Network operating systems Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Network operating systems - stress ExampleNovell was licensing Novell Directory Services to on the whole comers, the idea being to seed the market and make NDS a de facto measure that will increase demand for Novells directory-enabled applications. While these licensing deals didnt expected to produce much revenue at this point, that powerfulness change down the road if third parties start including NDS in products instead of building their own directories. As Robert Harbison says, Thats where Microsoft is really great. Microsoft shipped NT 4.0 with a sampler CD full of third-party applications from its ISVs. Novell has to do a lot more to jockstrap advocate NDS applications.Distinguishing feature of Novells come out to network operating systems is understanding of importance of middleware technologies, for example NDS unparalleled cross-platform oppose is particularly appealing to Tivoli. Microsoft has traditionally misunderstood the importance of certain middleware technolo gies and how important it is for them to be cross-platform in nature, says turkey cock Bishop. Active Directory is fine for pure NT shops, but Novells NDS strategy has some real appeal in the more heterogeneous environments that we target.It is mentioned by Breidenbach that NDS is now available on Hewlett-Packards HP-UX, IBMs AIX, Calderas Linux and The Santa Cruz Operations Unix, Sun Solaris and IBMs S/390. NT is already supported by NDS, but only in environments with at least one NetWare server. A version of NDS that runs directly on NT without NetWare was due out in summer of 1999 it would enable users to build pure NT networks but still work NDS. This approach of Novell differs a lot from Microsofts Active Directory Technology that is available only for Windows platform. As a result, Novells NDS dirty dog be implemented on various operating systems but do not help to promote Novells operating system Novell Netware, while software products of Microsoft run only in Microsoft Wi ndows environment.Another distinguishing feature of Novells approach to network operating systems is collaboration with switch vendors. As Breidenbach writes, part of Novells strategy for boosting NDS role in try nets is getting switch vendors on board. The company has been scoring big with the likes of Lucent, Nortel Networks and Cisco announcing varying degrees of support for NDS. At the same time Microsoft do not work with switch vendors so close.2 Given all this good technical stuff, why is Novell close to bankruptcy and Microsoft Networks are taking over the planet I think that the main reason of Novells difficult financial situation is thoughtless marketing strategy. It was a drift trying to enter desktop operating systems market. Failure in this attempt had caused loss of trust of many a(prenominal) potential customers. Breidenbach writes about this in the article. Novell was on top and got dethroned, says high-tech marketing guru Geoffrey Moore. When that happens, the mar ket is extremely loth(p) to reenfranchise such a company, even if it has the best product.And the number of ISVs is meaningless, Moore adds. The issue is what the power players are doing. Cisco and Microsoft ease up the strongest positions, so a solution that doesnt have their endorsement isnt likely to get very