Novell's Approach to Network Operating Systems - Essay Example

" It is mentioned by Breidenbach that NDS is now available on Hewlett-Packard's HP-UX, IBM's AIX, Caldera's Linux, and The Santa Cruz Operation's Unix, Sun Solaris, and IBM's S/390. NT is already supported by NDS, but only in environments with at least one NetWare server. A version of NDS that runs directly on NT without NetWare was due out in the summer of 1999; it would enable users to build pure NT networks but still employ NDS. This approach of Novell differs a lot from Microsoft's Active Directory Technology that is available only for the Windows platform.

As a result, Novell's NDS can be implemented on various operating systems but do not help to promote Novell's operating system Novell Netware, while software products of Microsoft run only in the Microsoft Windows environment. Another distinguishing feature of Novell's approach to network operating systems is a collaboration with switch vendors. As Breidenbach writes, part of Novell's strategy for boosting NDS' role in enterprise nets is getting switch vendors on board. The company has been scoring big with the likes of Lucent, Nortel Networks, and Cisco announcing varying degrees of support for NDS.

At the same time, Microsoft does not work with switch vendors so close.2 Given all this good technical stuff, why is Novell close to bankruptcy and Microsoft Networks are taking over the planet I think that the main reason for Novell's difficult financial situation is a thoughtless marketing strategy. It was a mistake trying to enter the desktop operating systems market. Failure in this attempt had caused a loss of trust of many potential customers. Breidenbach writes about this in the article. "Novell was on top and got dethroned," says high-tech marketing guru Geoffrey Moore.

"When that happens, the market is extremely reluctant to re-enfranchise such a company, even if it has the best product."And the number of ISVs is meaningless," Moore adds. "The issue is what the power players are doing.