
Connectivity with UNIX systems has been around as long as NetWare 3.x, which means, more than a decade, in the form of NFS, HTTP, DNS, DHCP and other IP-based services. Now the IP interation is much stronger, as ALL NetWare-provided services run both on IPX and IP.
Finally, eDirectory is ported to WindowsNT, Windows2k, Solaris, Linux and of course, NetWare. There has been also an AIX port, dunno what happened with that. Of course, eDirectory is fully LDAP compatible.
Novell has always endorsed open standards and interoperability. In this sense it has been and it remains the exact opposite of Microsoft. In hindsight, I am not sure it paid off. That’s the world we live in, unfortunately….
Don’t they have to prove themselves first?
No they do not, SuSE already did that. I suspect the same development teams will still be workign on it, i think the concern is they manage its developement and marketing properly. I think the lack of specific goal is troubling as well.
… with no multimeida support (aka Red Hat).
We already know Noorda didn’t know what he was doing, the question is does Messman?
MP#, etc is not too important on a Business Desktop.
I do wish that this artificial concept of ‘Desktop’ computing would go away! There are many classes of computer workstations – if you look at the problem in the light of being many sub-markets within the scope of computers people sit at and work at then it becomes clear that a single classification of one size fits all computing is a fabercation generated by a monopoly. When seen in this light it is clear that Linux IS READY for large segments of the so called ‘Desktop’ market. See high end 3D and movie production for an example of my point.
Apple should license eDirectory from Novell. Right now, (not a troll) the macintosh is the only commercial viable desktop besides Windows. It would really help them I think. Apple also needs some help with their server software. All of these companies should team up in order to survive againced MS.
Actually, Linux is a very viable commercial desktop. They’r easy to administer in large numbers, and its UI and software suite is entirely sufficient for many office workers. A lot of major Linux desktop deployments (government of Germany, etc) were in these situations.
I mean Sun has their own Linux Distro based on Gnome, they have their own Office Suite, and had they picked up Ximian they would get Evolution and a suped up Gnome desktop to add to what they have now. Novell were played their cards well in this case because they have SuSE, Ximian, and WordPerfect which if they fix it up, update it and provide a native Linux port will kick some serious arse. I know of some law offices that still use WordPerfect 5.1 with DOS !
You can’t just buy your way into the Linux Community. Novell will not be considered a viable member of the Open Source community until it contributes something other than a “name” and money.
Linux and BSD have done just fine with out the backing of capitalists. To me thats all the Novell buy outis..a way to save a floundering business by purchasing one of more reknown OS’s on the cutting edge.
-J
GNU Slack or Debian….any questions?
I use SuSE, but I lie KDE, Gnome is ugly I saw there desktop on the Ximian site. I hope we still have the choice to use KDE in future releases.
Novell was always a dull, staid company that bored the hell out of everyone. No frisbees in the corridors in Utah.
Once they gushed hubris because their engineers did a decent job of hacking a DOS-based server platform and an X.500 directory. As the money rolled in for a few years, they thought the world of PC innovation was at it’s apogee and they went to sleep. One day they woke up and discovered that the world had passed THEM by and they’ve been living off their ever-diminishing client base and loyal Netware engineers since then.
Trust me, they’ll screw this up. Completely. Here’s why: they think that former Netware guys (like myself) will come back to the fold when the greedy morons who run my company start asking about Linux. The plan is to get Novell back into the corporate data centers and regional sites as a stealth product. The imaginary scenario:
Pointy-haired Management says: “What about this Linux I’m hearing about so much? It’s cheaper than Solaris and Windows isn’t it? We should be using it. I can still use Outlook, right?”
Obsequious IT managers: “Sure it works great. Outlook, no problem. We’ll deploy it company-wide starting tomorrow.”
Obsequious IT managers, (who all cut their eye-teeth in the pre-4.xx Netware environment) call Netware and order billions of dollars of Novell/Suse products.
Here’s the real world:
Pointy-haired Management says: “What about this Linux I’m hearing about so much? It’s cheaper than Solaris and Windows isn’t it? It’s about time we started saving money from using computers. Then we can cut back our IT staff another 50% and my stock options will be worth another $20 million. I can still use Outlook, right?”
