Throughout most of its history, Novell relied on the NetWare operating system to power its sales. But under relentless attack from Microsoft, Novell saw its share of the server operating system market shrivel away.
The company has since shifted its strategy to take advantage of Linux's growing popularity with enterprise customers. Novell now sees its future bound up with the development of NetWare applications and services that run on this upstart operating system.
But while management continues to stress its continued support for NetWare, the question of its flagship product lingers. Indeed, Novell customers have expressed concern that the company's new Linux focus might result in the abandonment of NetWare. CNET News.com recently spoke with Chris Stone, Novell's vice chairman, to find out what the future holds -- for Linux and for NetWare.
Are customers worried about the direction that Novell and NetWare is headed?
Customers don't necessarily buy OSes -- they buy the services on top. In many cases the reason that, say, Microsoft is so successful is because they differentiate themselves with the Office application suite. We didn't do that.
So now we have a chance on a brand new platform to get it right, to do it the right way -- the complete stack. And the openness of Linux is so much freer. They can try something, and if they don't like it, they can try something else. They don't get locked. And that's why you see such a burning desire -- both from an economic as well as a technical perspective -- to move to Linux.
It's also a common infrastructure upon which to build applications and services.
Which is why we're going there. What you see us doing is a very strategic move. In April, we announced that we were going to take NetWare services -- file, print, directory, et cetera -- and we were going to place them on Linux and we called that NetWare 7. So that should be evidence that NetWare is not going anywhere, but continuing.
Are you saying the applications and services are going to continue to be developed in the future, whereas it is uncertain what will happen to the NetWare OS?
The NetWare OS will go on forever. That was my point: That OSes never die.
