Novell’s acquisition of open-source start-up Ximian almost a year ago marked a turning point for the networking giant. Losing out to Microsoft in the struggle for domination of the network operating-system market precipitated a downward slide that saw the company pushed to the peripheries of directory and security software. Read the interview at ZDNet.
Novell: Fighting Microsoft’s FUD machine
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Eugenia Loli
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Their desktop strategy seems to be laid out clearly. Show everyone first hand that linux/openoffice can be used as a viable business desktop environment.
The one things I’m still not clear on are the backend services such as Netware and Groupwise. I’ve only read that they plan to use linux, and that is the extent of what I have read.
Quoting from article:
“Once we have broken the Microsoft Office dependency than breaking the operating-system dependency is trivial.”
That in itself is a task of monumental proportions. Best of luck to them, they’re going to need it.
But you’re taking that out of context. That’s refering to switching over all of Novell’s employees to Linux desktops by switching them over to Open Office on Windows first. I have no doubt that this will be a sucess.
We know that these are going into shops that support Microsoft, so that means supporting Microsoft file formats, being able to talk to Exchange server — which we do with Evolution. We are also integrating with all of Novell’s back-end services such as GroupWise and iFolder.
Will it be able to sync mail, contacts, etc on a PocketPC?
‘Quoting from article:
“Once we have broken the Microsoft Office dependency than breaking the operating-system dependency is trivial.”
That in itself is a task of monumental proportions. Best of luck to them, they’re going to need it.‘
I think that was pretty much his point, that the hardest part of migration to Linux (for most businesses) is that you can’t use MS Office, and once you get past that, the rest is (at least relatively) trivial. And I think it is a terrific point- that the issues you confront when migrating from Windows to Linux is largely not an issue of the operating system (anymore), it’s an issue of the applications. (which we all know)
However, I think this goal is very close to being met. OpenOffice+Evolution+Exchange-Connector is starting to be a pretty good match against MS Office, and with Novel (and all their recent aquisitions) hell-bent on achieving this, I think we should be seeing some (relatively) quick progress.
OpenOffice is good, but it’s slow, doesn’t integrate with anything else (GUI widgets, fonts, ‘object’ cut n paste,browser/email) on the platform, and fixing it is probably more difficult than replacing it – the best thing to do is provide a specification for how openoffice should integrate into he Novell desktop and tell them if they want it on the platform, to follow those specs.
In the interim, abiword, gnumeric, gimp, inkscape, evolution, epiphany, totem and gaim should all be polished up by Ximian/Novell and integrated into a complete and seamless HIG-compliant GNOME desktop.
That means nautilus-based file-pickers, full object-based cut n paste and drag n drop between all the apps, unified and centralised preferences, seamless support for USB/Firewire peripherals and a simple way to upgrade the whole package on a regular basis.
Alternatively, use KDE and the KDE equivalents to those apps mentioned – it doesnt really matter what its based on if it looks, feels and works wonderfully.
Also, dont ship it with showstopper bugs, don’t ship it with broken functionality, and don’t ship it until it is as seamless and polished as you can possibly make it.
Anything less than that, and I will stick to MacOS X – because Apple actually do walk the walk with regard to UI and application excellence, or i’ll stick to my hand-hacked Fedora and Slackware installs, since theres no way i want to trade in my flexibility and tweakability for an unfinished embarrassment like Sun’s JDS.
I believe this can already be done with multisync and the correct plugins for Evolution. I haven’t worked on getting it up and running yet, though.
Don’t kid yourself, their intentions are not pure. Netware has lost the battle to Windows, so in order to keep people interested in the rest of the Novell product line, they have ported everything to Linux, and went as far as to purchase SuSE so that they would still have an NOS to distribute. The fact that it can be used as a desktop OS is a bonus to them. I just don’t see them open sourcing anything they had before purchasing Ximian or SuSE.
That in itself is a task of monumental proportions. Best of luck to them, they’re going to need it.’
“I think that was pretty much his point, that the hardest part of migration to Linux (for most businesses) is that you can’t use MS Office, and once you get past that, the rest is (at least relatively) trivial. And I think it is a terrific point- that the issues you confront when migrating from Windows to Linux is largely not an issue of the operating system (anymore), it’s an issue of the applications. (which we all know”
Exactly… And it’s the point most fail to fully understand. Switching operating systems is not tough. Migrating applications and related items can be like locating a bee’s nuts.
