The end is near for Novell's aging NetWare 3.x and 4.x platforms, two of the last remnants of the company's proprietary networking roots.
Since shipping NetWare 5.0, the first native IP version of its network operating system, in September 1998, Novell has fought a war on two fronts: embracing the openness of the Internet while continuing support for customers entrenched in the IPX (Internetwork Packet Exchange) and NLM (NetWare Loadable Module) architectures of older NetWare versions.
That's about to end. On October 31, Novell will end NetWare 3.2 sales -- concluding an 11-year run for the product. Support for the 3.x line will cease shortly thereafter.
The company hopes to make a similar "end of life" announcement regarding NetWare 4.2 within the next 90 days, officials said last week.
"IPX and NLMs are dead. NetWare is not," Carl Ledbetter, the company's chief technology officer, said in a phone interview.
The journey from NOS to services
It's the strongest message yet from Novell officials in their attempt to articulate the company's transition from network operating system developer to Internet services company. Company executives say they now have their eyes focused only on the future, not the past, in their latest attempt to jump-start revenue growth.
Officials adamantly maintain such a forward-looking strategy includes both NetWare and NDS eDirectory, the company's directory services platform. But they admit the message at times has been muddled. Their latest attempt at clearing up the confusion: a car analogy.
"The way we think about NetWare now, it becomes like the transmission of your car," said Ledbetter. "eDirectory becomes the visible brand -- the face to a lot of the things we do. It acts as the authentication engine for what goes on the Internet. NetWare becomes the underlying, absolutely reliable piece of transmission that makes the engine work."
With Novell positioning NetWare as more of a behind-the-scenes -- albeit critical -- component of an Internet infrastructure, Ledbetter was asked why officials have been drumming up publicity around a two-year NetWare product road map.
"We want to make sure our customers don't get spooked," he said. "We have almost 90 million seats out there. There are a lot of NetWare users who are just networking geeks. They want to know there's a real road map for that."
"A lot of the road map," he added, "is to make NetWare more of a factor in the Internet environment."
A Novell spokesman said he could not estimate how much of Novell's installed base still uses NetWare 3.x or 4.x. Not surprisingly, sales of the aging platforms are dwindling. For its third fiscal quarter ending July 31, Novell said revenues from pre-directory products fell 42 percent year-over-year, to US$16 million.
NetWare 3.x and 4.x aren't the only outdated products on the chopping block. Older versions of GroupWise, BorderManager Authentication Services, NetWare for SAA and NDS will be discontinued over the next 20 months.
"Anything that's not fully directory-based is going away," said Ledbetter.
Cutting the cord
The lifecycle strategy doesn't mean Novell is de-emphasising what it still considers key products, officials said.
For example, NetWare for SAA, Novell's host connectivity software, "is still a high priority," said Jim Tanner, director of product management for NetWare. "We are planning end of life for the older (NetWare for SAA) products and moving (those customers) up to the newer (versions)."
In effect, anything tied specifically to NetWare will either cease to exist or be extended to other environments.
"GroupWise, for example, frequently exists in environments in NetWare shops," said Ledbetter. "We'll make it a far more general platform."
As part of those efforts, Novell is expanding client access to the groupware offering. Earlier this week, the company announced GroupWise Wireless 1.1, which lets users access their mailbox wirelessly from any Web-enabled device.
Cutting the cord on older products fits into Novell's stated plan of using less resources -- including fewer people -- in an effort to cut costs and refocus on key growth areas.
A key unresolved issue is the company's pricing model. As it moves away from traditional software licenses, Novell is mulling a couple of proposals on usage-based pricing, Ledbetter said. Nothing's been decided yet, he added, while acknowledging such a business model is critical to Novell's future.
"A year from now," he said, "we are going to be regarded as a company whose future principal business is on usage-based, transaction-based Net services software."
