Last month's newsletter on the new ZENworks 7 suite brought out some good responses from some of you. Most offered praise and fond remembrance of the various ZENworks services and applications. On balance, it could be said to be Novell's most admired product - at least if you measure admiration by the percentage of people who commented favorably vs. those who spoke unfavorably of it. I'd say 99.99%, but only because I want to leave a tad of wiggle room - I really can't remember any negative comments.

I noted in that newsletter that ZENworks Asset Management (ZAM) isn't included in the suite, but neglected to mention why. Always alert reader Tim Wessels reminded me that the majority of ZAM was only recently acquired by Novell when it purchased Tally Systems last spring . There most likely hasn't been sufficient time to completely rewrite Tally's software to the ZENworks model, although the Asset Inventory module did manage to get included. Tim also noted that Novell will begin holding two-day "boot camps" for resellers later this month on the new Asset Management product.

Novell's boot camps, by the way, are an excellent training tool for authorized resellers (and anyone else who can sweet talk their way into the sessions). Frequently they are two-day affairs ("mini" boot camps can be one day, or even half-day) with an overview of the technology but an emphasis on the business cases within which the product or technology can be used to solve problems. They are usually scheduled to coincide with the release of new products or new versions of old products, and are organized as road shows with many playing in 20 or 30 cities around North America. They can also be held in the other sales regions, such as in Europe, Middle East, Africa and the Pacific Rim, although the schedule there is less frequent. Boot camps are free to all levels of channel partners.

We now return to our discussion of ZENworks.

From down in Auckland, New Zealand, I got a note which at first I though might actually be a complaint about ZENworks. But, it turns out that Milan (no last name please) simply thinks that ZENworks is so good it should be expanded to other areas. Specifically, instant messaging. That brought back memories, some good and some not so good. In fact, enough to warrant their own edition of the newsletter. Come back next time and we'll explore NetWare's 25th line - and its successors.

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To contact Dave Kearns:

Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found here.