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Bruce Greenblatt
Novell, Inc., is the worlds leading network software provider, connecting people to other people and the information they need and enabling them to act on it anytime, any place. The companys software products provide the distributed infrastructure, network services, and advanced network access required to make networked information and pervasive computing an integral part of everyones daily life.
Todays Novell was born from a dying hardware manufacturer called Novell Data Systems. When Novell Data Systems experienced problems with its workstation hardware business during the early 1980s, its source of venture capital, Safeguard Scientific, began looking for someone to salvage the company. Ray Noorda was invited to take a look at the company. He was not impressed by the hardware products, but he did take an interest in the ideas of SuperSet, a foursome of software development consultants that Novell Data Systems had hired in October 1981 to network its CPM Z80 microprocessors. SuperSet and Ray shared the same networking vision. Distributed computing systems could make inroads into applications traditionally implemented on minicomputers and mainframes.
SuperSet demonstrated their newly created file server operating system at COMDEX 82 using nine networked PCs. Ray Noorda stopped by their booth to take a look. By early 1983, Novell Data Systems was reorganized as Novell, Inc., and Ray Noorda joined the company as president. It did not take Ray long to change the focus of the new company to networking. Novell introduced what would become its flagship product later in 1983. The first version of NetWare was network file server software based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor. The company quickly began porting NetWare to other vendors hardware. SuperSet, with the help of Novell engineers, soon rewrote NetWare in 286 mode and added a variety of revolutionary system fault-tolerant features such as disk mirroring. The revamped product was demonstrated at COMDEX 85 the same year the company went public.
In 1994 Ray Noorda stepped down as Novells president and CEO, naming Bob Frankenberg as his successor. Bob articulated Novells pervasive computing vision, defining the business of Novell as connecting people with other people and the information they need, enabling them to act on it any time, any place. This vision centers on the idea that soon the smart global network will be as indispensable and easy to access as a telephone providing a near-instant digital link to global network resources. It will be as if all businesses, from the smallest mom-and-pop shop to the largest enterprise, are branch offices of one gigantic worldwide virtual corporation.
Novell is working with other leading technology companies to build the infrastructure to fulfill this global networking vision. As the world leader in networking software, Novell has the technology, partnerships, and strategy to make the networked world a reality. Novells strategy for forging the future of networking rests on three basic principles: build smart networks; give users network access any time, from any place; and enable heterogeneous networks to be easily connected.
To make the vision real, Novell is now creating systems and services that build the infrastructure for the smart global network; open programmer interfaces that will enable the network to integrate heterogeneous applications, systems, and platforms from all types of developers; and products that enable universal access to the global network. At the core of Novells strategy for building a smart global network is todays NetWare 4.1, the fastest, most reliable, most scalable, and best-supported networking environment available. NetWare is the ideal platform on which to build smart network services, and the company has started with NetWare Directory Services (NDS). With more than 10 million users, NDS is quickly emerging as the de ßΣ standard for networks worldwide.
Other smart networking services are available alongside NDS, including file and print, security, messaging, transaction processing, licensing, management, remote access, host connectivity, database, routing, and telephony. More services will follow soon, including distributed objects and electronic commerce services. Linking todays 2.5 million separate networks into one global network community is the role of NetWare Connect Services (NCS), which became available in late 1995. Through Novells partnerships with communications providers like AT&T, NCS will enable NetWare sites to connect their NetWare LANs securely to any other NetWare LANs, virtually anywhere in the world. Integrated Internet connections will effectively eliminate the distinction between the net and the users LAN.
To put NetWare networks directly onto the Internet, customers are able to add a robust NetWare Internet Server that is integrated with NetWare services for the most manageable Internet connection and Web publishing system available. Today, it is hard to develop software that takes full advantage of the network and almost impossible to develop software that takes advantage of a heterogeneous network. Net2000, Novells revolutionary new set of APIs, will remove these obstacles by giving developers a simple, universal programming interface to the diverse global network. Compatible with developers favorite toolsets, Net2000 will make building solutions for a global network as easy as building stand-alone desktop solutions today.
As powerful as network applications will be, many people today do not need or want to use a PC. Novells Nested NetWare extends network access and services to any device with an embedded microprocessor, regardless of its architecture. For instance, one day soon the Nested NetWare computer inside a car will notify the driver by E-mail when it is time for a tune-up. A Nested NetWare vending machine will report its daily stock levels electronically. A Nested NetWare interactive television will connect viewers to the Internet.
With the next century less than 3 years away, networks will become the principal transport medium for global commerce, content, and ideas. By the turn of the century, Novell technology will enable 1 billion connections around the world. And we will all see the biggest boom in productivity since the invention of the personal computer. Clearly, the era of the network is upon us. And Novell is already well down the road toward a world of pervasive computing that connects people with other people and the information they need enabling them to act on it any time, from any place.
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