Novell Inc has, as reported briefly (CI No 1,760) launched a cheap peer-to-peer network operating system aimed at users with around six or seven stations on the network. NetWare Lite, which costs UKP70 per node, is a tactical product designed not only to hurt the growing number of companies making a living at the low end of the market, but also to rope in the small user who may subsequently want to migrate to a larger NetWare system. The new software owes none of its code to existing NetWare entry-level products – apparently the whole lot was written directly in 8086 Assembler for compactness – and is designed for simple file and printer sharing only. Its core comprises two small executable files, one to turn the iAPX-86 machine into a client, the other to turn it into a non-dedicated server – both modules can be used at once to produce a simple peer-to-peer network. Likewise, it lacks the complex system of management utilities that are an integral part of the other versions of NetWare – a single utility does it all. Designed to be cheap, cheerful and easy to use – installation was demonstrated in about five minutes – the new operating system represents a direct threat to products such as Hayes Microcomputer Products Inc’s Lanstep, Performance Technology Inc’s Powerlan and Sage Group Plc’s Mainlan, but in particular Novell seems to have been stung by Artisoft Inc’s success with Lantastic. All credit to people like Lantastic commented Novell’s technical marketing manager Graeme Allan, who says that it wasn’t until such companies began to grow that Novell examined the market. It is very much a tactical move in that it recognises that there is a growing market… eventually it would erode our low end network market. Novell’s assessment of the current market for NetWare Lite is around 400,000 nodes per year, which could be quite a revenue-spinner considering that the product will require much less technical support than its larger siblings. However the real importance to the company is that Lite provides a way to hook potential users of NetWare 2.2 and 3.11 when they are still small – once you are on that migration path it is easy to get swept along. NetWare Lite uses the standard IPX/SPX communications protocols common to the whole NetWare family so that it can coexist on a local net with other NetWare servers. It is also possible to build rudimentary links between a NetWare Lite client and those servers. But the process is a little convoluted – a NetWare 2.2 or 3.11 client with a disk drive mapped to the server must runs the NetWare Lite server. Once done, NetWare Lite clients log in to it and can then access the mapped drive.
Get ’em while they’re young
The ‘get ’em while they’re young’ strategy looks good in the context of the low end market as it stands, dominated by many, small suppliers relying on mainly proprietary protocols and with limited upgrade paths. It is the last bit of the local network market that is proprietary and the shrewd supplier will offer migration links said Monica Giles, project manager of Logica Plc’s Telematica research programme. Like most research, Logica’s is a little hazy about the low end of the local area network market, but the figures that Ms Giles has available shows the market peaking in 1994, after which people drift away to the more standard offerings – a trend that could be accentuated by the Novell announcements. One trick that Novell has missed is to go for the small multi-vendor network market in which Sun Microsystems Inc subsidiary Sitka Systems Inc currently has 650,000 nodes installed worldwide. The increasing number of businesses that have a few MS-DOS and a few Macintosh boxes scattered about might have made another interesting market for Novell to pursue, but the company has avoided it, basically on the grounds that it is more trouble than it is worth. NetWare Lite can be used with conventional Token Ring and Ethernet adaptors and comes complete with a variety of ODI compliant drivers. Oddly, for such a commodity, low-support product, it is being sold in the UK th
rough the company’s existing channels. The obvious choice of selling it through one of the high street electrical chains is being considered but Novell does not think that the UK market is currently mature enough. – Chris Rose
