Hard to grasp now but Netware was really exciting technology at the time. It was also arguably the most advanced server on the Intel platform. There was a mom

Hard to grasp now but Netware was really exciting technology at the time. It was also arguably the most advanced server on the Intel platform. There was a moment in time when it looked like Novell might become THE corporate back end server technology and all sorts of servers were built to run on Netware. I think there was Oracle and Lotus Notes and CC Mail and some others However, Novell for whatever reason simply didn't make Netware robust. Netware needed to be memory protected and have task preemption and it did neither, making it unsuitable as a server. Why they refused to do this is unclear. I seem to recall reading that Drew Major didn't have the technical chops to make it happen. I also recall reading that Drew Major believed that task preemption and memory protection were slow, and that speed was more important. Also, Netware was late to the party with TCP/IP support - they were all in on IPX/SPX and in the end TCP won the entire protocol game, sending IPX/SPX, XNS and other common network protocols to the dustbin. Anyhow Microsoft came along with Windows NT and OS/2 and stomped on Novell and since Netware wasn't up to the job, the show was over.