4 ms·

It's funny, Novell used to own the server space lock, stock and barrel. They had mindshare in small business owners. Think fo that! Florists knew who Novell wa

It's funny, Novell used to own the server space lock, stock and barrel. They had mindshare in small business owners. Think fo that! Florists knew who Novell was. They were the guys who did the software for your backoffice server. But they threw it all away by not innovating. They could have continued to own the low end by continously making things easier and building on success. Instead they're a hasbeen with a corporate accounts only sales policy - I just tried to buy suse linux from their website, no dice.

gaius 17y ago
Indeed, I too remember when Netware was synonymous with LAN services for PCs (file, print, auth and directory). You could even run apps on your Netware servers using NLMs. But NLMs were tricky to write, and the OS gave you no modern features like memory protection; the game was over when MS released NT Advanced Server and NT 3.51 was the final nail in its coffin. All the aformentioned LAN services, plus SQL Server. Novell failed because they got complacent. Interestingly MS is going back to that now, Windows 2008 Server Core Edition is a command-line only version of Windows just for file and print...
- arebop 17y ago
  NT 3.51 was released in May 1995 [1]. Netware 4 was released in 1993. Netware 4's big feature was NDS, a scalable directory service with an LDAP interface. Windows got that feature in 2000. Meanwhile Novell released IntranetWare with TCP/IP support in 1996 and Netware 5 in 1998 [2]. Netware 5 had hierarchical storage management; support for Java, Perl, and JavaScript; and memory protection [3]. I was pretty young then and not much of a programmer, but it certainly seemed to me then that Novell's problems were more about business operations than about any lack of technological progress. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare [3] http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19980703.html http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19980703.ht...
  - gaius 17y ago
    NTAS was also released in '93 including TCP/IP and memory protection[1]. Complacency's a funny thing; it can sneak up on you. I'm sure Joe Novell Programmer was doing great work polishing features Netware already had and Jo Novell Manager was proud of how many happy customers she had. They just didn't foresee that people wanted a general-purpose OS on their departmental/LAN servers (not least because it makes developing server apps easier). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1

gaius 17y ago

Indeed, I too remember when Netware was synonymous with LAN services for PCs (file, print, auth and directory). You could even run apps on your Netware servers using NLMs. But NLMs were tricky to write, and the OS gave you no modern features like memory protection; the game was over when MS released NT Advanced Server and NT 3.51 was the final nail in its coffin. All the aformentioned LAN services, plus SQL Server. Novell failed because they got complacent. Interestingly MS is going back to that now, Windows 2008 Server Core Edition is a command-line only version of Windows just for file and print...

arebop 17y ago
NT 3.51 was released in May 1995 [1]. Netware 4 was released in 1993. Netware 4's big feature was NDS, a scalable directory service with an LDAP interface. Windows got that feature in 2000. Meanwhile Novell released IntranetWare with TCP/IP support in 1996 and Netware 5 in 1998 [2]. Netware 5 had hierarchical storage management; support for Java, Perl, and JavaScript; and memory protection [3]. I was pretty young then and not much of a programmer, but it certainly seemed to me then that Novell's problems were more about business operations than about any lack of technological progress. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.51 [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novell_NetWare [3] http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19980703.html http://support.novell.com/techcenter/articles/dnd19980703.ht...
- gaius 17y ago
  NTAS was also released in '93 including TCP/IP and memory protection[1]. Complacency's a funny thing; it can sneak up on you. I'm sure Joe Novell Programmer was doing great work polishing features Netware already had and Jo Novell Manager was proud of how many happy customers she had. They just didn't foresee that people wanted a general-purpose OS on their departmental/LAN servers (not least because it makes developing server apps easier). [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_NT_3.1