From...

August 3, 1999
Web posted at: 3:28 p.m. EDT (1928 GMT)

by Sharon Gaudin

(IDG) -- After nearly a year on the market, Novell Inc.'s NetWare 5.0 has customers saying it could fulfill the long-held promise of single-console management for an array of corporate information technology components.

For a year now, Novell has said it will succeed by helping its customers cobble together various operating systems and making them run as one unit. Users said that's just what NetWare and its Novell Directory Services (NDS) is doing for them.

"NetWare 5 has changed the type of services we can offer our students," said Stephanie Benoit, academic computing coordinator at the Community College of Southern Nevada in Las Vegas.

"It's given us enough scalability and flexibility to handle the fact that we're growing by about 22% every semester," she said. "In the old days -- well, a year ago -- people wanted Internet access. Now, I need to give them hard-drive space, [3-D] studios [and] the ability to send files electronically to faculty. It's exploded."

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Benoit, who uses some Unix and a few Microsoft Corp. Windows NT servers, said she's evaluated Microsoft's Windows 2000 operating system, due by the end of this year, but has no plans to rush to it.

"You have to look at the cost of switching compared [with] what it can do for you," Benoit said. "I need to be able to take care of all these kids' services with one directory. I need NDS for that. ... There haven't been any showstoppers with NetWare. Why would I give up on that?"

"Novell has been able to largely hold on to its customer base with NetWare 5, and they've also picked up new users. It's a good combination," said Dan Kusnetzky, an analyst at International Data Corp. in Framingham, Mass.

"I don't see that changing when Windows 2000 comes out... There's a lot of reasons to keep NetWare, and it would be really expensive to change platforms just because. People aren't going to be jumping to do that," he said.

Industry watchers said that's exactly what will keep most NetWare users in that camp -- or at least force them to administer mixed NetWare and Microsoft environments.

"The race is no longer about getting a company to choose one or the other," Kusnetzky said "Now, it's all about making them work together."

That's where users and analysts said Novell has a foothold. Able to handle a half-billion objects, NDS tracks not only devices and user names, but also routers, security, applications and switches.

That means administrators can use it to manage more of their burgeoning enterprises from one console.

Windows 2000's Active Directory can't yet handle as many objects as NDS.

Active Directory also can't handle information from non-Windows directories, but NDS can perform those functions with NT, Linux and some Unix servers. Windows 2000 and Active Directory boast far more applications than NetWare, though.

"NDS is a huge piece of the NetWare picture," said Lee Roth, LAN and security services manager at Southwest Airlines Co. in Dallas.

"Our world evolves around the directory. ... People using [Active Directory] will be in for a painful couple of years. NDS is working fine for us. There's no reason to look anywhere else," Roth said.