Users indifferent to Oracle's NetWare decision

Oracle's decision to drop support for Novell NetWare has been met with indifference from users, driving a further nail into the coffin for the operating system.

The company recently announced that it would withdraw support for NetWare from December next year. However, the majority of its users said that this would not cause a problem.

The Oracle User Group (OUG) survey received nearly 700 replies from 500 companies. Only six respondents were unhappy that Oracle would cease support for NetWare.

A total of 49 said that their only regret was that they liked having a choice. But the majority of the remaining respondents said the move would not affect them at all.

Ronan Miles, chairman of the OUG, said that the lack of impact to Oracle's customer base indicated that Novell's market share was declining.

Robin Bloor, chief executive of Bloor Research, agreed with the OUG's conclusions. "NetWare is clearly in decline and this result is just demonstrating that," he said.

Responses from those questioned varied, with some saying that they would have to revise business strategies, while others were disappointed that Oracle was removing support for a non-Microsoft product. Overall, the response was that users "liked Novell but could easily replace it".

One respondent thought that it would also affect the use of Novell Directory Service, although Oracle said that this would not be the case.

A Novell spokeswoman said that the company was unaware of the OUG survey and its results, and was unable to comment further.