Novell UK boss gets tough on NT threat

Novell is donning the heavy gloves as it prepares for the launch of Windows NT 4.0. Touting a new report from US analyst the Forrester Group, the company is telling all-comers that NT lacks the scalability for big business needed to compete against NetWare.

"I wish we wouldn't have to be in the position of looking at the so-called threat of NT," said Tom Schuster, Novell UK managing director. "For small networks NT is an offering, but it can't do absolutely everything from the desktop to the large environment enterprise.

"Corporates almost invariably throw out NT as a server platform because it's absolutely untenable and the statistics about its usage are being misused diabolically. Microsoft understands the desktop and has done a fantastic job there; Novell has done a fantastic job on the network. There's been a great symbiosis between us but if Microsoft wants to muscle in on the network we have to counter fallacious claims that don't make sense."

The Forrester report says NT is expensive to maintain, too unwieldy and "in danger of becoming a kludge".