Stories by: Dave Kearns

It's deja vu. I got a note from Oracle's Technology media marvel (and soon to be media mother) Rebecca Hahn touting a new study, commissioned by Oracle, from the Performance Engineering Group at Persistent Systems. It's titled "2 Billion Entry Directory Benchmark." I thought I was back in the 90's!

I've got two new products to tell you about today both of which should ease network managers' headaches - you could call them (late) Christmas presents, but you have to buy them for yourself.

That Novell-Microsoft agreement and deal will simply not go away. In reaction to the huge outpouring of criticism about it, Microsoft commissioned a survey and Novell actively participated in distributing the results.

This year Microsoft introduced a new incarnation of Windows Genuine Advantage which would gradually disable Windows Vista installations as long as Microsoft thought the copies were not "genuine." As expected, there was a bit of an outcry especially as the WGA used with Windows XP had been such a disaster that Microsoft was actually the target of class-action lawsuits seeking relief from the draconian desktop shutdowns it imposed on wrongly accused counterfeit versions of the operating system.

A friend of mine died the other day. A friend of mine, and a friend of yours, too. You may never have met Ray Noorda, never have seen him speak or read anything he wrote. Heck, you may never have been in the same state as him at any time. But if you've used NetWare, then Ray Noorda was your friend.

Rumors and discussion continue to swirl around Novell's BorderManager product. There are rumblings that a new version, 3.9, will be forthcoming after the product had been virtually declared dead.

Last week the press, even the tech press that should be friendly to Novell and open source, headlined the fact that 3,000 out of 5,000 Novell employees had the capability to boot Windows on their computers. One typical headline read: "Novell's shift to open source makes slow progress."

Last December we shared with you news that NetWare would become a virtual service running on top of the Linux engine in Open Enterprise Server. I've now been able to track down, with the help of Network World Senior Editor Deni Connor, the slideshow outlining the OES roadmap confirming these plans for NetWare.

Novell has taken the initial steps to help you gain familiarity with Linux. A few months ago, in an announcement that was almost overlooked by the press, Novell announced at BrainShare Europe a free online course called "Bridging NetWare skills to Novell Open Enterprise Server for Linux."

Oracle's November purchase of Thor Technologies and OctetString - along with its previous acquisition of Oblix - puts the company into the top rank of identity management vendors.

When SuSE Linux founder Hubert Mantel announced his resignation from Novell ast week, he became the third former SuSE executive to leave in the past six months. There was much speculation as to why Mantel left, which was sparked, in part, by the manner of his leaving. He announced his resignation via a Linux e-mail discussion list, claiming that SuSE had changed so much it was no longer the company he had founded 13 years before.