Our Fortune 1000 Enterprise with several thousands of employees is based on Novell’s eDirectory, with file and print services on NetWare v6.0 (migrating to v6.5) and using ZENworks to manage our Windows Client PCs (Just say NO to Group Policy!).

Sure, we have Active Directory, but why use it when we have Novell’s superior product?

Insightful the comparison and all the comments here, truely.

First of all, let me thank you for providing such valuable insights as I have found on this blog and profoundly inspiring.

While planning to leverage on various aspect of the subject (as it could and should be worth to spread all around the countries), comes to my mind the idea to adapt and tailor key issues, methodologies, expertise and findings for africa’s education sector.

I know that it could turn out dauting as a challenge. So what?
Failure is always a part of any endeavour and venture and I know what I’m talking about on the risk to fail. Please consider reading my foreword here (http://altispost.com/index.php/It-may-be-daunting…-So-What.html) so you may get my sense on this issue.

The true fact is that while some countries (like Uganda, Kenya, South Africa and even Nigeria one one hand, and Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt to name few on the other hand) have made significant improvements on several topics like designing education policies that take into account variables and constraints, governments out there still lack of guidance more than resources.

This lead me to my main question:

- Do you work on the field yet, have connection or programs running up or planned, have internal resources (I mean experts or practioners) devoted to this part of the globe?

And to a larger extent, does this idea sounds to you interesting exploring, no matter what the operating formula should and could be , understanding that these 53 countries are those where the needs for infrastructures are the highest and where they’ll with no doubt been built along the coming decades?

Best regards,
Cedu

this is an interesting article, indeed. Being active now in the virtualization area for SAP since a couple of years i hear this ‘Vmware will be gone when Microsoft gets more active in the virtualization market’ every couple of months again and again. And i don’t think that we will see the ‘Netscape Microsoft’ or ‘Novell Microsoft’ story again.

2-3 years ago when Hyper-V was not yet out there VMware ESX had a clear advantage, from a technology point of view, compared to MS Virtual Server, although it wasn’t 100% bug-free neither. When the stand-alone version of Hyper-V was released in October 2008 it looked like that Microsoft is able to catch up with VMware. But now, with vSphere, VMware seems to be ahead in the leading position again. And at the end of the day all hypervisors, talking about the simple basic functionality, are free of charge. So where is the competitive advantage? Why should customers switch from VMware to Microsoft or vice versa?

I think the decision will be done on the scenario level, so what you can do with the hypervisor and other products around HA, disaster recovery, easy deployment of dev/test/training systems etc. etc. It’s not about the technology anymore.

And of course it’s about the cloud, where virtualization technology can help to connect public and private clouds using e.g. virtual appliance models. VMware’s vCloud initiative and Microsoft’s Azure are both targeting this market.

So, Will VMware become the next Novell? I don’t think so, but i also belive that VMware will not keep his +90% marketshare forever. Competition is good for the market, and it’s good for our customers.

Best regards,

Roland Wartenberg
Green IT Evangelist
SAP