Novell's Race Against Time 381
DiamondGeezer writes "The Guardian newspaper in the UK reports in 'It's a race against time' that Novell is on a knife-edge financially and competitively, having placed a huge one-way bet in the success of its Linux strategy. But there's no guarantee of success: its revenue from Linux licensing is puny, and it faces a crowded market of Linux distros. Novell may be getting some positive press now that it's gone full tilt for Linux, but let's remember the reasons why: because of mis-steps of its previous management (especially the disastrous acquisition of WordPerfect in the mid 1990s) and its failure to grow its Netware business (with more than a little help from Microsoft), it's now having to re-engineer itself for Linux."
Questions on viability of NLD (Score:5, Interesting)
If so, what can the average Linux user do to help (besides switching to Novell Linux Desktop (NLD) or becoming a shill?)
If not, why not?
What Novell should do. (Score:3, Interesting)
Novel's Netware failure is their own fault... (Score:4, Interesting)
I must admit that it was very early in my IT career that I made this switch. Perhaps my inexperience in Netware had something to do with my opinion of it.
IBM buy-out? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is Utah (Score:5, Interesting)
Disastrous acquisition of WordPerfect? (Score:4, Interesting)
Supporrting Companies with OSS Strategies (Score:2, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Good for Apple (Score:2, Interesting)
other options (Score:5, Interesting)
http://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=NOVL&annual [yahoo.com]
While their installed base is certainly not what it once was, they have a solid reputation, still significant installed base, and from what I remember, a decent size pile of cash (771,844 at last quarterly report) to fall back on.
In other words, exactly where SCO might have been if they had not made a different sort of bet. (i.e. running a business of making products, selling support and consulting services, etc. Not to start an SCO love fest, but once upon a time they were a well regarded company).
Wordperfect (Score:3, Interesting)
the winning paradigm has yet to appear. (Score:2, Interesting)
best buy ? nope.
frys ? nope.
barnes and noble ? nope.
office depot ? nope.
clearly I am of the opinion that linux can move forward best and fastest via low cost, impulse buy at major retailers.
novell (or?) should attempt this.
FUD (Score:2, Interesting)
One more item for thought: IBM is heavily invested in Novell. I can guarantee you, Novell is going nowhere but forward until/unless IBM gives up on Linux and Open Source technology -- and there's no evidence of this even remotely happening.
Until Microsoft proves it can compete on price and quality, instead of paid "studies" and fabricated "exposes" of competitors, readers would be best advised to avoid their products like the plague.
Was buying Ximian such a great idea? (Score:3, Interesting)
All the stuff that will actually increase sales is based on Suse (clustering, Xen, etc...).
Why didn't they try to buy Trolltech instead of Ximian.
I just don't see how Mono is going to help the bottom line in the near term.
Heck, I would've have bought Trolltech, and slapped some proprietary apps into Suse. There's got to be a competitive advantage somewhere, and I don't know how just services is going to give them that.
Suse was already pretty much a KDE distro, and buying Trolltech would have given them two things.
(1) The ability to change the Qt license to a more liberal one.
(2) Bring in the talent of Trolltech that is already accustomed to working with Suse.
KDE/QT still has a superior framework to Gnome/Gtk+, but frankly I see the Qt license being the one showstopper that will push Gnome/Gtk+ into the "standard" desktop category, once Linux on the desktop actually matters.
Troll here often? (Score:5, Interesting)
ROFL. Yeah, right, sure. And rocks fall upward, and the moon is made of green cheese...
I administered Novell and NT both back in the days you're talking about. Netware 3.x beat NT 3.x so badly, on every possible applicable point, not even the most incompetent admin would have ever made the claim you just did with a straight face.
Microsoft PAYED my employer a huge sum to partially replace our Netware server with an NT 3.5 server. That little netware server was keeping the office served so far as email, web gateway, and file and print serving without a problem. NT on a slightly faster machine proved itself incapable of handling the EMAIL ALONE for the same office, and this AFTER having guys from MS fly down to work on it every couple of weeks for six months.
On top of lack of functionality and lack of stability, it was also impossible to properly admin. It was a total POS and everyone knew it. Even the PHBs were totally upfront about it - they knew it was trash. But whenever we had a problem, MS cut a check (or something to the same end effect) to more than cover the losses.
That's how they won. Novel certainly made mistakes, but that doesn't change the fact that their product was vastly superior and defeated on grounds other than technical.
N - Novell and Windows N = coincidence? (Score:1, Interesting)
Nothing like clever naming so the mindless masses are blinded to N=Novell because of Windows N
^^^^ All of the text in this message is in MY opinion and for entertainment ONLY.
