Sybase dismisses vendor bundle

Sybase has thrown cold water on Novell's bundling deal with Oracle, claiming it is just a marketing stunt in a shrinking sector.

This week at BrainShare, Novell announced it would bundle a five-user version of Oracle 8 with versions of Netware 4.11 and above.

But Andy Bellinger, UK product marketing manager at Sybase, claimed the deal will not increase sales for Oracle, which supports a number of network protocols.

'Novell is a second or third-tier platform, and all Oracle is doing is saying it will support its current customer base. It will not win significant new customers with this deal,' he said.

Bellinger added that Sybase continues to support Novell, but said the Netware environment was no longer a leading force in the market. 'Novell is not a primary platform. Market share in Novell is static or falling away to Windows and TCP/IP,' he said.

Meanwhile, Novell has outlined three stages in its clustering roadmap.

The first, dubbed Orion I, will ship in the second quarter. It offers two-node clustering for high availability. In the fourth quarter, the company plans to introduce Orion II, which supports up to seven nodes.

Both will be sold as Netware 5 add-ons.

Orion III, due some time in 1999, will allow up to 16 Netware servers to be clustered. It will offer dynamic load balancing and a single-system image.