Day One at Brainshare

by John Henry Maurice

Day one of BrainShare is done, except I will walk thought the SolutionsLab one more time before I catch the bus back to the Ramada.

The day started at 9:00 with the opening keynote. Jack Messman, Chairman and CEO is ill so Chris Stone filled in. Chris has a claim to fame, he once was in a band that became Aerosmith.

It is amazing to think that back when I first started using Novell NetWare, the product was a totally LAN based software. Now, Novell is moving to a totally web-based access method. Use a brower to access your files, your printer, your applications, and to manage your network!

I attended the following sessions...

  1. The Past, Present, and Future of the ZENworks Family of Products. When ZENworks for Desktops v4 is released this summer, you will not need Client32! Lots of other improvements too.
  2. NetWare Futures and Roadmap. The next two releases build on NetWare v6 (Nakoma, Hayden and Uinta are the code names). Nakoma is expected within a year, while Uinta - a complete rewrite - is 2 1/2 years out.
  3. Intergrating NetWare v6 and Windows2000.
  4. Application Management Using ZENworks for Desktops Prometheus (v4). Lots of cool stuff here - chaining application installations, browser based application launching and installation, etc.
  5. After all of this fun, the only thing left to do is to climb the rock wall!!! I made it up to the top on my first try, but it was the "beginners" route. My friends Paul and Linda would be proud of me.
  6. To give you an idea of how large this conference is, there are over 1900 first time attendees, 2500 2-5 time attendees and 1000+ 6-10 time attendees.
  7. Well, I'm going back to the SolutionsLab, to investigate NetWare Internet Messaging System.

Wherever you go, there you are - with access to your files!