Re:Ximian was cheap and relevant (Score:2, Interesting)
Somewhat offtopic, but on irc today I heard that some guy that worked at Novell/Suse on KDE is moving on to work at Intel in their "Linux Desktop" division (whatever that means).
Re: cashflow & Market share (Score:5, Interesting)
It is true that their share of server sales has dwindled from a high of 80% down to low double digits. You can actually see that the impact of the introduction of WinNT. Over more recent years, the decline is actually due to Linux. What people frequently misunderstand is that this relates to NEW server sales.
What is not mentioned is the actual installed base. In this arena, Novell is huge. IIRC, a study that I saw put it at something like 3 to 5 million machines are running Netware.That's far more than all *nix combined, and was only matched by Windows.
Installed base == support/maintenance/upgrade revenue - ie services revenue. Novell has a cash cow there, that's for sure. Check out their 10Qs. And I should note that all their other 'businesses' - be it identity or ex Collabra or whatever are basically immaterial in comparison to their "software division formerly known as Netware".
But that revenue is still not sufficient. It was clear that if they didn't buy SUSE, they would lose their installed base to Linux for file/print services over time. And BTW, the Linux NEW server sales have been increasing rapidly. I always see that Linux is increasing at the expense of Windows and/or Unix, but never Novell. That is what surprised me most in my travels....
Obviously, migrating existing customers from Netware to Linux doesn't prevent leakage to either Windows or other Linux flavors, but now, they at least have a clear path for customers, and it will probably be the easiest path for their installed base.
Anways, that's my rant. And I wish Novell the best of luck. Successful linux companies will mean even better corporate acceptance.
Re:No (Score:4, Interesting)
I doubt that matters. It's not really law anyway, because it's open to wildly varying interpretations. Law is objective, anti-trust "law" is subjective.
Really, who would sue? Novell couldn't last that long in court without cashflow. However long they could last would probably just result in a settlement much less generous than that with Sun & MS.
So let's say a state or the feds sue. MS would just drag it out, and since there is no smoking gun, nothing will really happen. What if the states win? What do they do? Anything the states do against MS would just be hitting the stockholders. And by stockholders, I mean the retired people living on diversified investment income. The execs have already made the money from the "anticompetitive" behavior, probably much of it in terms of huge bonuses.
Anti trust law is a mess. It doesn't really accomplish anything. After all, they went after IBM, and what happened? Now we have MS. Nothing was solved.
I'll tell you what REALLY solves the problem. Instead of a state suing, why doesn't it just boycott MS products? Same with the feds. I bet the monopoly would be broken very quickly. Remember, the states are the ones perpetuating the MS monopoly by buying huge amounts of software and introducing it in schools. If California stopped buying, that alone would fracture the market enough to destroy the technology monoculture.
Re:Questions on viability of NLD (Score:2, Interesting)
Just my $.02,
Ron
Re:Why is Netware important (Score:3, Interesting)
The directory service is far superior (microsofts current incarnation of this is about where Novels was about '95) and this is an enourmous advantage in a large operation. Many large corporate networks are Novel for this reason already, so obviously if you're in one of those you need it for interoperability as well. You get greater stability, better performance (again, more important in a large operation where it may mean you can do the same job without buying as many servers) and it's a hell of a lot easier to administer properly.
With Novel into Linux now, you can expect it to continue to perform with less hassles in heterogenous environments as well.
Re:Was buying Ximian such a great idea? (Score:1, Interesting)
Well, this maybe won't, but still is something interesting: consider the Novell partnership with JBoss and also consider the fact that JBoss can run in Mono with IKVM, and also that Java apps in Mono can access
Linux + Mono + JBoss = killer application server stack that can be used to build combined Java/.Net apps.
I'm not sure what comes before step 3 profit, though...
Re:Was buying Ximian such a great idea? (Score:2, Interesting)
Why is that? There's nothing tricky about Qt licensing.... you either use it to write GPL software (which keeps the open source folks happy) or you use it to write QPL software (which any business in the business of writing applications to sell will be fine with, afterall, a Qt license isn't *that* expensive for a company)
I do agree with you about your other point though, buying TT to gain Qt would have made sense... Of course with all respect to those crazy Ximian hackers, those guys do some impressive stuff.
Bill
Re:Sad but true. (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't expect that from the vendors, but that will certainly come from your local ISP, cable company, etc. They are heavily searching for more services that utilizes the bandwidth and back-end infrastructure they have built over the last years. Therefore centrally managed thin client desktops in the homes is a natural next step. Of course not for the average /. reader, but think about your mums and grandfathers.
