Oracle cuts NetWare support

Oracle is to drop its support for Novell's NetWare in a move which analysts say will kill off the operating system as a database platform.

The company unexpectedly announced last week that it would withdraw all support for NetWare from 31 December 2001, giving users just one year to migrate to other platforms.

Robin Bloor, chief executive at Bloor Research, said it would be difficult for Novell to maintain Netware's role as a database platform without the support of Oracle. "I believe that NT is a better database server than NetWare, and the market agrees. But for those who have NetWare, it is important to have support," he said. "We'll see if they will now move over to Linux or NT."

Oracle will continue to offer limited 'extended assistance support' for its products on NetWare for another three years, but this was described as "worthless" because it does not cover bug fixes, certification or response time support.

"Without error correction support, the extended assistance support is meaningless," said one user.

Oracle has recommended that "customers upgrade to other platforms as soon as possible", and is touting its own Oracle 8i appliance as well as Linux, Sun Solaris and HP-Unix.

A Novell spokeswoman said that the discontinuation of support was Oracle's decision but that Novell was helping to find migration arrangements for its users. "Our customers are unhappy and say that Oracle is wrong," she said.

The announcement comes as a blow for Novell so soon after announcing the release of its internet-based open platform, NetWare 6.

Gartner's Mike Silver predicted last week that investments in Novell's products and services would only be viable up until 2004.

First published in Network News