Novell to show off 6 Pack in Las Vegas

Novell will demonstrate the next two versions of NetWare, codenamed 6 Pack and Modesto respectively, at its Brainshare user conference in Las Vegas later this month.

The next release, 6 Pack, will be the follow up to Netware 5, which began shipping in September 1998. Although no launch dates were published, the product will be aimed at multiprocessor servers and will be demonstrated running on Compaq's forthcoming eight-way server.

A representative at Novell said: '6 Pack is aimed at companies that want to take greater advantage of e-commerce. It will offer increased speed and greater scalability.'

Server management functionality will also be improved and the product will include version 8 of Novell Directory Services - unveiled last week - which can manage up to one billion objects.

Modesto, the 64-bit implementation of NetWare announced at last year's Brainshare, will also be on display at the conference.

The representative said Modesto would become available as soon as Intel began shipping the Merced processor. 'The early adopters of Modesto will be our high-end corporate customers,' he said.

He claimed that Novell would be the first vendor to demonstrate an application running on the Intel processor, but refused to divulge any details, although the product is expected to be a directory-based network package.