No sooner does Novell Inc get some exciting technology under its belt – the first for a long time – it slips away from them. US press reports, primarily from our sister publication ClieNT Server News, have it that key members of the Wolf Mountain clustering project team at Novell Inc have tendered their resignations and formed a new company, the Wolf Mountain Group Inc, with the aim of porting it to Windows NT. Those defecting are said to include Darren Major, chief architect of Novell’s Unified File Object Directory, and Jeff Merkey, chief architect of Wolf Mountain itself. Many of the 40-odd staff working on Wolf Mountain are thought to be involved in the new venture – and maybe others from Novell as well. Only a few weeks ago, Merkey was presenting the technology at Compaq Computer Corp’s Innovate conference in Houston, Texas, and pointedly deferred all questions about turning Wolf Mountain into a product to a Novell marketing manager, who would only say that more would be revealed over the next few months. It’s thought that those on the project were worried that the technology might never make it to market, offering as it does a threat to Novell’s core NetWare business. The new project has a new name – Tapestry – and aims to create highly-scalable, fault-tolerant clusters that could support as many as 800 four-way nodes. Product is feasible in a year from now, say the developers. Novell is said to be considering its legal position, though theyl refused to comment on the reports as we went to press.
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