* What does the future hold for Open Enterprise Server?
There are one or two lingering questions about Open Enterprise Server that I keep hearing. One is the question of the future of the product. Since it doesn’t carry a version number or other identifier (“OES 2005,” “OES I,” “OES Premier Edition,” etc.) some people worry that it might be a “one-hit wonder” and then disappear. There’s a good reason for the lack of version information and there’s good news on the futures front.
Remember that OES carries two networking kernels – NetWare and SuSE Linux. The NetWare could be called Version 7 (although it more closely resembles Version 6.5++) while the SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) is Version 9. Rather, it’s Version 9, Service Pack 1.
While you could say OES is Version 1, that leads to numerous problems. First, there’s the well-known marketing problem of trying to sell Version 1.0 of anything. People just have an aversion. But secondly, there’s the actual act of versioning itself – does OES Version 1 refer to all of the components in the box? When SLES 9 Service Pack 2 (SP2) becomes available in a few months, what would you call OES based on it to differentiate from OES 1?
Someone at Novell obviously remembers the problems with NetWare 2.15. At that time, the “red box” (the total of all components in the network package) carried its own version number, as did each component. When the NetWare kernel was modified it got a new version designation but so did the “package.” When any major utility got revised it got a new version number – and so did the total package. This wasn’t helped by Novell’s constant changing of the contents of the package so that a given retailer might have 3 or 4 different package versions (all with different component mixes) of NetWare 2.15. It was a mess and Novell resolved to start doing things differently. And it has, for the most part.
OES Product Manager Charlie Ungashick shared with me the roadmap for OES when I saw him a couple of weeks ago. There are plans for more versions, and there are ways to differentiate. While there’s little news about changes to the NetWare kernel (two reasons: one, it’s hard to improve on something that’s almost perfect and two, Ungashick is a Linux guy) here’s what should happen:
Fall 2004 – SLES 9 ships.
January 2005 – SLES 9 SP1 ships.
February 2005 – Open Enterprise Server (including SLES 9 SP1).
August 2005 – SLES 9 SP2.
September 2005 – OES SP1 including SLES 9 SP2.
February 2006 – SLES Version 10.
February 2006 – OES Service Pack 2.
July 2006 – SLES 10 Service Pack 1.
August 2006 – OES Service Pack 3.
August 2006 – OES (next version, codenamed “Cypress”).
OES does have a future.
