Microsoft Claims 3.3 million NetWare Migration Win

Anonymous Coward writes "For the second year in a row, Microsoft has waited for Novell's annual BrainShare show to start before claiming a huge customer migration win off NetWare and onto Windows. According to this article Microsoft says that there were more than 1.8 million successful commercial sector migrations in 2005 alone, and a total of 3.3 million customers migrated over the past two years. It has also launched a new program to lure customers in the education and state and local government sectors off NetWare and onto Windows." Novell's comments are enlightening about where they see themselves within the market.

Welcome to 2006!

[XorNand]

And in other news today: Apple smuggly announced that the iPod is greatly outselling 8-track tape players.

I'm Novell certified and have (had) been admining Netware boxes for over a decade. But I haven't touched one in more than three years. NDS is worlds better than Active Directory, especially in a true enterprise-sized installation. However, the supposed debate is moot in 2006. Netware got clobbered like Netscape Navigator did. Too many software vendors have stopped writing versions of their products for Netware, and too many hardware vendors don't write drivers. I commend Novell for trying to turn their ship around and not resigning themselves to annilation. Their committment to SuSE is a very wise move, IMHO. So enough with the marketdroid strutting already. This hasn't been news since the last century.

Re:The MS thugs are at it again

[drinkypoo]

This really illustrates the greed inherent in the capitalistic model. It has nothing in particular to do with Microsoft. If Novell were cleaning Microsoft's clock, they'd probably do the same thing. Microsoft's only sin [in this case] is that they have ammo while Novell's clip is empty.

Welcome to...

[amcdiarmid]

How many migrations from:
Windows 95?
Windows 98?
Windows NT 3.5?
Windows NT 3.51?
Windows NT 4.0?
Windows 2000?
Citrix Winframe?
Citrix Metaframe?
Citrix Metaframe XP? (really, what kind of bs name extension is this?)
Citrix NetScaler?

Inquiring minds want to know

Here Is Why

[Anonymous Coward]

Read the first comment [newsforge.com] on this Newsforge Brainshare report.

When your CNE's are that frustrated, it's no wonder.

Office isn't *that* expensive...

[everphilski]

Office XP Standard (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook) is $73 on Pricewatch, 2003 is $77.

Re:Insightful??

[Alcimedes]

The reason I say this is I've watched Novell lose out at our University for NO reason other than it's not MS. Novell can do more than the AD system they're trying to roll out, but they're going with AD anyway because it's the MS system.

When we asked the decision makers why, it was because we're already paying for the MS software, so we might as well use it.

It's sad. I'm not happy to see Novell going away, it offer tools that MS's AD doesn't, but it's gone, and gone because of marketing.

M$ = IBM of 60s

[glsen_az]

Back in the day (well, the prehistoric computing day), IBM was the "Yes, sir!" company -- we're talking the 60s and 70s here. If you bought IBM products for the corporate server farm, you deserved a real, "Attaboy!", "Job well done," "Can't go wrong choosing IBM." It's this same kind of dull-thinking, clone mentality that is the mindset public schools are facing today.

The school district I work in is stumbling toward Microsoft oblivion from our fabulous Netware systems. We pay a tad shy of $40K/year for unlimited Netware servers, client software, GroupWise (I like it a whole lot more than any Outlook), ZENWorks for desktop management/policies/imaging. We haven't been allowed to even try using any of the other Novell tools that are included in our School License Agreement, namely iFolder, NDPS, easy inventory management. Mostly because if the users got a taste of iFolder and being able to access their school server storage securely from home, there'd be no way they'd allow a migration to continue.

There really is no confirmed $$ amount for what it will cost to migrate all the servers in the school district to Windows 2003, set up multiple M$ Exchange boxes to replace the single GroupWise box, there is no plan for a desktop management package because the licensing fees are out of this world, and imaging software (probably a seat license for Symantec Ghost) is an unknown cost factor to replace the fantastic ZENWorks.

It's all a marketing thing -- the IT director (and I use the term loosely) has been simply sold a bill of goods and has no clue how to finish the task or even get any distance along the path.

In the meantime, we're a half Netware 6.x/half M$ Server 2003 district with everyone quivering in fear: "Will my school be next to migrate?"

The servers just don't break and I've been quasi-admining the servers on my campus since 1996 and 3.11. I dread going back to Windows policy management after working with ZENWorks for so long. I would rather just be running SuSE servers and desktops and be done with the whole Windows thing, but schools feel the children can't be deprived of the M$ experience.