Puzzle Systems Corp, which has been making a living out of Novell Inc NetWare emulation under Unix since 1989, has introduced its first NetWare 4.X emulation. SoftNet Utilities 4.0 runs under Hewlett-Packard Co’s HP-UX, Sun Microsystems Inc’s Sparc – Solaris and SunOS – Silicon Graphics Inc and iAPX-86 systems running Santa Cruz Unix, UnixWare or Solaris x86, and enables them to function as NetWare 4.X- or 3.X-compatible servers to MS-DOS, Windows, Windows95 or NT workstation clients on Novell networks. Host systems running SoftNet appear as NetWare servers in Novell’s Network Directory Services, and to associated printers. Using the IPX protocol, NetWare personal computer clients can access Unix directories and printing resources, and U nix workstation users can send print jobs to NetWare printers. It is available immediately, downloadable for a two-week free trial from http://www.puzzle.com. Puzzle has also updated its other products – SoftNet NFS and IPConnect – to work with NetW are 4.X, along with its recently launched SoftNet WebServ, which provides a full set of intranet-Internet services to NetWare 4.X. Here, the company is likely to come into direct competition with Novell itself, and WebServ is ultimately likely to ap peal more to NetWare 3.X users who would otherwise have to upgrade to gain access to Novell’s Internet offerings.
