Comments on: Moving Forward One Step Back at a Time

By: Haider

Fri, 24 May 2013 14:35:26 +0000

Have you considered FileWay from Everywhere Networks ? Not only it’s a replacement for Netstorage but it also integrates with OWA 2003, 2007, 2010 and 2013 to provide remote file access.

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By: Migrating from GroupWise: A Costly Decision

Wed, 17 Oct 2012 04:20:02 +0000

[…] keep making the decision to migrate away from GroupWise to Exchange. As evidenced by comments in this discussion, the decision is rarely technical. Some exec wants his Outlook, or someone gets promised all sorts […]

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By: Tom

Tue, 15 May 2012 15:18:34 +0000

Did anyone at any point do an estimate of whether any money had been saved at all? Novell’s licensing is hardly expensive compared with its major competitor; when you throw in staff and user education and training… your management have been duped!

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By: Matt

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:17:19 +0000

Jacques,

I’m no MS fan. If I was in charge of our migration I would’ve explored some sort of hybrid system, using MS to serve up directory services and OES or Linux to serve up files.

I would’ve stuck with ZCM for at least another year, and really put v11 through its paces.

We where lucky to have 11 people to help out… 4 are network admins, one is a supervisor, and one was a temp we brought in. Everyone rolled up their sleeves to get this done – all while doing “emergency projects” and people still got to take vacation and sick leave during the process – effectively I’d say we had about 8.5 guys working on this at any given time.

When all was said and done our Zenworks replacement cost us over $100K to get into for the first year, which cost us more than our OES+ZCM+Groupwise yearly cost. We also had a HUGE learning curve in learning a new desktop management tool along with all the “new stuff” that we stepped into with windows.

In the end, we don’t have fewer problems… just different problems.

Are we better off? I sure don’t see it.

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By: Jacques Sauve

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:05:38 +0000

Matt,

Most of the organisations I mention in the article don’t have 11 staff to handle these migrations. Most of them have to make do with 2-4. I also want to clarify that I’m not “suggesting” these timelines – they’ve been reported to me by these customers. I’m not making this up!

Yes, ZCM 10 was buggy, but by 10.3 was stable and we had great success with it. Now at 11.2, it is very stable and customers are very happy.

I’m glad your migration went well, and that you saved your job. I also appreciate the candid comments about your experiences with Windows vs. Novell.

Thanks!

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By: Jacques Sauve

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:02:06 +0000

I agree, Wayne! We’ve seen a lot of that as well – CIO’s or IT Directors that have a “management” background instead of a technological one. Blows my mind what some of these guys put their staff through – and what it costs their organisations! – just because “they want Outlook” on their desktops! Sigh.

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By: Jacques Sauve

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:59:17 +0000

Ugh. Don’t even get me started on that!

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By: Jacques Sauve

Mon, 14 May 2012 23:58:41 +0000

Eric,
We all agree that Novell’s marketing hasn’t been the greatest (can you say “slight understatement”?!); hopefully that will change with Attachmate. All indications are that it will.

It’s been one of the hardest things to get across for us as a partner: that Novell is more than the old NetWare, that they have modern, relevant solutions that run natively in Microsoft/AD. Those customers that have been open-minded enough to listen and try have been very surprised and impressed (ZENworks is a perfect example of this!). Too many customers, however, have drunk the blue Kool-Aid and now have a purely blue-tinted view of IT. If it ain’t stamped with the Microsoft logo, it couldn’t possibly be good!

And I agree with you – OES and GroupWise are rock-solid!

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By: Matt

Mon, 14 May 2012 22:05:31 +0000

I’m a die hard Novell loyalist – but I jumped ship. I had to in order to stay employed.

We just transitioned from Novell to MS this past summer. The change involved touching some 4000 workstations and a couple of dozen servers.. and we got it done in just a few short months with a crew of 11 – so I don’t really buy the migration timeline that the author is suggesting.

Finding a replacement for Netstorage wasn’t an easy task – but our new product is far superior to Novell’s offerings. Its WebDAV even works with modern desktop OSes like Windows Vista and 7.. there’s none of that “Just use a 3rd party WebDAV” nonsense.

I REALLY would’ve like to keep ZCM – but ZCM 10 was so buggy that nobody wanted to give it another chance. Sorry Novell…

There was no way we where going down the Exchange path.. and we raised a few eyebrows when we openly laughed at people who suggested that because we where migrating to MS we just “need Exchange”. Nope.. we went Google – and I’m really surprised about how well it’s going.

After running MS servers for almost a year here are my findings from the trench

* the biggest thing I miss is how well Novell provided file services. It just worked… and it worked well. NTFS’s ACLs are embedded into every file and directory, so when you make a change the client has to molest every part of the path.. it’s slow and inefficient. Move a file or directory and the ACLs are stuck to it, resulting in some weirdness that’s described as a feature. WTH??

* eDir is still superior to mAD.
* Novell/OES File services are better than MS
* Groupwise is just another email system
* ZCM suffers from a history of bugs – v10 was really v1.0

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By: Wayne Burr

Sat, 12 May 2012 15:19:02 +0000

Sadly, it’s been my experience over the past 25 years or so that the vast majority of Senior Management or other final decision makers have not come into the role ‘through the ranks’ so to speak, and have never actually performed many (if any) of the tasks that the admins and other support staff are expected to do. This leaves them very succeptible to Microsoft’s great marketing gimick of ‘its the product that you have always used’, and the other fantastic statement ‘you won’t have to re-train all your staff’. From what I’ve seen, these are really powerful motivating statements for the uninformed, as it implies that EVERYBODY knows how the products work, and that they won’t have to spend ANY money on training, which we all know is blatently false. You have to train your staff regardless, if you don’t, they will eventually leave.
I’ve used both Novell and Microsoft products over the years extensively, and far and away the stuff that Novell has produced is much easier to learn, and really works as promised. ZCM really has no equal performance wise out there currently, and it’s really too bad that they can’t use marketing nearly as effectively as Microsoft to sell thier product.
Maybe I’m totally mistaken, but I’ve known managers who cannot believe that a cheaper, less cumbersome, easier to use product is worthwhile to purchase. ‘If it doesn’t cost a ton now, and lots down the road, it musn’t be very good’ seems to be very common thinking.
Alot of that comes from the resellers too, who see a great cash cow in promoting Microsoft products over any other solution.

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