I mentioned last week that Novell's BorderManager had all the appearances of a dead product that simply hadn't been buried yet. The "current" edition being sold is Version 3.8 which, I pointed out, was first released almost four years ago! Aside from Microsoft, no major vendor goes that long between point releases (i.e., 3.8 to 3.9) of a product.
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Still, to paraphrase Mark Twain, rumors of the death of BorderManager may be premature. A couple of astute readers pointed me to an announcement from former colleague and longtime BorderManager guru (he wrote the book!) Craig Johnson. Really, he did write the book - "Beginner's Guide to BorderManager 3.x" - THE book on BorderManager, by the way. If you buy BorderManager 3.8, you'll find included an electronic abridged edition of the book - it's better than anything Novell has published!
Back to the announcement, though. A short time ago, Johnson posted this to his Web site: "BorderManager 3.9 Lives!!!"
Well, maybe. Johnson's note says that Gonzalo Morera, "one of the true 'good guys' at Novell" is soliciting user input "as to the features and improvements they would like to see going from 3.8 to 3.9." Significantly, Johnson adds: "Whether or not all features requested make it into 3.9 depends a lot on the amount of engineering resources it will require."
I'd be more sanguine about this if two conditions weren't noticeable in Johnson's note. First, Morera - although a wonderful person in his own right - isn't involved with product management or product marketing, usually the areas that will solicit user input for new versions of products. He's actually a technical support engineer - albeit a very good one. Now good product managers will enlist the aid of TSE's to discover what users want in a new version, but it's rare for the TSE to be empowered to go off on their own to do so.
Secondly, Morera is not using his Novell e-mail account to solicit this input (rather, you're invited to write to Morera's Gmail address with your suggestions). Again, it's not unheard of to set up a special mailbox for processing user input on a specific issue (such as an upgrade's features) but it does raise an eyebrow or two. (Well, I've only got two eyebrows!)
Dave Kearns is a writer and consultant in Silicon Valley. He's written a number of books including the (sadly) now out of print "Peter Norton's Complete Guide to Networks." His musings can be found at Virtual Quill.
Kearns is the author of two Network World Newsletters: Windows Networking Strategies, and Identity Management. Comments about these newsletters should be sent to him at these respective addresses: windows@vquill.com, identity@vquill.com .
Kearns provides content services to network vendors: books, manuals, white papers, lectures and seminars, marketing, technical marketing and support documents. Virtual Quill provides "words to sell by..." Find out more by e-mail.
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