* Sad news from the U.K. for Novell
The U.K.’s Coventry University has been a large NetWare user for many years. Its 18,000 students and staff have enjoyed the NetWare environment since before the school became a university back in 1992. Thirty servers currently handle the school’s networking needs. Sadly, that’s about to change.
According to a story on the U.K.’s Silicon.com https://software.silicon.com/applications/0,39024653,39150467,00.htm, “Coventry University is replacing its ageing Novell Netware infrastructure with Microsoft products in a £500,000 deal.” That’s bad, but the thing that made me wince is when the story said that this switch “…will also boost the technical skills of its IT staff.”
Maybe what they mean is that you need to be more technically savvy to keep a Windows server up and running. After all, Colin Bruce, IT manager at Coventry University, is quoted as saying: “We had no Windows experience at all – people used it on the desktop but that was about it.” Perhaps they’re in for a rude awakening.
What really bothers me about this story, though, is that academia has always been a stronghold of NetWare ever since it was begun as a school project at Brigham Young University. The educational community has also been among the strongest supporters of Linux over the years. You’d think that if any organization would make the move from NetWare to SuSE Linux it would be a college or university.
But the real problem, as I mentioned in Network World a few weeks ago http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2005/062705kearns.html?rl is that it appears that no one at Coventry University really understands what Novell is doing with NetWare and its constituent products. Among the reasons given for the migration, according to the Silicon.com story:
* Access to shared online calendars and diaries.
* Faster log-in for users.
* Greater levels of resilience.
* Puts in place the infrastructure to support single sign-on.
* Puts in place the infrastructure to support remote working by staff and students.
Bruce further says that the existing infrastructure was limiting the choice of software available to departments. “It was felt that we were being constrained by the NetWare environment,” he is quoted as saying.
Now I know, and hopefully you know, that NetWare, eDirectory, GroupWise and the rest of the Novell environment can do all of those things and more, and do them better than the Microsoft products. Why doesn’t Bruce, the University’s IT manager, know that?
My guess is that he sees a lot more of his Microsoft sales and marketing people than he does those from Novell. And that’s sad.
