Novell or Microsoft ???

Jaqmar2001

Which of the two, Novell or Microsoft, are more popular in the UK? Which of the two does most companies use in the UK? Is that a fair question or, is Novell really on their way back?

malcybood

We still use Novell although Microsoft are miles in front in respect of user base. The biggest thing stopping us migrating is the £2million licensing fees. In the UK you will still find Novell mainly in the Health, education sectors and some councils.

Everybody seems to be partnering with Microsoft & IBM though as opposed to Novell. An example is Nortel......we chose Nortel VOIP 4 years ago over Cisco as one of the main reasons that some of their product set integrated with Novell Groupwise where Cisco didn't.

We had some guys in from Nortel to give us an update on the product roadmap last week and there is a strategic partnership with MS / Nortel for unified comms but Novell seems to be dropped.

Netware 6.5 which most company's running Novell will be on at present is only going to be supported until 2015 also before Suse OES takes over so I guess the existence of Novell largely will depend on how widely adopted this technology is.

Here's the Novell product lifecycle

http://support.novell.com/lifecycle/lcSearchResults.jsp?st=-1&sl=-1&sg=1

Jaqmar2001

Thanks for the reply. Looking at the Novell link you provided, it really gives me an insight of where Novell would be in a few years time.