NetWare 5 makes small splash in OS pool

Marketing is Novell's weakness.

This year has been a pivotal one for Novell. The 14 September release of all-singing, all-dancing, pure IP NetWare 5 was the highlight of 1998 for the company. But behind the razzmatazz of the flagship NOS launch, Novell was busy with a raft of ancillary products, all focused on its Novell Directory Services. They included NDS for NT, BorderManager and ZENworks, together with a new release of GroupWise.

At the beginning of 1998, however, the jury was still out on the company's long-term ability to keep its head above water as it continued to be hammered by Microsoft.

However, the appointment of ex-Sun executive, Eric Schmidt, heralded a massive round of lay-offs and restructuring, the fruits of which have started to become apparent.

"Schmidt was the best thing that ever happened to Novell," said Clive Longbottom, analyst at CSL Consultancy Services. "The company's technology has superb file, print and security, all underpinned with directory services.

As this is all so great, why can't Novell wipe the floor with Microsoft?

It should be stepping into the users who are waiting for Godot and NT5, but its lack of marketing expertise is still holding it back."

Novell maintained it was exploiting the delays Microsoft is suffering with Windows 2000 and its Active Directory component. Derek Venter, market development manager for NetWare and NDS, joked: "The only platform available for deploying Active Directory is an overhead slide projector."

WHAT NETWARE 5 HAS TO OFFER

- Novell claims to reduce network management cost by over 50 per cent with NetWare 5

- Open internet standards-based

- ZENworks management utility

- First version of NetWare to ditch proprietary IPX in favour of native TCP/IP

- First NetWare to support SMP

- Lightweight Directory Access Protocol v3 support through NDS

- Netscape FastTrack Web server

- Five-licence version of Oracle8 database included

- Java support through integrated Java Virtual Machine

- Improved storage (Novell Storage Services) and print (Novell Distributed Print Services).