Horrified IT management: “No Linux doesn’t save money. And in our opinion it isn’t ready for general desktop use: there are just too many problems with Outlook and MS Office migration & compatibility. It just offers a flexible, better alternative to locking ourselves into Redmond’s empire. After we re-train all our junior IT staff, we’ll ease it into the server room to replace our aging Solaris equipment. Those flaky intranet servers are on the top of the list. We can even experiment with Suse desktops in the IT and engineering departments. And we already have a proposal for deploying it in the support centre with that new ticket system. Oh and by the way, Novell just bought Suse and they offer pretty good support.”
Not so-stupid management, after all: “Novell???!!! I thought they went out of business. I thought they were dead. Isn’t that what you guys told me when we spent $5 million getting rid of all their stuff 3 years ago? Didn’t you guys waste months arguing about Zenworks and SMS and NDS and Active Directory. (jeez, how did he know about that?) Why do you want to bring them back? I’m not going to stake this company’s fortunes on a has-been outfit.”
Whoops.
And so on. Good luck, Novell. There is no way your name will be mentioned at my company again. We’ll go with RedHat, or find the money to do what we can in-house.
Since we are on the NOVELL topic here is something interesting:
A REPORT ON COLOMBIAN site Evaluamos claims that IBM may buy Novell within a month.
The Spanish language site says that sources close to IBM claim such a deal is on the cards, following Novell’s purchase…
link: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=12689
One would guess Novell is going to kill SUSE’s support of KDE. That will weaken the Linux market overall.
And the companies that liked dealing with SUSE… a fine European company… are going to HATE dealing with Novell… one of the worst managed “dumb American” companies in the history of software.
All in all, the Novell acquisition does not look good.
“Actually, Linux is a very viable commercial desktop. They’r easy to administer in large numbers..”
Lets say I wnat to limit my telemarketing dept. to access to 10 certain websites during working hours but during lunch it is ok for them to go to a anywhere except certain websites that I have filtered out and I reproduce this type of scenario across my company based on dept. How easy would this be on Linux?
If I have Open Office installed and somehow some of the program files get corrupted will iy in re-install automatically without mine or the users intervention?
How hard is it to enforce a company approved wallpaper mangement decides on and then change that wallpaper the next week when they change thier minds?
Lets say I wnat to limit my telemarketing dept.. How easy would this be on Linux?
>>>>>>>>>>
Extremely. If you’re a mildy competent UNIX admin, its a simple matter of setting up the packet filter to whitelist or blacklist traffic from certain sites. You might need a simple cronjob to switch scripts at different times of day. There are also simple internet filtering programs along the lines of those available for Windows.
If I have Open Office installed and somehow some of the program files get corrupted will iy in re-install automatically without mine or the users intervention?
>>>>>>>>>
That’s not possible. Executables in shared directories on a UNIX machine are not writable unless you’re the root user. So the only way you’d get a corrupted executable is from disk errors. At that point, you don’t want a reinstall, but a disk replacement! But let’s speak hypothetically. Then, auto-reinstalling corrupted software is a simple matter of a cron-job that checks the MD5 hashes of the binary against known-good MD5 hashes. If a discrepency is detected, you can have the package manager uninstall then reinstall the program. You can even go beyond that. Set up a local APT or YUM repository from which all the clients update their software periodically. Then, software upgrades become a matter of just throughly testing a package, and pushing it into the repository when you deem it stable enough. Or, you could go the whole nine yards and just mount /usr on an NFS partition.
How hard is it to enforce a company approved wallpaper mangement decides on and then change that wallpaper the next week when they change thier minds?
>>>>>>>>>>>>
For GNOME: See the GNOME administrator’s guide, chapter 1. It shows you how to lock down gconf settings.
For KDE: For KDE, see the documentation about the Kiosk Mode, which is designed for precisely this purpose.
I have to agree witht he general comments here, after attempting to build a Novell solution at my last company.
Novell has serious problems, one not mentioned though is the fact that the company has no experience with Open Source software.
