At last week’s Novell Inc-sponsored BrainShare conference, over 40 AT&T Corp representatives were on-hand to promote AT&T’s NetWare Connect Service, which is designed to extend NetWare local network-based services and applications over the wide area. AT&T seems to be trying to talk up the service, in the wake of its decision to abandon Network Notes (CI No 2,863). According to Novell, there are several reasons why NetWare Connect will succeed where Network Notes failed. The most significant of these is that there is currently no way for users to access NetWare- based services over the Internet, so that remote users wanting to access their corporate local network effectively have little option. This contrasts with Network Notes, whose version 4 was specifically designed to integrate Notes with the Internet. Secondly, AT&T is playing up the inherent security advantages which NetWare Connect has over Internet-based services: since the service is based on AT&T’s Worldwide Intelligent Network, traffic is directed by routers that are behind AT&T firewalls, rather than by the Internet’s public routers – although the company admitted similar security could be achieved via encryption software or other security systems. Finally, Novell said that NetWare Connect is designed as a facilities management service, removing many of the administrative headaches that would be involved if a company were to try and extend its local network architecture into the wide area. AT&T boasts of enhancements to NetWare Connect on the way – the first of which may be revealed any day now – and that the uptake has already been encouraging. Indeed, the company added, AT&T has a couple of dozen customers above those that have already been announced.
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