Return to 1998 SUMMER Index
by Sarah Keen, Editor
The letter arrived out of the blue. Novell were offering to help sort out the Millennium problem and had kindly enclosed a floppy disk to help in the task. This identified which copies of NetWare were in use and Novell would then advise whether it was millennium compliant or not. Impressive stuff. Most of last year was spent auditing the network, locating elderly time bombs and checking with suppliers to verify the findings. Novell, it appeared had identified its customer base and were stepping in with a guiding hand. A little late but, you know, better late than January 2000. I returned the disk and got on with the problem in hand.
The problem was so bad it was feared none of the IT department would survive to the Year 2000. With hindsight it was probably a mistake to buy any router from a supplier named after the Hindu God of destruction but the specs did say it would work with IPX/ODI and ISDN... The router lived up to its name. Consultants took days to configure the box. Then it either connected so efficiently it didn't drop the line even when the PC was switched off or never connected at all. Either way it caused the IT team to dance like whirling dervishes as our remote sales team complained of either no access or huge phone bills
All the company needed was a WAN link to email and a database. Novell supplied a barrage of information. Yes, we could upgrade, to Intranetware and Bordermanager. Yes all this would convert IPX to TCP/IP. Yes, as an existing customer you should get a good upgrade price. Yet when these came through I flinched. The upgrades were costly and complex. Nothing makes this network manager tetchier than to overhaul a fileserver merely to add in what should be a straightforward service. Events were forcing a dyed in the wool NetWare user to turn to NT.
The IT director took some persuading to give the NT gateway and Cisco router a try. He was a stout Novell supporter, certain Bill Gates was the number of the beast. After the Great God of Destruction I was convinced that B.G was the lesser of two evils. After I promised to walk on coals of fire in sackcloth and ashes if NT let us down, we agreed to try.
The day came. NT arrived. We plugged it into the network, plugged the ISDN line to the router, installed a number of batch files to run ccMail across a WAN and LO!! Seamlessly - out of the box working. Files on demand. An AB_FAB machine.
The next week brought a letter from Novell. It had no record of the serial numbers previously supplied. When and from whom had we purchased the products? Novell would not release any millennium information until it had these details. Simultaneously, Novell had wasted my time and insinuated illegal ownership of its products. The questioning missive drew increasing anger and ended in the bin. Novell squandered a unique opportunity to consolidate customer loyalty. The Millennium bears down upon NT and NetWare Manager alike. When the sun first rises in January 2000, NetWare will cast a long shadow. However, lacking the energy of NT and failing to nurture its existing users, what will stop Novell ending like Stonehenge: a monolith to the old ways of doing things?