March 17, 1997 10:00 AM ET

IntranetWare upgrade drifts to end of '97
By Lisa Wirthman

Novell Inc.'s users may have to wait until year's end to see another revision of IntranetWare. However, they may not have to wait for a full revision to receive new features targeted for each release. In an interview with PC Week, Novell President Joe Marengi said the next full release of its network operating system, dubbed IntranetWare II, may not ship this spring as originally planned. It could actually be the end of the year before users see the product, Marengi said. A little bit at a time Instead, Novell plans to ship the expected enhancements to the intranet platform and operating system in pieces, said officials at the Provo, Utah, company. Due in IntranetWare II were features such as Novell Distributed Print Services, virtual private networks, an IP version of Novell Connect Services, an implementation of the Java Virtual Machine and firewalls, according to a road map unveiled by the company when IntranetWare was introduced last fall. An end-of-year shipment of IntranetWare II also would delay the NOS release dubbed IntranetWare III, which was targeted for this summer. Planned for IntranetWare III were replication services, proxy caching and native TCP/IP. Some of those features--virtual private networks, firewalls and proxy caching--have been renamed as Border Services and will be previewed at Novell's annual BrainShare user conference later this month, Marengi said. Early access versions of these Border Services technologies have also been shipping on a CD-ROM to users since December. Some users said they didn't care whether features were integrated with the operating system or delivered separately, as long as performance and integration aren't compromised. As long as there are no trade-offs, it doesn't matter to us, said Tim Downs, vice president of data processing for Printing Incorporated, in Wichita, Kan. But the problem is that there usually are sacrifices in speed and performance when technologies aren't integrated into an operating system, Downs said. Novell can be reached at (800) 638-9273 or www.novell.com. Copyright(c) 1997 Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company is prohibited. PC Week and the PC Week logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. PC Week Online and the PC Week Online logo are trademarks of Ziff-Davis Publishing Company. Send mail to PC Week