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In article <3gpejd$ev1@interport.net> mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus) writes:
>From: mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus)
>Subject: NOVELL AND NETWORKING
>Date: 2 Feb 1995 02:04:29 GMT

>I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
>real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
>networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
>information on their groupware and e-mail products?

No, because WIN 95 is a desktop operating system, not a network operating
system. WIN-NT is a threat, MicroSoft is their major competitor, call Novell.

Tom Boismier, MPH (teb@mailgw-vtc.oto.med.umich.edu) wrote:
: In article <3gpejd$ev1@interport.net> mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus) writes:
: >From: mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus)
: >Subject: NOVELL AND NETWORKING
: >Date: 2 Feb 1995 02:04:29 GMT
: >I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
: >real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
: >networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
: >information on their groupware and e-mail products?
: No, because WIN 95 is a desktop operating system, not a network operating
: system. WIN-NT is a threat, MicroSoft is their major competitor, call Novell.
Win95 could be a file server, can send and receive mail, is a
	peer-to-peer networking OS, just like winnt.
In the recently Byte magazine, there is a good article about Novell's future.

In <3gpejd$ev1@interport.net>, mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus) writes:
>I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
>real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
>networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
>information on their groupware and e-mail products?
>
>--
>Michael Dreyfus			New York City
>mdreyfus@interport.net		http://www.interport.net/~mdreyfus
>
Michael,
     I am an ECNE and MS cerified and I can tell you that Windows95 by
itself is not a threat to Novell - in fact Win95 supports Netware out of the
box. The threat comes when MS releases the next version of NT which is
the Cairo project. MS has stated that they will be releasing a new version
of Win95 at the same time as the Cairo release of NT and these 2 products
will have certain networking ties that Novell will not be able to duplicate
for at least a few months. The real present threat to Novell is not Win95
but NT 3.5. Even though my own lab testing shows that NT is much less
robust than Netware 4.1 in terms of supporting many users, there is a growing
number of people who are beginning to believe that NT may be the right
direction because Novell cannot possibly keep up with the R&D expenditures
of Microsoft. MS has taken profits from DOS and Windows 3.1 sales and
reinvested them in Windows NT for the specific purpose of taking away
Novell's current 72% market share. Few people are being made aware that
NT cannot match the price/performance ratio of Netware 4.1 - in fact even with
a 4 processor Alpha RISC file server, Windows NT cannot match the file server
performance of Novell running on a single processor Pentium PC. This is dramatic
evidence that the entire microkernel architecture of NT is fundamentally
ineffecient and in fact causes significant processor power to be wasted.

Charles McCane

Tom Boismier, MPH (teb@mailgw-vtc.oto.med.umich.edu) wrote:
: In article <3gpejd$ev1@interport.net> mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus) writes:
: >From: mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus)
: >Subject: NOVELL AND NETWORKING
: >Date: 2 Feb 1995 02:04:29 GMT

: >I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
: >real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
: >networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
: >information on their groupware and e-mail products?

Ignoring win '95 ('96?-whenever) and considering NT and/or Windows for
Workgroups- Novell can connect not only Macs and PC"s, but very old PC's.
Novell  may now require a 386 or better for a file server, but you can
still attach an AT or even an old 8088 to a Novell net and do useful work.

In locations such as ours where we cannot justify the capital expense of
new hardware merely to run newer software (after all, 90% of the business
users of word processing software could survive with older versions of
Word Perfect or even Word Star) they'll be building ski resorts in Hell
before we are all Windows compatible.  But we have wire services available
in the control rooms, offices and studios which are captured to the net
via 8088 computers, and practically all of our day-to-day working software
will run on an 8088 although mostly we have AT's.  Remote printers on the
net could run on XT's as well.

Obsolete doesn't mean broken.  And when I tell the boss "we need" I'd damn
well better mean "need" and not "I want" or "it'd be neat"!

Policies and opinions held by the employer of the undersigned
are not reflected in the views of the undersigned.  Or anyone
else in their right mind, for that matter.

Fred Dabney/ KRWG Radio/ New Mexico State University  (fdabney@nmsu.edu)
"Never attribute to malice that which can adequately be explained

Michael Dreyfus (mdreyfus@interport.net) wrote:
: I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
: real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
: networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
: information on their groupware and e-mail products?

: --
: Michael Dreyfus			New York City
: mdreyfus@interport.net		http://www.interport.net/~mdreyfus

No not Win95, but Windows NT Will be a threat to Novell because first it is a
Microsofts product, but also because it's cheap (you don't have to buy a 50 user
because it might be needed in the future, you just add servers and clients
when you need them). Windows 95 will probably be used in WS instead of NT
but NT works really well as a server.

PS we have a Novell 3.11 and have just installed NT

Bjorn.Sundqvist@centek.se

Surprisingly enough, the most credible short-term threat to Novell's NOS
dominance may be Pathworks.  Apparently it is a close second to Netware in the
overall U.K. market, and takes *first* place in large shops there.

I'd have to agree that the one to watch for the middle term is Windows NT.

Either way, Microsoft gets some or all of the money.

The shape of the price curve means different things at different sites.  Here
it is *much* easier to sell us licenses in 250-user chunks, per-server, than to
sell us individual client licenses.  Needless to say, the big red N can be seen
everywhere on campus.

