Novell preps software for year 2000

Year 2000 is fast approaching, but Novell, Inc. says its customers have no need to panic.

Within the next two months, the company will formally announce plans to ensure that its network products work even after the final second ticks off in 1999.

Novell is testing all of its products for year 2000 compliance and plans to issue any necessary software patches by the end of 1998 for NetWare 4.X, IntranetWare, GroupWise, ManageWise and others. A final decision has not been made, but the company probably will test NetWare 3.X for compliance given that it is an older product still widely installed, said Denice Gibson, executive vice president of Novell's product group.

Additionally, all products shipped in 1998 will be built from the ground up with year 2000 in mind, Gibson said. The new products will include the upcoming Moab revision of Novell's flagship IntranetWare operating system, she said.

Impending doom?

The coming of year 2000 has raised concern among IT industry members that computers and software not designed to recognize the millennium change will crash or go haywire. A year 2000 problem would be particularly bad for customers counting on Novell software for directory synchronization and group collaboration, where timing is everything.

Year 2000 issues raised to date have largely centered on older Cobol code that does not take the millennium change into account. Industry observers say that if companies do not change all time and date references to reflect a four-digit field such as "2001" vs. the existing two-digit code that presupposes a prefix of "19," the result will wreak havoc on business applications running on mainframes and other large systems.

But given that network operating systems and applications have grown to count on time and date stamps for capabilities such as collaboration and directory synchronization, companies also should look at whether their networks will be affected by the rollover to a new century, said Sheri Anderson, senior vice president and chief information officer at Novell. She is heading Novell's Project 2000 initiative, which recognizes that the company is one of its biggest customers with 600 servers and 35,000 user accounts.

"A worst-case scenario is that your whole network could stop running if you don't know what the date is," Anderson said.

Novell's operating system software and groupware applications allow data to be processed in more than one location and synchronized over the network. "So we have to make sure that synchronization is going to work, that it is not going disregard certain messages because it doesn't understand their date format or synchronize them inappropriately so that you are sending garbage over your network," Anderson said.

A time and date stamp also is a mechanism employed by Novell Directory Services to provide validated access to network resources.

NetWare 4.X customer Kelly Overgaard was alarmed that the year 2000 issue could affect more than just the company's PC hardware and business applications. "[Network software] is an added layer that I am hoping Novell can just resolve for me up front," said Overgaard, LAN and desktop services manager with Sun-Diamond Growers of California in Pleasanton.

Novell has worked with Utah-based Key Labs, Inc. on a test suite that will certify whether all timing and synchronization software within NetWare 4.X, GroupWise and ManageWise will be affected by the year 2000 issue. Novell will first test the products internally for compliance and then have Key Labs and possibly other third parties verify the tests. All compliant products will carry a year 2000 compliance label on the Novell red box, Anderson said.