Attempting to switch a MS shop who has used the entire MS Office Suite for the past 10 years is nothing to sneeze at.
The volume of achived documents which would eventually need to be converted to the new format; could boggle the best of minds.(and create a new conversion dept.)
I remember the MS Office discussion in our office a number of years ago. We were changing to MS Office 97 from Corel. We tried a multitude of converters, tried saving as another file format, etc. The secretaries ended up having to reengineer most of their documents because they couldn’t get the formatting to cross over. I’m all for using OOo in our office. I use it already. But I need good converters. Once I have software that will convert almost anything I can make the arguement, but most of those secretaries are still around… and they remember the mess. It’s not just the old documents that need to be moved over, but any weird formating on new documents coming to them as well.
end rabbit trail.
Novell’s acquisition of open-source start-up Ximian almost a year ago marked a turning point for the networking giant.
Novell’s acquisition of Enterprize Linux company Suse almost a year ago marked a turning point for the networking giant.
Please don’t kid yourselves. Suse is the Enterprize Linux Division of Novell, servers are Novell’s core business, and whatever they say they are replacing Netware with Linux. Whatever anyone said about Ximian and Suse at the time, Suse is the real deal for Novell. Suse have expertise and proper product lines of their own that they cannot walk away from – even if they wanted to. Guess which deal was subject to fifty million dollars of funding from IBM?
Suse is a highly important part of Novell in moving to Linux because they are basically betting their survival on it – and they’re betting their core money-making business at that. They are not betting their future on a loss-making company, once awash with VC funding that never had any chance of making it independently. Desktops are an interesting future, yes, but it all starts with Novell’s existing server OS strategy and the porting of all of their product lines to Linux.
It was our choice to do it. We had independent secure financing from VCs so we weren’t at any risk of not getting venture funding and we has also talked to a number of companies about potentially partnering.
I’m afraid it wasn’t your decision. The VCs knew that they weren’t going to get any return so they pushed for a buyout. I find it absolutely bizarre that he talks about secure financing from VCs as some sort of revenue.
We all agreed we needed a distribution so even before Ximian was acquired it was on the table that we would have to go to the next step and buy SuSE.
LOL!! He makes it sound as if Ximian was actually part of (or even completely behind) the decision-making process to buy Suse.
It is strange in that David Patrick seems to be trying to sell Ximian to Novell more than anyone else. I’m afraid this is yet more PR from the Ximian guys shooting above their station.
“Don’t kid yourself, their intentions are not pure. Netware has lost the battle to Windows, so in order to keep people interested in the rest of the Novell product line, they have ported everything to Linux, and went as far as to purchase SuSE so that they would still have an NOS to distribute. The fact that it can be used as a desktop OS is a bonus to them. I just don’t see them open sourcing anything they had before purchasing Ximian or SuSE.”
Novell’s only intent is to get even with Microsoft for killing and grilling their golden goose,(netware) and raiding them for their best and brightest employees. You might be surprised at what they might do to achieve that goal.
Novell is a really odd duck in many ways. I would have placed a bet five years ago they would have been bankrupt, busted, and long gone at this point.(came close)
Perhaps they will return to the Novell of old.(long odds)
Market need dictates the process of switching, migration, and progression. Beyond the marketing FUD, the “market” is saying there is a need for GNU/Linux, open-source alternatives, and services to support it.
Switching from the “other platform” to GNU/Linux is a breeze. I have been free from the “other platform” and driving GNU/Linux since October 2003 with zero regrets. My documents all converted into Open Office with little issue. I had to adjust a few fonts. A little Migration from one platform to a better one, like GNU/Linux, is happening now, not later, in both the private and public marketplace.
Troy
“Switching from the “other platform” to GNU/Linux is a breeze.”
It sure is on ONE system.
Try it on an enterprise scale sometime, your opinion will change greatly.
much of the difficulty getting zealots like me on your side is to show that you support the ideology of Linux, not just contribute to it. IBM, SGI and Novell, from what I have read, seem to be good supporters of Linux AND its ideology, whether they agree with it or not. That ideology is not anti-capitalist, but I am, in the same way Herbert Hoover was. So its important to make that distinction. But as long as you care, through your actions, about your customers, your products and your employees you’ll never have to worry about me attacking your ogranization rhetorically.
In fact I’ll probably stop posting this rhetorical nonsense in a few months when I’m sure the path to the future is OPEN. Because, like you, I also care about my job and my career and the careers of my friends and family. And I have experienced first hand the consequences of NDAs, proprietary software and closed standards in every sector of computer science. My love is the science and the freedom that this country and these companies once stood for. I pray that we will eventually stand for that once again, by choosing it with our own free will.
