Novell swipes at MS with Workstation Manager

Novell has taken a broadside shot at Microsoft with the launch of Novell Workstation Manager, a software system designed to enable users to control NT workstations integrated into LANs, intranets and the Internet.

Novell said that Workstation Manager eliminates the need to control NT workstations through NT server domains, because they "lack the flexibility and scalability of Novell Directory Services (NDS)."

This is Novell's first of many steps towards a complete solution for integrating and managing intranets, LANs and the Internet, since the launch of NDS. "We don't want to be in the NDS business," said Dominic Storey, Novell's director of technology, "we want to be in the networking software business," confirming that NDS is just a peg on which Novell will hang its future networking strategy.

Workstation Manager is the company's next step in establishing its credentials in the NT/LAN/intranet integration business. Storey added network administrators will now be able to "leverage NDS to simplify workstation administration, reduce the cost of network ownership, and deploy Novell's IntranetWare and Netware, NT workstations and other systems in the same, tightly integrated network environment."

While Novell continues its quest to wrestle the networking integration lead from Microsoft, Storey was quick to add, "this shows that Novell offers the most advanced networking platform for Windows NT."

Novell can be contacted by telephone on 01344-724000.