HP was perhaps the first and the biggest supporter of Windows Home Server. It built and sold appliances with the OS embedded -- appliances that let families back up files, share music video and photos or let road warriors store critical data at their house and get it over the Web.
I never bought one, but you, the trustworthy Redmond Report reader, told me how much you liked it. It was simply great for file synchronization and backup -- at a decent price.
Somehow it never caught on (free and cheap Web backup and dirt-priced external hard drives saw to that!).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/06/20106 comments
IDC recently released a report claiming that server shipments increased, on a dollar basis, over 13 percent for the third quarter. This is the most impressive showing in the last decade, IDC says.
Microsoft owns nearly half of the server OS market, while Linux weighed in with 17 percent. IBM mainframes came in at 8.6 percent -- not too shabby for big iron. Unix continues to disappear, with revenues down almost 10 percent.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/03/20100 comments
In a recent letter, a loyal Redmond Report reader wrote that Google's StreetView took such a great picture of his house you could see right inside.
That's pretty bad. But what may be worse is when Google drives onto private property to take shots of houses set a ways back from the road.
That's what happened to Christine and Aaron Boring. A Google van drove down their private road and took photos -- not just of the front, but the backyard and pool. The couple sued and won a judgment. So are the Borings living high on the hog with all that Google cash? Not exactly. The judge only gave them a measly buck.
Can you say moral victory? I thought you could.
Posted by Doug Barney on 12/03/20105 comments
Recently I penned a column about VMware. In it I asked if VWmare, which I hugely respect, was making a couple of strategic errors that could doom its future. One problem is the lack of support of competing hypervisors, leading to vendor lock-in. And now VMware wants to virtualize your servers, desktops and private public clouds -- that could be a near-total lock-in.
The other problem concerns third parties. VMware just isn't third-party friendly enough. Folks I talk to say Microsoft is far easier to work with.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/03/20100 comments
We've received a ton of e-mails on the end of the Novell area. Look for another batch of your Novell thoughts next week:
Back in the days when Microsoft licensed QDOS from Tim Patterson at Seattle Computer so it could supply an OS for IBM's PC, Novell Data Systems in Utah was hard at work making computers and operating systems. Microsoft succeeded beyond its wildest dreams when the IBM PC took off like a rocket ship. Novell took note of the impressive sales of the IBM PC and went to work on how to network them together. In 1983 Novell Data Systems changed its name to Novell when Ray Noorda arrived at the company to "salvage" what was worth doing. ShareNet became NetWare, the first true file sharing operating system for Intel 808x and Motorola 68000.
Their microprocessors was created by the talented Drew Major and his colleagues at SuperSet who were under contract to Novell. Novell almost single-handedly created the market for local area networks with their NetWare software, which supported almost every PC networking hardware technology that existed. I met Ray Noorda at the first NetWorld trade show and conference held at the Dallas InfoMart in 1986. And for the next 12 years, NetWare ruled the LAN. Those were exciting times to be involved with PC networks. It is impossible to recount the history of Local Area Networks and directory services without mentioning the pioneering work of Novell.
The past 27 years of Novell's history have had their ups and downs to be sure and I hope Novell will continue to be around after the Attachmate acquisition of Novell is completed early next year.
-Tim
I'm glad I learned just enough Novell and cc:Mail to migrate off them to NT and Exchange back in the day.
I do miss Banyan Vines -- StreetTalk provided a great inspiration to Active Directory.
I just wiki'ed the demise of Banyan -- so sad. But I'm glad I stayed ahead of the curve and switched to NT back in 1996.
- Anonymous
I just wanted to say how nice it was to see an article from a Microsoft-centric publication that isn't trashing Novell. As a Veteran Novell reseller (some 14 years), it's a sad day, I had hoped VMWARE would grab them instead, but I hope the future for products like Groupwise is strong and we will see resources badly needed to bring those products into the newer technology band as soon as possible.
Novell was a player in networking for Windows 3.1, and many shops ran Novell networks, which, of course, didn't play well with Windows networks. To be fair, because Novell had a tight set of rules of nodes on their network, they all recognized each other and worked well.
