By John Geralds, VNU
Net
Novell will re-position NetWare, its flagship networking
operating system, and BorderManager, its internet connectivity
software, as part of its battle for market share with Windows and
Linux.
Speaking this week as the company announced disappointing
financial results, Novell officials said they no longer refer to
NetWare as a network operating system (OS) but as a “platform” for
storage, database, printer, email and directory services. Novell
also now prefers the word storage to describe NetWare file
services.
Novell said it would deliver a symmetric multiprocessing version
of NetWare later this year that lets users tie together multiple
server processors. Novell will also ship a 64-bit version of
NetWare for graphic and computer intensive applications, as soon as
Intel delivers its 64-bit Itanium processor.
It also expects to deliver a 32-bit version of NetWare for
multiprocessor servers in the first or second quarter of next year
that will include processor failover, selective processor matching
and DFS support.
The company is hoping to compete more competitively against
OSs like Linux and Windows. According to market research firm IDC,
Linux replaced Novell’s NetWare in the number two spot in new
server OS shipments in 1999, and Microsoft’s software is
expected to retain the top spot in new shipments of server
software. IDC said Novell will ship one million NetWare 5.x servers
this year, up from 580,000 last year.
Novell said the BorderManager team is considering positioning
the software package for the proxy server, security server and
virtual private network markets. Contrary to the rumours, Novell
said it has no plans to break BorderManager into multiple products.
Instead, Novell is working to fine tune BorderManager’s ability to
fill multiple security needs.
During a conference call, Novell chief executive Eric Schmidt
addressed questions of a possible takeover by IBM. “People love to
generate rumours. It’s important to consider shareholder value, but
we don’t have any plans specific enough to talk about,” he
said.
Novell tiptoed past third quarter estimates, earning $8.6m, or
three cents a share, on sales of $27m. First Call consensus
expected the software developer to earn two cents a share in the
quarter.
Company officials said they will take further steps in the
fourth quarter to cut back expenses, but did not provide any
details.
Novell recently reorganised itself into three business units –
appliances, directory services and NetWare – to streamline
operations. The ever-struggling company had previously been on a
comeback trail.