A Novell BrainShare '98 dump

I spent last week in beautiful Salt Lake City attending Novell's BrainShare 98 (and I apologize if you tried to e-mail me on the BrainShare 98 network - I gave the wrong user ID in last week's column). While I'm sure you've already read the reports based on last weeks announcements, I'd like to talk about impressions rather than hard news.

Novell CEO Eric Schmidt's opening keynote speech was a far cry from those I witnessed Bob Frankenberg and Ray Noorda deliver at BrainShares past. Those were like typical rah-rah pep rallies and had the aura of preaching to the converted. In contrast, Schmidt seemed to know that most members of his audience were not diehard NetWare fanatics but rather on the fence about which network operating system to buy next.

His speech was an earnest attempt to convince developers, network administrators and consultants that NetWare - and Novell - were still viable in an increasingly NT-centric world. There were few new technology announcements or glitzy demos. Rather, the address was about consolidating Novell's strengths, leveraging Novell Directory Services and creating a heterogeneous network.

All in all, it was a successful presentation. I, for one, came away convinced that under Schmidt, Novell has regained a sense of direction, and a sense of where it fits in today's technology world.

Among the few new announcements, the one I felt had the greatest potential was news that Oracle 8 would ship as part of NetWare beginning this June. Not only will Oracle 8 ship with every box of NetWare 5, but even before that, with NetWare 4.11 (or IntranetWare). It's an announcement I've been waiting for since 1991 - when there were rumors - and I don't understand what took so long. NetWare has been and continues to be the best Intel-based platform for Oracle software, which continues to be the best relational database management system.

Since many copies of NT Server are being sold simply as a platform for SQL Server, the Novell-Oracle alliance gives you a choice. After all, many of the applications you want to run can use either SQL Server or Oracle. And even though Oracle for NetWare has been available for four years, many users have been afraid to go with it for business-critical applications because of the dough required just to test the combination.

In future columns, we'll look more closely at some of the other Novell technologies discussed, such as NDS for NT, ZENWorks and Border Manager.

Kearns, a former network administrator, is a freelance writer and consultant in Austin, Texas. He is also author of the twice-weekly Network World Fusion Focus: Windows NT. He can be reached at wired@vquill.com.