“IBM, SGI and Novell, from what I have read, seem to be good supporters of Linux AND its ideology”
With regards to IBM and Novell, I would have to say I disagree with you. Both of these companies only support the use of Linux because it hurts Microsoft and both of these companies have a vast set of products that they SELL that run on Linux. IBM doesn’t give away Lotus Notes, WebSphere, DB2, etc… and Novell doesn’t give away ZenWorks, GroupWise, BorderManager, etc… and I don’t see them open sourcing any of these products any time soon.
Don’t kid yourself, their intentions are not pure. Netware has lost the battle to Windows, so in order to keep people interested in the rest of the Novell product line, they have ported everything to Linux, and went as far as to purchase SuSE so that they would still have an NOS to distribute. The fact that it can be used as a desktop OS is a bonus to them. I just don’t see them open sourcing anything they had before purchasing Ximian or SuSE.
Of course they’re not pure. That’s why they are in the business to make money. The whole reason they’re gunning for Linux is just to get the name recognition back on their side. NT didn’t beat out Netware because it was a better server OS, it beat it because it was a Microsoft product. It had the “buzz”. Didn’t active directory finally catch up to where NDS was in 1994?
And besides, how do you define NOS these days anyway? Anything short of DOS could be used as a NOS in one way or another. Every ‘popular’ OS that has been made in the past five to ten years has a web server product for it. Even windows 95 had PWS, file and print sharing. And if I’m not mistaken, Novell is still selling Netware, and still developing it.
I know they are in business to make money and that is just fine with me, but they are suddenly getting a pass with the open source community because they bought Ximian and SUSE. Again it doesn’t really matter to me, but people shouldn’t just assume that they are going to eventually give the farm away.
AD is just now where the first version of NDS was and NDS is a great directory server. As for defining a NOS, I would say Netware is still an NOS, but you are right, the whole distinction is now hazy, but there are still OSes better suited to run as servers and others as desktops.
As for Netware, they are still developing it, but when Netware 7 comes out you will be able to choose if you want to use the Netware kernel or a Linux kernel, at least that is my understanding. Eventually they will scrap the Netware kernel and continue to develop file and print services on the Linux kernel only.
I have championed Novell for years and have administered their products for 10 years. Today I support servers running Netware 6, Linux, Windows 2000 & 2003, OSX, FreeBSD, and Solaris. Out of all of these different servers I have the most stability issues with the Netware servers, this did not always use to be the case, but it is today and it is unfortunate. We are also starting to run into a lot of cases where we can no longer find vendors that have Netware listed on their supported OS list. This was why Novell bought SUSE in the first place.
Well, maybe – obviously Microsoft has never done anything about security (at least until XP Service Pack 2) and if it wasn’t for Active Directory – which has been considered inferior to Novell’s NDS – would Windows 2000 Server have gone anywhere?
So I’d say Novell still beats Microsoft in those areas – and now they’ve got an OS that can beat Microsoft everywhere else.
“Well, maybe – obviously Microsoft has never done anything about security (at least until XP Service Pack 2) and if it wasn’t for Active Directory – which has been considered inferior to Novell’s NDS – would Windows 2000 Server have gone anywhere?”
I’ve used both AD and NDS extensively. I would have once agreed with you about AD being the weaker sister.
Those days are long ago gone for me. AD as it stands today is a much richer platform.
Active Directory is what keeps and will continue to keep a ton of people from jumping on the Linux bandwagon.
I just installed Suse 91. Standard yesterday, and love it. My only complaint is that the scroll wheel on my mouse does not work. I’ve heard that I need to change a few options in a text file. Does anyone know what I have to change/add/remove ?
Thanks in advance. Any help is greatly appreciated.
“Linux isn’t for idiots. RTFM.”
God, get a life. Instead of telling someone to RTFM why dont you give them a little help or just STFU. Dont be a duche.
Make sure that:
Option “Emulate3Buttons” “true”
Option “ZAxisMapping” “4 5”
are in your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4
At least they haven’t attacked Linux like Sun and Microsoft.
But I don’t expect IBM and Novell to give away their closed source products. That doesn’t make them the best contributor to free software, IMO. What does is how they take the free software products they have and work on them and release the code for other like-minded individuals and corps to work competitive to improve all the products we have to use. Apple is an excellent example of how corps can use FOSS and improve it while they benefit from its use.