Perhaps what will happen, is that the market will split:  Microsoft and its
value-added channels will take the small sites, where per-user licensing is
attractive, and Novell will hold the large corporate sites with its products
aimed at enterprise-wide networking.  Not to say that MS can't do the
enterprise too, but I don't think they've been serious about it long enough to
take that market from Novell just yet.  Still, MS continues to grow because
people usually underestimate MS' ferocity and cunning when it identifies a
market that it wants.

It remains to be seen whether Novell's expansion into applications will aid its
growth with additional revenue, or slow growth by softening the organization's
focus.  Interesting times, indeed.
--
Mark H. Wood, Lead Systems Programmer    +1 317 274 0749   [@disclaimer@]
Internet:  MWOOD@INDYVAX.IUPUI.EDU       BITNET:  MWOOD@INDYVAX
My other computer is a { VMS | Linux } system.

I read on the paper early this week about an anti-trust lawsuit against MS.
Allegedly Microsoft fends off competitors by announcing "new products" well
BEFORE they are ready for sale (ring a bell?), expectant customers won't
purchase other products because they don't want to spend money on something
which will probably become obsolete when MS releases it's product, even
though MS's stuff is probably still on the drawing board while the competition
has their's ready to ship...

Another part of the complaint, and I think potentially more damaging to MS
is the alleged "dumping and unfair pricing practices". Supposedly MS is
giving away the store until it's target market competitors go out of
business and they can take over (i.e. NT!), I guess that is their strategy
against Novell. If MS looses, they could be on the same boat AT&T ended
up in. Reportedly, MS has offered to settle FIVE (5) times already,
all rejected by the complaint.

Who knows, maybe MS'll have to charge above cost for NT and Novell will
be able to hold on to their market share.

-Fred



DISCLAIMER: these are only my opinions and probably wrong.

In article <3gpejd$ev1@interport.net> mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus) writes:
>In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a real threat to Novell?

No. Novell has no product to compete with Windows 95, so there is no threat.

>Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of networking products?

Novells NetWare 4.x _is_ the next generation, so I'll say yes. :)

>Who is their major competitor?

Microsoft in network OS (with NT AS) and desktop (office). Lotus when it
comes to GroupWare/E-mail.

>Do you have any information on their groupware and e-mail products?

Novell has strong products with GroupWise, Softsolutions, paperwise.
Lotus Notes _is_ groupware, and their strategy is very very strong.
Lotus cc:Mail also is the biggest e-mail product today.
Microsofts GroupWare/email strategy is in serious problems.
They are building themselves into a corner by only supporting Windows + NT.
Their store-and-forward messaging strategy is no good as a replication
tool. Lotus looks good here, but has nothing like Softsolutions, and their
scheduler Organiser 2.0 is still a single-user scheduler with network
support patched on top, while Novells Softsolutions is a network scheduler.

--
Lennart Regebro                    Lennart.Regebro@scs.no (Try this first)
Galactic Guide Field Researcher    regebro@stacken.kth.se (Spare address)

 >I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
 >real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
 >networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
 >information on their groupware and e-mail products?

	Certainly Windows 95 is no threat to Novell.  Windows NT does seek to
compete, but I suspect it will not be a serious challenge.  It seems to me that
Novell's real strength is in its local network server (and transport) operating
system.  As long as networks remain focused on local servers, Novell will reign
supreme, I suspect.  The real challenge will come if the market shifts either down
(toward peer networks) or up (toward integrated wide area networks, particularly
over the Internet).  For what Netware does, nothing else even comes close.  It is
both very stable and very low maintenance.  Not only that, but it permits an
enormous range of computers to communicate, everything from DOS and OS/2-
based PCs to Macs to Unix boxes, requiring a minimum of workstation resources.
At one time, its closest competition was Banyan Vines.  Although frequently
hailed as a superior product, Banyan was apparently never able to produce
a redirector shell as efficient (and as small) as Netx.  These days, IBM and
Microsoft are trying to compete at the high end, while Lantastic is doing a bang-
up job on the peer level.

	As you might tell, I have been using Netware for a long time.  I started
with 2.0a, and migrated to 2.2.  Both of these were absolutely rock-solid.  Never
a second's trouble.  My network was able to run for months with no down time.
I then tried 4.0, which was a disaster (fortunately, I never installed it). 4.01 was
much better, and 4.02 better still.  While still not as rock solid as 2.2, they are
more versatile.  4.1 is supposed to be better yet (we shall see very shortly).

In article <3gpejd$ev1@interport.net>, mdreyfus@interport.net (Michael Dreyfus) says:
>I am doing research into Novell.  In your opinion, will Windows 95 present a
>real threat to Novell?  Is Novell positioned well for the next generation of
>networking products?  Who is their major competitor?  Do you have any
>information on their groupware and e-mail products?
For a great overview of Novell's position for the future check out the latest
Issue of Byte magazine.  There is an article covering Novell's position
from Novell's point of view.  Claims that Novell has decided to give up
on the desktop market and focus on the development of its networking
OS of the future SuperNOS.
			Hasta,  Mike

In article <1995Feb3.092933.12148@ivax>, mwood@indyvax.iupui.edu says...
>
>Surprisingly enough, the most credible short-term threat to Novell's NOS
>dominance may be Pathworks.  Apparently it is a close second to Netware in the
>overall U.K. market, and takes *first* place in large shops there.

That is surprising, considering how microscopically small Pathworks market
share is in the US.  I guess by short term, you mean they will go from
5%, to say, 30% in a couple of years?

--
farley@access.digex.net
Pro-Life:  Not killing people until *after* they're born.