The History of Novell: Novonics

When Ray Noorda was forced out of Novell in the mid-1990s, Novell was without an effective leader and unusual things happened as a result. A Novell employee by the name of Rob Hicks, who worked in Novell's accounting department, negotiated an arrangement with Netscape Corp. to license the Netscape FastTrack Server, Netscape Enterprise Server, Netscape Messaging Server, and, perhaps, other Netscape products. He formed a company, called Novonics, that ported these Netscape products to the NetWare platform. Novonics used Novell's distribution channel to sell their products although they competed directly with Novell's own products.

The FastTrack and Enterprise servers were web servers. The FastTrack Server had unremarkable features. It was a plain web server similar to the free NCSA web server that was popular at the time and the emerging Apache web server that would eventually dominate web serverdom. The Messaging Server had the usual E-mail server features (SMTP, POP3, and IMAP) and was also unremarkable and similar to the free sendmail server. By contrast, the Enterprise server was full-featured and a highly-regarded web server that is still popular today.

Why Hicks licensed all three servers instead of just the Enterprise server is a mystery. Novell already had basic E-mail and web server products. More on this later.

Novonics was not part of Novell but was viewed as a sister company. Novell (or was it Hicks?) announced Novonics with much fanfare in the trade press. Novell's sales force was expected to sell both Novell's products and the Novonics products. Customers now had a choice of GroupWise or the Netscape Messaging Server. These were significantly different and suited different needs. Novell sales people, many of whom were not up to speed on both products, had to deal with confused customers. Many simply described the difference as "basic" and "advanced" products.

Novell's customers were also confused by the fact that both Novell and Netscape had directory services. Novell had Novell Directory Sevices or NDS and Netscape had the Netscape Directory Server or NDS. Many Novell customers were not aware other vendors had directory services. This was before the days of Microsoft's Active Directory (though Microsoft was convincing gullible customers that NT Domains was a directory). Most didn't know that Banyan's StreetTalk directory pre-dated Novell's directory. Some Novell customers wondered which directory would become the standard and put off deploying a directory until the winner became apparent. Some are still waiting and some have declared Active Directory the winner though it's technically inferior.

The issue of the web servers is more complex. Read on.

Novell had spent considerable time developing their own web server called the NetWare Web Server. They included it free with NetWare. Early versions of the NetWare Web Server were no better than the free NCSA web server but it quickly gained additional features such as the ability to support multiple virtual hosts. It could serve up web pages for multiple domains such as www.abc.com, www.def.com, etc. This was a feature that Netscape's FastTrack server didn't have.

Novell killed the NetWare Web Server and replaced it with the Novonics/Netscape FastTrack Server. At first, the FastTrack server was not free. Customers that had been using the free NetWare Web Server now had to spend money to replace it with a product that had fewer features! FastTrack didn't do virtual hosting.

Novell eventually backed down and included the FastTrack server with NetWare for free. However, they refused to continue supporting the Netware Web Server. Many people thought this was remarkably unfair and stupid. Many people abandoned NetWare as an Internet platform and installed Unix, Linux, and Windows NT. Loyal Novel customers who needed virtual hosting paid Novell for the Novonics/Netscape Enterprise Server that was overkill for many customers. The cost was quite high. A few years later, Novell would declare that this server was free and included it with NetWare again ticking off customers who had paid for the product. Novell would later compensate some of them in some way.

Eventually, Novell asked Hicks to dissolve Novonics and bring the Netscape products directly under the Novell umbrella. Hicks complied and returned to his job at Novell. Novell now assumed the Netscape/Novonics licensing agreement.

In the latter part of the 1990s it was clear that Open Source Software, popularized by Linux, was to make a significant impact in the marketplace. Coincidentaly, Ray Noorda was a early supporter of Linux. (See the Corsair Project chapter) The open source Apache web server had evolved to the point where it eclipsed the commercial web servers in features and compatibility with other technologies.

In 2000, someone had ported Apache to NetWare 5. This set the stage for NetWare users, who had not abandoned NetWare as an Internet platform, to replace the Novonics/Netscape Enterprise Server with Apache. In 2001, Novell announced that Apache was one of the supported platforms for their Novell Portal Services.

Since Novell and Netscape (now owned by America On Line) are competitors and the license agreement that Novonics had negotiated is expiring soon, Novell is not likely to renew the license. This will make Apache Novell's only web server. Novell is probably glad that Apache now runs on NetWare and they can get out from under the Novonics rock.

There's no way that anyone, Novell included, can look back on Novonics and see wisdom or logic in the whole affair. It was a disaster no matter how you view it. It would never have happened if Novell had a leader in the post-Noorda era.

Novell is not the only one with Netscape issues. Caldera (another company that Rob Hicks helped create) also had Netscape-related problems. See the chapter on Caldera for details.