It's also the logical next step for integration between those thin clients and video-on-demand plus PVR type applications. See it as the merger between your set-top box and your cable modem. I'm sure that that's coming. And when you can do proper web browsing, email and a little office from your TV's / displays (and now don't think WebTV, but more 1280x768 HDTV), I'm sure many people don't really want to have their own PC anymore. Let someone else do the backups, virus and spam filtering, etc.
One word (Score:3, Interesting)
If Novell turns into a huge Linux tech-support company, I bet they'll earn MILLIONS. Or maybe not, but think about it. It can become the #1 company in helping companies migrate to Linux.
Just think about it. With the increasing Linux market, they'll be VERY busy.
Setting up Samba? No problem. Recompiling the kernel? Our staff will go to you. Considering options between software? There we are.
"Novell. The Linux company."
But now, if Novell wants to survive SELLING SOFTWARE, then they should just forget about it. The FOSS is taking everything by storm - so they better adapt the service model (instead of the product model), or die.
Free Updates (Score:3, Interesting)
Not a legend, true story... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not an urban legend. We (IT) lost track of a NetWare 3.x server used by a small (less than 100) department in a large (more than 20,000) entertainment company.
When it was time to upgrade the department's LAN from TokenRing to Ethernet, we couldn't locate this server. The clients had no idea where it was. They only knew that the all-important J: drive on their PC was there before they were.
It turns out that there used to be a janitor's closet behind shelves, and a large desk pushed up against the shelves, that no one in that department had ever remembered being opened. Certainly no one had the key for it. When it was finally opened, there was the 3.x, chugging away without a care in the world. I don't remember what the box was, but I doubt it held more than 16 megs of RAM.
By that time, the company had pretty gone the Microsoft route, and we were all weary of dealing with the christmas lights like nature of a WindowsNT based network. Needless to say, we were amused and more than a little impressed by this little-engine-that-could.
= 9J =
Re:Sad but true. (Score:3, Interesting)
YAST is one of the things that I don't like about SUSE. I'm not a fan of SuSEConfig either. I don't know... but I just prefer the text config files rather than being confined to a UI that someone else designed for me.
Re:Novel's Netware failure is their own fault... (Score:2, Interesting)
I have seen Apache on Linux servers with more than two years of uptime. That was back around the time of the 2.0 and 2.2 kernels. I have had Linux servers running for years, and they have only gone down for extended power outages and kernel upgrades.
The kernel upgrades have been basically optional because the vast number (if not all) of the security fixes addressed problems that were not remotely exploitable. Of course, the safe thing to do is apply the fix in case someone breaks in through say Apache then tries to use a rare kernel vulnerability to elevate privileges.
Re:Novel's Netware failure is their own fault... (Score:3, Interesting)
A couple of points:
I work for a company with about 35,000 employees worldwide. The majority of our server systems (about 70%) are Netware and email system is mostly GroupWise (again about 70%). All I can say is, the combination of eDirectory, Zenworks, and GroupWise make for a wonderfully manageable network. So good in fact, that we are migrating Windows 2000 servers over to Netware 6.5. If all goes well, we should be standardizing on GroupWise for all users within the next 2 years.
Further, as Novell's Linux offerings mature, we will probably migrate to future versions of Open Enterprise Server, which is basically SuSE with all the traditional Novell services running on top.
RedHat (Score:3, Interesting)
Now for the zeolots, I'm not saying other distros can't be used on mission critical, I'm just saying without the corporate backing of a major player... (Oracle cert for RH, NetVault cert for RH, etc) Not on my database servers...
btw, I run Fedora FC3 also, just not on mission critical. I could use anything on those machines, but I choose Fedora because it supports the latest and greatest awhile still being pretty stable on most hardware and software functions. (Dell PowerEdge servers, and postfix, mysql, apache, etc)
Multi-year uptimes are common (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: cashflow & Market share (Score:3, Interesting)
This path thing you talk about is very important. We're a mostly MS shop (lots of databases on MS) but 60-80% of our files services are on NetWare. We've been kicking around getting rid of NW over the last couple of years to simplify things for both our IT department and end users.
Our most recent decision to wait was directly Linux related. Our customers are asking more and more about running our products on Linux and we have a couple of test setups, but nothing major. Our CTO pointed out that IT would have to support this if we went whole hog in that direction and the absolute easiest path for IT to gain experience with Linux would be to migrate our NW servers into OES servers.
We're still on NW and we're moving very slowly on Linux, but NW will stay, for the moment, simply because we can see that migration path and want to have the option of traveling on it. In our case, the Linux-future at Novell is probably the most important difference between us staying a customer and not.
TW