Novell Inc officially launched its NetWare 5 network operating system in San Francisco yesterday, having begun shipments of the final version last Wednesday. While the announcement held few surprises – after all, the company has seeded the market with 350,000 plus beta copies of the software – Novell nevertheless used the occasion to emphasize that the pure IP underpinnings of Netware 5, and the complete integration of Novell Directory Services that turn NetWare into a directory-centered product, will provide the basis for its future growth. Eighteen months into the job, Novell CEO Eric Schmidt has stopped Novell losing money. Now he needs to renew growth, and says he intends to do so by launching a new set of higher level services on top of NDS and NetWare. With Netware 5, the integration of NDS, which first shipped in April 1993, goes beyond file and print so that all the other components are directory-enabled. The IP infrastructure, for instance, replacing Novell’s proprietary IPX protocols (still supported) have been fully integrated into the directory. But Novell isn’t pitching NetWare 5 as a competitor for NT, and is quite happy with its typical role as file and print server, probably alongside NT for application serving. Wider ambitions are focused on NDS, which is gaining its independence from NetWare. NDS for NT version 2 is due out by the end of the year, and adds database integration to the current product. It can theoretically work without NetWare present at all, although Novell recommends at least one NetWare server. The product will help fill in the systems management gaps that large users of NT – such as the Chicago Mercantile Exchange – currently have to negotiate while waiting for Microsoft’s own Active Directory, due out along with NT 5.0 at some unspecified date in the future. Once Active Directory does emerge, Novell says its own products will work alongside it, and will extend it to non-Microsoft platforms. A Solaris port will follow, which will serve as a reference port for other Unix versions. Over the next six to nine months, Schmidt promises a range of higher-level applications that make use of NDS. The first, already out, is the ZENworks Year 2000 and software installation tool, and Schmidt promises clustering, remote management and remote connectivity enhancements are next. We won’t be rushing on to NetWare 6, he said. Novell persuaded Compaq CEO Eckhard Pfeiffer and Intel VP Pat Gelsinger to attend the San Francisco event, and lined up the major hardware manufacturers and database vendors in support. Compaq has shipped one million NetWare servers since 1989, around half of the total number its shipped. All told, there are now around 81 million NetWare users on 4 million Intel-based servers. Now Novell’s task is to get its users – NetWare 3 as well as NetWare 4 – to upgrade. It claims that, with the directory now in place, the move isn’t as major as its difficult shift from version 3 to 4. This time it is Microsoft which faces the giant step from NT 4 to 5, it points out.
