NT v Netware: A Hard NT To Crack

Everyone?s a winner in the NT/Netware race according to the competitors. Novell and Microsoft both insist that they are wearing the yellow jersey. Bobby Pickering reports

There?s no doubt about it ? Microsoft?s NT 4 is clearly making big strides in the server operating system market. Market researcher Computer Intelligence estimates that it was the number one ?shipping server OS? in 1996 in Europe and the US, ?outshipping all versions of Novell Netware and Unix in the new Intel-based server market?.

Microsoft has recently been quoting figures from IDC, which declare that sales of NT Server grew by 85 per cent in 1996. In response, a senior manager at rival Novell tried to take the wind out of Microsoft?s sails by observing: ?It?s easy to get sales growth like that at the beginning when you?re starting from a very small base. When you?ve got big market share like we have, you can?t have growth in those kinds of numbers.?

Novell points instead to IDC statistics which show that shipments of Netware and Intranetware servers in 1996 totalled 973,000 ? ?a 25 per cent lead over the number two product, Windows NT Server?. What?s even more relevant, says Novell, is its commanding lead in the installed base ? three times as many people connect to a Novell server every day than an NT Server.

Both companies are basing their server marketing strategies on intranet and internet integration ? reflecting growing big business concerns about developing these areas without having to overhaul the whole IT infrastructure.

Microsoft added Internet Information Server (IIS) as a free component within NT 4 ? a smart move which allows it to tantalise corporates with the prospect of getting a Web server up and running ?in minutes?. Last year Novell repositioned itself as an intranet focused company by renaming its flagship brand, Intranetware. To have made an equally dramatic announcement, Microsoft would have needed to rechristen Windows with a more browsery name, like Porthole or Windscreen.

The move was timely, and helped prevent a meltdown in Novell sales as NT 4 Server sales took off. In fact, Novell conceded a fair bit of territory to Microsoft before starting to offer some coherent resistance. Now it starts from the premise that mixed environments with both companies? products are a reality in many organisations.

?The Novell versus Microsoft contest is still a hot topic, but our customers tell us they deploy both companies? products,? says Denice Gibson, VP of Novell?s internet products division. ?The big difference is that Novell provides solutions that enable customers to build heterogeneous intranets.?

The Novell option, so the argument goes, solves network administrators? headaches over Nos integration. ?For example, Novell provides both networking clients and directory management products that integrate NT servers and workstations into Novell networks and intranets without the additional administrative overhead associated with the NT platform,? says Gibson.

NT 4?s shortcomings, many of which Microsoft tacitly acknowledges by outlining the advances that will be coming with NT 5 next year, are giving Novell a window of opportunity by allowing it to offer its customers this year the option of NDS on NT servers. If it can get some critical mass behind NDS, there may be some chance of it surviving once Microsoft?s own Active Directory services eventually arrive.

Microsoft, of course, wants to position NT 5 ? or Cairo ? as the basic infrastructure for corporate intranets, and has been white papering all over the market to prepare the ground for this eventuality. It has come up with a distributed computing model using internet standards such as HTML and TCP/ IP, which aims to offer much more in terms of a programming environment than other client/server environments.

But the key to this distributed computing platform is integrating the networking functions into the operating system, and that means writing Novell out of the equation.

For now, Novell is fighting hard for a place in the sun. Novell?s range of software for ?effectively managing NT? revolves around a series of products that use NDS across the whole heterogeneous environment. Novell Administrator for Windows NT, for instance, aims to eliminate the need to administer NT Server domain-based resources.

?Customers tell us that adding NT domains to their environment increases their network management overhead by approximately 30 per cent,? says Dominic Storey, director of technology for Novell UK. ?With Novell Administrator for NT, they have a single point of control and a single process for managing users and groups. This significantly shelters them from the complexity of domains.?

The big problem with domains, explains Storey, is that they?re not easily scalable, and that is a core problem for NT 4. ?Customers want to reduce the risk involved in scaling network architecture, they don?t want to get to a point where they have to add new servers and suddenly need to increase their hardware investment.?

Microsoft is not doing itself any favours over allaying customer fears about scalability issues. Its answer to the problem ? the Wolfpack clustering initiative ? keeps being delayed. As Storey observes: ?Clustering is a Microsoft white paper, not something that?s out there and that dealers can make money on.?

It?s not just scalability that?s important to customers, says Storey. He sees other big issues in using NT 4 as the core Nos. ?It?s designed as a general purpose operating system, it wasn?t designed for networking. And its management facilities are limited, which is why customers are turning to Managewise.?

Such a barrage of fire suggests that Novell sees NT 4 as a serious threat to its market share. In the UK, according to figures from Romtec, Windows NT has been the best selling network operating system for over six months.

Over at Microsoft, this Cairo is increasingly looking like an entirely different animal from the one first outlined by Bill Gates many moons ago. At briefings earlier this month by Richard Tong, VP for Microsoft desktop and business systems groups, the company outlined a vision of the future that pulls networks, intranets and the internet into a seamless unity.

?Our customers are asking for an integrated infrastructure, internally and externally, that allows them to combine Web pages, structured data and existing legacy data, and groupware,? said Tong.

The Active Platform model which is now emerging indicates that Microsoft has made two big decisions: to integrate the network with the operating system, and to move further away from any pretence that it is committed to open systems.

Tong indicated that NT 5 ? which he said would enter beta this year and ?heavy beta? in 1998 ? will involve a huge jump in NT?s operating system services. NT 5 will incorporate the active directory (?a heterogenous multi-master directory?); a distributed file system for ?stitching together file servers and indexing them with catalogues?; improved storage and ATM management; and greater support for scalability.

If that transition succeeds, the victims will be the existing leading Nos suppliers. But Microsoft will also be asking its customers to make another leap. It wants them to abandon the open standards that underpin the internet and opt for its proprietary technologies ? the Windows OS, Active X and DCom. ?The HTTP protocol is a ubiquitous but weak link on the internet,? said Tong. ?We will use DCom to connect Active X controls on the client with Active X server controls.?

In return for selling your soul to the devil, Microsoft promises you a hell of a good time. The aim is to produce the richest computing environment on the internet by abandoning any pretence of openness.

By stating that it wants to move away from the HTTP protocol, Microsoft has indicated it wants to move away from what is essentially the central protocol of the Web. It?s a big gamble, but probably the best thing that Microsoft can do in the circumstances. Certainly, there will be many developers, resellers and customers that already feel sufficiently tied in with Microsoft ? and confident enough that it has the clout ? to go with the flow.

Microsoft?s continued success will be based on its ability to move towards its goal of being supreme software provider in a step-by-step way. Transitioning its NT customer base will be the key, but it shouldn?t be taken for granted.