New Services for NetWare Feature Pack

To take advantage of a shift in Novell’s NetWare strategy and make it easier for customers to migrate from NetWare to Windows, Microsoft has released an updated version of its Services for NetWare feature pack. Services for NetWare 5.03 provides a set of interoperability and migration utilities for using Windows Server 2003 in a NetWare network and improves support for directory synchronization and file migration, but it also removes support for File and Print Services for NetWare.

The release comes as Novell signals that Linux will be more important in its future than its former flagship product, NetWare. In particular, Novell acquired Linux distributor SuSE, as well as Ximian, an important Linux application software vendor, in 2003. At its Brainshare conference in Mar. 2004, Novell indicated it will push hard to move Linux into the mainstream. Although it will release NetWare 7.0, it has ported the core NetWare functionality to Linux in a product called Open Nterprise Server, and it will migrate other products, such as its ZenWorks management suite, to Linux.