NetWare for SAA is made more flexible

IBM and NOVELL have revised netware for SAA to appeal to wideraudience.

IBM and Novell have finally announced a revised version of the market-leading Lan-to-host gateway.

With version 2.2, IBM and Novell will go a long way toward making NetWare for SAA more affordable and flexible.

The improvements will focus on TCP/IP connectivity, file transfer capabilities and Windows client support. Customers will also be able to pay for the product on a per-client basis rather than per-session.

IBM and Novell hope the update will counter some of Microsoft's momentum in the market with its SNA Server product.

"Even with this new release of NetWare for SAA, we feel that IBM and Novell are still a full release of software features behind us at this point," said Vesa Suomalainen, general manager of Microsoft's SNA Server product unit.

Despite that, version 2.2 of the IBM and Novell product should prove attractive, especially its per-client pricing scheme.

Most clients can support multiple sessions with a host either to multiple applications or printers.

Reducing those charges by billing for just the client software eliminates a lot of confusion and cost.

Another key requirement for Version 2.2 was support for TN3270E. This is an up-dated version of TN3270, which allows SNA users to connect to mainframes over TCP/IP.

Version 2.2 also includes native support for Novell Directory Services (NDS). This alleviates configuration hassles associated with running the gateway on a NetWare 4.X server in bindery emulation.

"We have held up our migration to NetWare 4.X because the gateway in the past has not supported NDS natively," said a user in the banking sector.

He will upgrade his servers to NetWare 4.x and NetWare for SAA at the same time, which will enable him to configure the company's 200 gateways simultaneously rather than individually, as was required with bindery emulation.