I would think, that a company that can’t turn a dime now, isn’t going to do so fooling around with Open Source products.
I make that assertion based on all the clueless corporate types I call on a daily basis that don’t want anything to do with Linux.
The US is WAY behind the rest of the world in open source adoption.
Most IT managers in the US don’t have a clue if they can’t see a pretty screen with buttons to push or a setup icon to click on, they can’t do much.
Which pretty much describes 90% of the people I talk to.
What does this all mean? Well, it means for a long time to come, it is going to be very hard for companies to adopt Linux with push button idiots in IT.
No wonder IT is artficially high priced in the US today, and corporate executives are looking to push as many IT functions as possible over seas….
Were the growing number of Penguins blows the mind.
-gc
I’ve been in NZ, and noticed that Novell is, in fact, doing fine in the larger enterprises there (can’t name names, as I was on expedition there). I dunno what you kiwis are doing, but it must be something right.
IIRC IRD (Inland Revenue Department) still uses Novell and for their website front end they use Linux and Solaris ( http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.ird.govt.nz ).
Although Microsoft does have a decent slice of the market, many businesses are very reluctant to move away from “old fashion” reliable solutions. WINZ (Work and Income New Zealand) are still using mainframes. The choice of using a mainframe has nothing to do with legacy support as the software they’re using now was a completely new, custom written package specifically for them.
The one thing I have to say is that it is rather humorous to see that companies have learnt nothing from the NT migration debacle. They were promised “stability”, they replaced their reliable UNIX servers and mainframes only to find that NT performed WORSE. Here we are, 2003, and people are making the same mistake about Windows 2003. No lessons have been learnt. I would just love to know the rationale used by some of these so-called “IT Experts” who make such glaringly obvious stupid decisions.
Novell has a long and sordid history of ruining product lines and enraging customers, and whether or not they have new management many of us would make them our last choice even if we were to implement Linux.
Their documentation was the worst, you couldn’t even call them for support unless you were vested in their certification program. Most amazing of all, they were even worse than Microsoft about releasing buggy products way behind schedule.
Putting their past problems aside and assuming they can somehow miraculously remake themselves, not only are old customers like myself not going to be interested in their product, many of the international Linux diehards will instantly put them on the “American Capitalists” hitlist, and renounce them similar to what has recently happened with Red Hat.
Novell will find their target market has very tight wallets, and selling their new services such as Linux Red Carpet at $200 per client a very tough sell.
Dude you have no creditablity here on OSNews. Don’t waste your time trying to troll here again.
I’m not here to seek approval from any open source geek cults that may disagree with my points. I represent the position of many in upper-level IT management who instantly see through a lot of the false promises of open source and also have a great deal of experience and understanding of the industry at large. If you care to disagree with my comments go right ahead. But it’s not surprising you didn’t because there is little to dispute that Novell is a company with a long troubled history, and there are many outstanding biases against them that aren’t about to go away.
Just go back to /. where you belong TopTroll.
Not sure why people are attacking this guy. Personally I think that the idea “Novell will have a hard sell” is neither trolling nor wrong. Novell has lost much of their momentum to MS, and among people who used both Server products the ease of use with MS is palpable. (Notice I said “ease”, not security, which is a different issue.)
Novell has not had a good reputation since the days of Windows for Workgroups – their product line is solid but their marketing is horrible and their support was worse than average. To suggest that they will have a “hard sell” is not trolling at all.
Seems that on OSNews if you disagree with the large percentage of OSS-only advocates that read it religiously you are a “troll”.
Novell’s documentation, for all products, has been better than anyone’s. Both electronic, support docs and manuals, periodicals, everything is searchable in a miningful way. I have worked for years using Novell’s online and paper docs, plus their CD support tools (before they put those online, as well). Compared to Microsoft or IBM, it was a pleasure to use.
Calling support? Of course you can, if you have a support contract of any type, you are entitled to phone support. Again, you’re throwing random lies.
Finally, I knew very few unhappy Novell customers, in contrast with the many more unhappy Microsoft customers. Novell products have been easy to support and brought real value to any corporate network.