These things take time. But eventually I believe IBM and Novell will release more software when it becomes less profitable for them to keep it closed or continue to pay to develope it.
FOSS will compete with all closed software, that is its nature. But as long as they don’t pay companies like SCO to attack it directly or make retarded statements in the press that give it a bad image (worse than the image my existence and comments gives it) then I won’t attack them for using and contributing to this code. In fact I applaud their open-minded efforts and pray they will work for the good of everyone including the industry as a whole.
Divide and conqueror or embrace and extend. I don’t see how it can be any other way in capitalism. But you got to admit that the media’s dotcomcrash impacted the financial capabilities of many corporations and put a lot of people out of work. Or maybe we really were making stupid websites and developing stupid technology. But does any of that make a good excuse for the devestating economic consequences of our ignorant (I hope) actions?
I actually agree with a lot of what both oicGracchus and Ian say, but my reasons for not being too optimistic about Novell/Suse is a bit different.
Novell/Netware lost its dominant position to MS, partly because of MS’s “buzz” but also in part because their field force were a bit too arrogant.
I have been a supporter of their eDirectory products and DirXML line of products in my business and generally support what Novell corporate says, but do get discouraged sometimes because of two issues.
One, as oicGracchus mentioned, their QA has been lacking and support slow (especially if you work with a non-U.S. subsidiary of theirs). Two, their sales people are not “selling” but “waiting”.
I can feel the marketing and corporate strategy people trying hard to make Novell a relevant company again, whether by getting good products in their line up or by trying to ride the Linux wave, but the field is just too contaminated with people who still think that Novell is in its glory and customers will come to them (like when Netware was the only real viable choice).
No matter how good a product Suse Linux or Ximian connect or iChain or eDirectory (which already runs on Linux BTW) may be, they will have a difficult time convincing the market until they have a company wide “underdog mentality” in place.
Just my 2 cents.
A typical supporter of OSS supports development of several FLOSS projects. It is not mandatory that all the software he/she owns becomes OSI open source. The open source ideology never aimed at that.
It is the free software ideology, and the FSF, who aim at that. And all of the big players keep some parts of their software closed source to make sure their support + total end solution business have unique features.
This is different from ie. Microsoft because Microsoft depends on almost only proprietary software and Microsoft doesn’t have any significant, active number of developers on any FLOSS project. Ofcourse that installer they put under the CPL can now be put as a counter-argument, but it is far from significant.
Active Directory did’nt make it’s debut until around 2000.
NT DID NOT support AD. AD was first availible in Win2k.
NDS/eDirectory was available as early as Netware 4 (possibly earlier.
And whoever made the comment about being suprised Novell did not go bankrupt; why exactly are you suprised. Novell has more than a few customers that pretty much run nothing but netware for their “enterprises”, namely CNN, and the Navy just to name a few.
The comment about Novell ditching the Netware Kernel? Give me a break. Why would anyone who really knows what they are doing willingly swap the netware kernel for the linux kernel to do a job that netware was optimized for?
Choose the best tool availible for the job at hand, not the one that sounds the coolest.
“And whoever made the comment about being suprised Novell did not go bankrupt; why exactly are you suprised. Novell has more than a few customers that pretty much run nothing but netware for their “enterprises”, namely CNN, and the Navy just to name a few.”
When you consider their stock value was near 50.00 per share in 1999, and plunged to well under 3.00 at one point it’s not exactly a sign of good things happening. Even at the current level of around 9.00 they are a ghost of what they once were.
Source: http://quote.morningstar.com/quote.html?hsection=&ticker=NOVL&TimeF…
Sure there a many who still run Netware, but their market share is mighty damn small compared to what it was in the mid-90’s.(insert whatever inflated percentage here)
Wow your stupid!
MS went from $60 to $27
SUN went from $40 to $4
AMD went from $50 to $15
Maybe you were in coma when the tech bubble burst?
Are they all in serious trouble? The stock price is not an indicator of the health of a company. Hell SCOX stock is worth more than SUN right now!
The comment about Novell ditching the Netware Kernel? Give me a break. Why would anyone who really knows what they are doing willingly swap the netware kernel for the linux kernel to do a job that netware was optimized for?
My guess would be that the Linux Kernel is in constant development, with plenty of support. While technically the Netware Microkernel is probably better suited for Netware, you aren’t going to find too many 3rd parties developing for it.