* After a two-year hiatus, Dave Kearns takes a trip back to BrainShare
After a two-year hiatus, I’ll be heading back to Novell’s BrainShare conference next week. I expect it to be a far different event than my last trip to Salt Lake City in 2002. At that time the “next version” of NetWare was being talked about, the one code-named Nakoma, which eventually became NetWare 6.5.
As Network World Senior Editor Deni Connor wrote in a story about BrainShare 2002: “An ambitious lineup of new initiatives from Novell has customers and analysts wondering how the financially strapped company will manage to also modernize existing bread-and-butter products such as NetWare, GroupWise and ZENworks.” A lot has changed since then, hasn’t it?
Just glancing through the 47 “introduction and overview” sessions (and that’s only one of a dozen different tracks) shows titles such as:
* Windows vs. Linux: Getting past the FUD
* SuSE Linux Retail Solution Overview and Futures
* Understanding How Open Source Really Works and What It Means To You At Your Company
* Where’s the Beef? Calculating Linux ROI
* Intro to Open Source: Licensing, IP, and Copyright Considerations
Now there are still plenty of sessions on older, more familiar products – even a couple of NetWare 6.5 sessions – but Novell’s new embrace of all things open source will be evident in every area of the conference. In fact, Novell has even gone so far as to publish a “First time at BrainShare?” guide (https://www.novell.com/brainshare/newcomers.html), for those to whom “NetWare” is a foreign language! It offers such helpful hints as:
1. Register!
2. Get a hotel
3. Book your flight
Evidently, the open source community isn’t quite as worldly-wise as old-time NetWare fans. (That’s a joke, folks, no nasty e-mails, please!)
I’m hoping to find out a lot more about Open Enterprise Server, the future of eDirectory, and the roadmap for collaboration, management and security. If you’ll also be in Salt Lake City, stop me in the hallway and let me know your thoughts on the company, the software and the direction both are taking. In turn, I promise a long look at the show’s events, announcements and consequences in the weeks to come.
