If I were a Novell shareholder I would be pushing for them to divi up thier mountain of cash and close up shop.

The current stategy of trying to get thier customer base for an ancient directory service to switch to an OS they can get for free doesnt seem lik a long term winner and I would be surprised if the company ever made a profit again.

Given that Novell, possibly the most schizophrenic company ever, is losing money and has become such a minor player they sound more like a cottage industry - how much longer is this farce going to go on? Given the fact that Novell was the major player in file and print and directory services it is astonishing what they've become. Now Novell is nothing more than a byword for hasbeen.

Lots of large companys use novell's e-Directory solution as an alternative to AD. (a lot of people think its better) For them they consider that they are buying the product (e -Directory) and not the OS. The fact that Novell now runs on linux is great for them as for the most part it means they can standardise the IT estate between windows / linux with enterprise support available for both. This means they can get their admins to specialise in windows and linux rather than having to faff with netware as well.

>Lots of large companys use novell's e-Directory solution as an alternative to AD. (a lot of people think its better)

Yes, it's much better imo. We're still migrating away from eDirectory here. Curiously enough, Novell still, to this day, doesn't provide a Netware Client for Linux that isn't unusable crap.

You can authenticate to your SUSE workstation through AD, though. Novell was once great, now they're a pathetic joke. May MS follow in their dottering footsteps :-D

A Happy Ex-Netware admin

"If I were a Novell shareholder I would be pushing for them to divi up thier mountain of cash and close up shop."

Riiight, and I'm sure you equally feel that you should be the recipient of some of that cash. Come to think of it, that almost makes as much sense as your opinion. Probably a good thing that you aren't a shareholder.

"The current stategy of trying to get thier customer base for an ancient directory service to switch to an OS they can get for free doesnt seem lik a long term winner and I would be surprised if the company ever made a profit again."

First, you can't switch from a directory to an operating system, different technologies. Secondly, Linux (no matter what the flavour) is FREE (let that sink in for a bit), yes dude, LINUX IS FREE.

Either way, fact is fact (according to the article):

- Growth in 3 strategic areas

- Double digit year over year growth in Linux

- Exceeded market expectations

Funny how technologists (as well as non-technical decision makers [to which I've always considered to be an oxymoron]) who used Novell to once solve a critical problem and helped their organizations cut costs criticize Novell based on emotion and continue to buy (and in some cases try to implement) mass marketed insecure technologies, tolerate downtime on email, and STILL pay billions of dollars into that investment.

Also, to date, the so called "ancient directory service" continues to be the most scalable directory in the world with an implementation that holds over 40 million objects and over delivers on all SLAs.