End of an era

[riedquat]

Well thats it...after just under 13 years of constant uptime (baring service packs and upgrades), i've just taken a final backup and its time to shut down our Netware servers for the last time.

[Guest monkeyx]

Sorry to hear about this. (although Novel brought mutch if its demise upon itself)

 

I shutdown my last Novell server in around 1994/1995.

 

I then briefly got involved in upgrading some 3.11 to 3.12 for the year 2000 party! But did not stay long enough to retire them

 

My fondest memories are of the 3.x series as it was so far ahead if NT at the time.

[TronXP]

I am still running Novell Netware, its sad to see them disapearing, but as Monkeyx says Novell is to blame. We are looking at phasing Netware out within 2 years.

[amfony]

being a total product of the MS propaganda system (and ignorant) werent novell systems enjoying some what of a resurgence?

[Tallwood_6]

being a total product of the MS propaganda system (and ignorant) werent novell systems enjoying some what of a resurgence?

 

They are from what i understand, one of the secondarys down the road where using netware and are now moving to OES2 which is working very well for them.

[torledo]

being a total product of the MS propaganda system (and ignorant) werent novell systems enjoying some what of a resurgence?

 

not really, Netware is on life support, novell are trying desperately to prevent customers from switching to M$ by providing the whole OES-Netware/OES-Linux migration path....certainly the small wins they have where customers have moved to OES-linux are outweighed by the customers who've moved away completely. Edirectory has been well and truly obliterated by AD, market share for Groupwise is in terminal decline...so what have Novell got for the enterprise ? Essentially what they've got that they can monetize is an enterprise linux server business with SLES and a couple of strong enterprise products that are far from dominant (Zenworks and the platespin purchase spring to mind)...but that's about it, and even in the enterprise linux market there's stiff competition from redhat.

 

Novell have still got a technically strong product portfolio, but they come very much second and third best in most commercial areas....they've realised they need to make they're products multiplatform in order to compete, so not relying purely on the Netware or Linux platforms - and also means intergrating with AD aswell as Edir. Zenworks is a good example now that it doesn't require Edir in order to function, but venerable netware is a dead duck. They may have the SuSe products, but i personally think the best thing that could have happened to Novell was being taken over by Sun when that rumour was doing the rounds.

 

Now that a Sun deal is no longer realistic a Citrix-Novell merger might be interesting.

[Jeremy69]

We retire Novell in two weeks time with considerable regret. It's been stable and there is a significant investment of experience in it but sadly more and more software won't run happily on it and more companies are not very keen on support if there is a problem and it involves Novell.

[evil-tom]

Quite sad really. However, don't forget the identity management bits. In areas where AD isn't good enough their software is the best for interoperability with other bigger systems and life outside the domain.

[RoyG]

Summer 2008 will see the demise of Novell in our school too. We originally migrated from NT3.5 to Netware 4.11 in 1996, after a major server crash in the week before Ofsted inspection. At that time it was much easier to find Netware support than MS support.

 

During the last 12 years unscheduled "downs" can be counted on one hand, with the maximum down-time being 40 minutes!

 

But the swing to MS has been inexorable. The inevitable will happen over the summer break, as my successor as NM, who took at Easter, is much more comfortable with 2003 Server.

 

R.I.P Netware!

 

RoyG

[evil-tom]

Out of interest, is RM's offering the one taking over, or will it be native?

[torledo]

Quite sad really. However, don't forget the identity management bits. In areas where AD isn't good enough their software is the best for interoperability with other bigger systems and life outside the domain.

 

That's a good point, but it's not so much AD not being good enough, but Microsoft's own identity management product which isn't even a blip on the radar of identity and access management market.

 

Novell is certainly one of the main players in this area, but the products' reliance on edirectory creates it's own problems as forrester research pointed out...

 

Strengths in data management highlight the product’s pedigree in Novell’s eDirectory technology and Identity Manager’s roots in metadirectory-based provisioning. Unfortunately, this causes the provisioning product to be dependent on eDirectory, which is one of the factors contributing to a skills gap that organizations often face and a need to bridge when selecting Novell for IAM

 

I'd expect the edirectory prerequisite to be removed in later version(s) for exactly the reasons mentioned above....with large companies dropping edirectory like a hot potato it seems rather inconvenient to have to use it for the identity management product. Also, novell idenitiy manager is multiplatform not requiring netware and available on redhat. The position of novell identity does not change the fact netware is irrelevant these days, and that SLES has got some way to go to catch up with redhat on x86 servers. As you say the identity management product is for big companies with complex integration requirement, so it's a niche product, and doesn't sell in big numbers.

 

For schools and most mid-sized organisations Zenworks configuration management 10 is probably the only product worth having a gander at - everything else is covered by Microsoft and redhat (and it's derivative products such as CentOS)

[RoyG]

Out of interest, is RM's offering the one taking over, or will it be native?

 

Noooo!!!!! Everything in-house.

 

RoyG

[Sirbendy]

Other side of the coin - we're moving to a new building summer 09...and parent academy still hasn't told us any OS/Server details

 

Novell is looking like a distinct likelihood..."overseer" of academies is a CCNA and loves it.

 

Me, I like S2003, NM likes SLES. I think Novell is a tad retrograde as a new server OS...

 

We'll see..

[evil-tom]

NetWare might be a retrograde step - however using eDirectory and using SLES with OES add-on might actually allow you the best of both worlds.

 

There needs to be a recognition that Novell > NetWare.

 

NetWare <> Novell.

 

T