Hewlett-Packard Co is already using the hardware-independent version of Novell Inc’s NetWare to develop native NetWare for its Precision Architecture RISC. Sun Microsystems Inc is following a similar course, though Novell is doing the implementation for Sun. Now US reports suggest Digital Equipment Corp and IBM Corp will, over the next few months, announce plans to put native NetWare up on their RS/6000 and Alpha CPUs. Meanwhile, the Novell network operating system version for Sun systems – NetWare for Sparc – will have all the features expected in the upcoming NetWare 4.0, including a global directory. NetWare for Sparc, due next year, will enable MS-DOS, Windows, Macintosh and other vanilla NetWare clients to access Sparc-based servers. They will be able to access resources such as printers and databases over NetWare and NetWare for Sparc servers. For Sparc server users, the software will replace the need for Novell’s NetWare for Unix, which has been criticised for being to slow. However Sparcstation clients won’t – at least not initially – be able to access servers running NetWare for Sparc. They will have to buy NetWare for NFS, which costs $5,000 for 100 users. Once the initial product is out, the firms say they will add more communications options for Sun workstation users. To offset criticism, Novell is promising to deliver a new NetWare NFS gateway this month, which it says will make it easier for NetWare clients to access Network File System services on remote Unix systems.
