noob

well, I can tell you're new to the IT field, so let me give you a little guidance. If you want a stable, reliable file server, you'll be hard pressed to find one better suited to that task than the old Netware (NOT the new OES2 crap). If you want good login scripting abilities, the login scripting built into the Netware client has always been superior to the half-assed junk in Windows. If you want a high-quality directory infrastructure, sorry, but eDirectory still beats the pants off of your beloved AD.

Now there are some areas where your gross overgeneralization may hold true. Novell made a horribly convoluted mess when they added Apache and Tomcat applets to Netware. That is a nightmare that only a deranged, server-shooting admin would ever try to edit by hand. Novell's DirXML services to sync AD and eDir are likewise incredibly over-engineered (what exactly was wrong with the much simpler NDS4NT???) As well, Novell's gradual slide from compiled EXE admin tools (NWAdmin) to local Java (ConslowOne) to Java on a webserver (iManager, etc) was a downhill slope.

And finally, there's Groupwise. Users generally hate it because it's not Outlook. Admins generally love it because it's not Exchange.

As a long-time Netware/Groupwise admin (not a manager, thankfully), I find Novell's old stacks to be very, very useful and reliable for certain tasks. But as you said, the industry has moved on. Everything is now built for integration with AD, very few things have any integration with eDirectory, and even those that do generally used the more generic LDAP or RADIUS as opposed to the eDirectory API.

So listen, noob, just because you're a hot-blooded young-un who thinks he knows everything, well, you don't. Some of us were doing this back when you were still playing video games and eating ice cream, so we know how the industry got to where it is today. It didn't appear by magic, it slowly evolved. And we helped drive it. Now you come along and say all of the Old Ways (that you don't understand) are shit and only the New Ways (that you understand) are worth their salt. Guess what, noob? In 20 years some other young punk is going to come along and pour piss all over the stuff you're doing today and talk about how old and decrepit it is. And it's gonna make your blood boil. So you'll post him a little note that starts with the sentence "well, I can tell you're new to the IT field, so let me give you a little guidance.". It's that whole "Circle Of Life" thing, just without the Elton John song...

Multi-fail

You think Netware is bloated? You really don't know what you're talking about. You do know that Netware is an OS right (and one that's gone end of life)? Novell is a company.

Anyway, Netware was great for it's core functions - file and directory services - far, far superior to Active Directory. It just couldn't compete on integration. And then when it started to get squeezed by MS the big panic started. Bad decision after bad decision killed Netware, but the core eDirectory / file server architecture was brilliant.

Well, yes, actually

I have a BES tied to our Groupwise system. Works a charm, since we use Groupwise. Wouldn't do much good to have the Notes or Exchange version, now would it?

As to staying current, yes, except for Microsoft, I tend to stay current. I had an MCSE for Win2k many years ago but let it lapse. Just got tired of wasting time and money learning stuff that in a few years wouldn't be worth a plug nickel (according to Microsoft). So I play a lot in the Linux/FOSS space, since, from a learning perspective, that's far more stable and memorable than the ever-changing coat of many colors that Microsoft puts out every few years. I'm none too keen on the "upgrade because there's a new version and we have to be cool" mentality - my job is to make things work. Netware and Groupwise still WORK. The users still get their network drives every day because Netware is a NOS built like a refrigerator, humming quietly in the corner, doing its thing.

Now I might give you points for Exchange/Outlook, from a user perspective anyway, but from an Admin perspective, GW is great. The POAs are wonderful at knowing when things go wrong in the message store files and fixing the problems. It's rare that I have to manually "fix" anything in Groupwise - maybe half a dozen times a year. It just works.

Oh, and the other clencher for the deal - for $6.50 per head per year, I can run all of the Netware and Groupwise servers I want. To my knowledge, there is no similar deal from MS at that price point.

You are right about integration. Sadly nobody is integrating things with NW/GW anymore. And there are more and more things coming out that require AD: VMware View is first to mind. But OTOH, it keeps the headaches low since if things can't integrate, they can't break... And it helps by keeping us creative in how we do things, since we have to come up with our own procedures and such to mimic integration. So when our procedures break, we know where they broke and how to fix them, we aren't sitting on the phone waiting for some tech rep with a heavy accent to read his answer off the screen.

We do run some MS stuff. Our main Admin/Accounting system is on MS SQL. I used to like the simplicity of the SQL2000 GUI admin tools, but the GUI tools for 2005 are an abomination, and haven't seen 2008 yet. Then there's IIS, for our users who simply cannot give up their Frontpage/Sharepoint Designer lifestyles. But that's about it. Other than those two instances, we don't really have any need for other Microsoft stacks.

So, no, the Novell software stack is not a liability any more than the Microsoft or Red Hat stacks are a liability. They are getting long in the tooth, and their potential for use is decreasing, but for those areas where they are still useful, they are great for the job. Calling them useless is just foolishness.