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March 22, 2006
What a contrast
Two apparently unrelated articles from two different sources happened to appear adjacent to each other in my news reader:
From Slashdot:
For the second year in a row, Microsoft has waited for Novell's annual BrainShare show to start before claiming a huge customer migration win off NetWare and onto Windows. According to this article Microsoft says that there were more than 1.8 million successful commercial sector migrations in 2005 alone, and a total of 3.3 million customers migrated over the past two years. It has also launched a new program to lure customers in the education and state and local government sectors off NetWare and onto Windows.
From The Register:
Novell will support Netware, the veteran, nay ancient, network operating system, until at least 2015. By which time, presumably everyone who ever used the system will be retired or dead.
Speaking yesterday at the company's annual Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City, Utah, Novell CEO Jack Messman said the firm would support users of the latest (6.5) version of the network operating system software "as long as customers want to run it."
Netware users are not as plentiful as they once were, but they still represent an income stream of sorts for Novell. Which is just as well, as sales for its new flagship software, the SUSE Linux distro are not cutting much mustard, especially when compared with mighty Red Hat.
Given the reliability of Netware and the incredible support offered by Novell, I would guess there are going to be 3.3 million disappointed customers out there.
Posted by Ozguru at March 22, 2006 06:00 AM
