 NOVELL AND NETWARE – THE SONG REMAINS THE SAME
Novell's purchase and fixation on Linux is the latest, and probably last, version of the same erroneous, failed tactic tried since 1991.
Supposedly what Novell needs is some missing golden arrow in their quiver; hence the situation is to be remedied with a splash of cash and a shift of attention.
The first of the golden arrows was DR-DOS, purchased in 1991. Microsoft had just released a much improved version of Lan Manager, and Novell thought, if Microsoft is trying to eat its lunch, it could do the same back.
Then, in 1992 Novell bought Unix from AT&T. The reason was that NetWare was perceived as unsuitable for enterprise back end servers.
The tactic is the same throughout: “Let's buy some new product, an existing competitor to Microsoft, that will solve our problems.” History shows clearly that Novell was never helped by such software acquisitions. DR-DOS, mostly a failure, was sold to Caldera in 1996. UnixWare was met with indifference, and some mistrust (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_wars). It was sold for a loss of about $340m. And let's not bother discussing the purchase of WordPerfect; suffice to say, it was a disaster.
In 2003 Novell acquired Suse Linux. Here's a press release:
"The work we're doing on Open Enterprise Server brings together the best of both worlds," said Frankenberg. "Customers will have a choice - Suse Linux, NetWare or a combination of both - in Open Enterprise Server"
The problem is that this is a press release from 1995 . I have merely replaced the words “Unixware” with “Suse Linux” and “SuperNOS” with “Open Enterprise Server”. (Source: Software magazine, June 1995, "Netware Everywhere - Novell's Plan to Challenge Microsoft" by E.Harding). And when one relates the fractious, at times litigious state of Unix in the early 90's to the state of Linux today, we can say that for Novell the song remains the same.
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Saturday, February 04 2012 @ 04:31 AM CST
I'd like to point out a few things here, first and foremost I generally agree with the main thrust of the article, Novell's so-called "strategies" over the years have been notoriously short-sighted and simple-minded. I must however point out factual errors such as the assertion that buying Word Perfect was a "disaster". Anyone who actually knows the history knows that GroupWise was once called Word Perfect Office, and was part of that acquisition. GroupWise has been one of Novell's best, most profitable, and longest lasting products and today is as important as NetWare/OES, SuSE, ZENWorks, and IDM to their success and potential future.
Likewise "SuperNOS" can be argued as a currently viable and possibly profitable product as well, it really is Novell Cluster Services, which evolved from SFT III into what it is today. The vision for SuperNOS was way ahead of its time and although there are many issues with Novell's clustering solutions, NCS and BCC are still excellent pieces of technology and are still generating revenue...
Despite that people have been predicting the imminent death of Novell for a decade or more now, it still stands -- nobody can really say with any certainty how much longer it will stand, but it stands nonetheless. I suspect that we are now at a critical point in her history, and if she plays her cards right things could turn out very well. Leadership, Common-Sense, Foresight... these are the things it will take, only time will tell if management has a sufficient amount of this to make it over the hump.