[olug] Novell and Linux

[Bill Brush]

I guess I left out part of what I heard.  Not surprising considering all
the info they had in the 5 hours I was there.

Nterprise services 1.0 is basically "Gold".  It will be available either
late this month or early next month (I forgot this part).  Nterprise
services 2.0 is in Beta 2 (they gave us a eval CD) of it.  You are correct
that it won't be released until next year some time.

I agree that Novell's track record with previous acquisitions has not been
great; however, that being said, the management team that was responsible
for those miscues has long since been replaced.  I had the opportunity to
hear Jack Messman and Chris Stone speak at Brainshare (Novell's technical
conference) and while Messman is your typical CEO, he does seem to have a
shrewd business sense, and Chris Stone (the guy behind the technical
decisions) seemed VERY sharp.  Messman stood up in front of everyone and
admitted that in the past Novell had been too focused on the technology and
neglected the business side of things.  I think they have a plan.

>From what else I've been able to find out, the SUSE brand will not be
eliminated, but will continue on.  I honestly don't know if the prices will
change, but I doubt it.  Novell doesn't really need the revenue stream, but
it does need the exposure and the positive press.  I wouldn't worry too
much about Novell damaging the adoption of Linux or the OSS movement.
Novell has shown previously that they will contribute to open source
projects.  Check out forge.novell.com to see some of the stuff they've got
out there.

I think an important point to consider is something I read in one of the
articles discussing this acquisition.  Back in the mid90's NT had all the
positive buzz, and the momentum while Nmetware (while technically superior)
was viewed as arcane and hard to work with.  So a lot of Netware customers
jumped ship, but they remember their positive experiences with dealing with
Novell.  Now Linux has the momentum, MS servers are perceived as unstable,
unsecure, and bloated and suddenly all those businesses have a company that
they know offering them not only a Linux solution to their needs but
support for it too.  I think this will turn out to be a very Good Thing for
Linux.  That senario doesn't even touch on the massive installed base of
Netware which is already using a good deal of OSS thanks to the use of
Apache and MySQL (and others)  and which will be eventually moving to a
Linux based Netware server (IMO Netware 8 will be Linux only and probably
64 bit optimized).  Also, if Novell releases a Linux workstation distro
optimized to talk to their services that will make Linux adoption on the
workstation a real possibility in a lot of Novell shops.  I know in my
office one of the few obstacles to cutting the workstations over to Linux
is the lack of support for the Novell tools for Linux workstations
(Zenworks, file shares, directory services).

For myself I'm pretty darn excited about all this.

Bill




                                                                                                                                 
                      "Craig Wolf"                                                                                               
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                      11/07/2003 07:46                                                                                           
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>I heard some things a little different:
>Novell Linux Services 1.0 is in beta, 2.0 is not due out until mid to late
2004.
>Novell Linux Services 2.0 will provide 98% of the functionality of NetWare
on Linux when released.
>Does not appear that there will be a Novell Client for Linux past what you
can find now.
>
>I do agree that they are doing good things in this arena and I am REALLY
excited about the CURRENT direction >of things BUT  I am concerned about
what changes they will do and if they will be for the better OR if they
>will damage Linux and stunt the movement some.  I hope that Novell has
learned from it's past mistakes when >they were the dominate force in the
NOS area and will not try to abuse it again when and if they become a
>dominate force again.
>
>Just my humble opinion......