Microsoft networks were spotty, and connecting with coax led to dead zones. So you might be able to see a computer two cubicles down but not the one next to you.
Ah the memories, two reboots a day and daily network outages -- the golden years!
-Mark
I cut my networking teeth on Novell NetWare 3.x and worked with NetWare up to 6.0. Novell always seemed to have good technical products. There are some features in NetWare and eDirectory that I wish Microsoft would have implemented in Active Directory. The biggest problem with Novell as a company was that they did not know what they wanted to be when they grew up. As you mentioned, it bought and sold parts but didn't really go anywhere with it. Maybe because of this, it didn't know how to market itself. All the technical people loved NetWare, and I will never forget what they did for the industry.
-Craig
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/03/20100 comments
An elevation-of-privilege flaw exists, and Microsoft is keeping the info close to its vest. Apparently the flaw is a true flaw in that a proof-of-concept exercise exploited the hole.
I'm all for transparency but not a big fan of detailing a hole to hackers before it's plugged.
In another cool move, the code that attacks the hole has been removed from the Web. Classy move.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/01/20101 comments
I know I tend to find fault with Google. Some of it is because of their sheer power, sheer arrogance and the fact that it, who creates no content, makes more money from content than those of us that do.
Nonetheless, I use Google search (even though Bing is probably just as good) and like what they are doing with free cloud apps.
The latest move is integrating Google Docs/Apps with Office. While still in beta, Google Cloud Connect for Office will let us store Office files in a Google cloud, and let others share and collaborate through Google Apps.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/01/20101 comments
Novell's story has been a soap opera so long it rivals Days of Our Lives, but without the sex (so far as I know). The company has been through more twists and turns than Mario Andretti.
Here's what I recollect from my years following the company: In the early days it was a simple company focused on LAN operating systems. Then it went into full Carl Icahn-mode, spending more time buying and selling companies than building product. It bought then sold WordPerfect and Borland's Quattro Pro, and later spun off a company that was actually two companies. Caldera, a Ray Noorda pet project, had one part that sold Linux, and another separate concern that held patents, such as DR-DOS, which was acquired from Digital Research. Noorda used DR-DOS rights to sue Microsoft (successfully) for antitrust.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 12/01/20108 comments
I've looked into Microsoft and the world of supercomputing and it's a mixed bag. On the client side, I've found that Windows does a poor job exploiting multicore processors and, to some degree, graphical processing units (GPU). That means Windows clients aren't true workstations -- at least in the engineering sense. If you really want to, an ISV can exploit this hardware (with a lot of work) and Windows won't stand in your way too much, but the client does far too little to exploit these capabilities on its own.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/29/20100 comments
It's no secret that Larry Ellison hates SAP. He used to hate Microsoft, and probably still does, but after Oracle bought its way into the ERP space, SAP became the bigger target. Both companies are massive and healthy so one could call this a draw.
One place where Oracle clearly won is in the courtroom. It recently nabbed a sweet $1.3 billion after proving that an SAP subsidiary stole confidential information.
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/29/20102 comments
Most of us in our right minds aren't big fans of Google StreetView -- the service where Google vans photograph the outside of our domiciles (they would surely go inside if they could) and post it for the whole world to see, whether we are sunbathing in the nude or not.
In Germany you can opt-out. Your house is still there, but is blurred out. Apparently not all Teutons are against StreetView like I am. It seems some have been going around egging homes whose owners opted out. This all happened Saturday, Nov 20. The dumb slobs missed Halloween by three weeks!
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/29/20102 comments
Best get your troops ready this Tuesday (hopefully they had Columbus Day off and are rested,) 'cuz there will be no less than 16 patches waiting for them.
I wouldn't exactly freak as I believe Microsoft is more proactive than most (or arguably all) vendors in admitting its own flaws. And let's be honest, between Windows and Office, Microsoft has an attack surface the Taliban would drool over (fortunately, their computer skills are as backwards at their philosophy).
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Posted by Doug Barney on 11/29/20100 comments