The technology pieces fall in place: Advanced Netware

By November 1984, most of the pieces of the Novell that would later dominate the LAN industry were in place.

• The company was profitable and had a diverse product line.
• It had clarified its marketing and development strategy: Novell was a software company whose products freed users of the limitations of proprietary hardware systems. All users needed was the NetWare operating system, and they could use whatever hardware they wanted.
• Most importantly, as a result of IBM's PC LAN announcement, NetWare's file server technology was finally recognized as the superior solution to the problem of networking PCs.

But one important piece was still to come: Advanced Netware.

Before Advanced Netware

Novell's product line at the end of 1984 showed how far the company had come from the S-Net system of 1983 -- and how prolific Superset had been. There were two major product lines: 1) LAN systems, where software was bundled with hardware in turnkey packages that sold for $2,000 to $25,000, depending on the package; and 2) LAN software, including the NetWare Operating System, network communication software, and program generator languages used with NetWare. Individual copies of NetWare cost about $1,500 each.

Novell sold four different kinds of LAN systems, three of which were OEM products:

1.NetWare/S-Net. This was the system that saved Novell in 1983. It used a proprietary file server that Novell manufactured using Motorola MC68000 microprocessors. Configured in a star topology, the S-Net supported up to 24 PCs of different types, up to 500 megabytes of storage, and up to five shared printers. You could use over nine different kinds of PCs on the S-Net, including all the IBM PCs, certain IBM compatibles, the Texas Instrument Personal Computer, the Victor 9000, and the DEC Rainbow.

2.Three kinds of NetWare/86 systems. These systems used the IBM PC, XT, AT or IBM clones as file servers. Novell purchased LAN hardware from other companies and packaged it together with the NetWare/86 version of the NetWare Operating System. The three systems were:

• NetWare/Omninet. Novell bought the hardware from Corvus Systems, Inc.
• NetWare/G-Net. Novell bought the hardware from Gateway Communications, Inc., the company which Ray had invested in. In 1984, Novell bought about $733,000 in hardware from Gateway.
• NetWare/ARCNET. Novell bought the ARCNET-PC network interface cards from Standard Microsystems Corp.

Each of these NetWare/86 systems could support up to 50 PC workstations, 252 megabytes of disk storage, and three shared printers. The file servers could be either dedicated file servers, or combination file server/workstations (non-dedicated file servers).

Besides complete LAN systems, Novell's other major product line was LAN software. The NetWare Operating System came as NetWare/68, which Novell used on its proprietary 68000-based file server; and NetWare/86, which supported file servers using the Intel 8086 or 8088 microprocessor.

Advanced Netware

Advanced Netware solved a couple of looming technology problems that Superset, in particular, saw coming.

• The first problem was a growing product line of custom-developed operating systems, in essence, a new OS for each new piece of server hardware and network board.
• The second problem was that each of these LANs was standalone: it did not "talk" to other LANs or other networks.

Advanced NetWare addressed both of these problems.

To solve the many-servers-and-LAN-boards problem, Advanced Netware changed the architecture of Netware. The OS was divided into an unchanging "core" which was "linked" to "drivers" which handled dealing with the peripherals that would be installed on the server. At first these drivers dealt with different LAN boards; later they also dealt with high capacity disk drives. (Printers were handled separately.)

This linking occurred at installation time. The person installing was asked which LAN boards were installed in the server "box", and the Installer program would then ask for appropriate floppy disks containing "drivers" to be put in the disk drive.

This linking process was revolutionary to Netware. It allowed the list of usable LAN boards to be updated rapidly by simply developing new driver floppy disks, and it allowed the server to support more than one board at a time -- up to four. This opened the door to Netware LANs being interconnected, and much, much more.

This same architecture of core-and-drivers could also be used in the client PC's as well as the server PC, which opened the door to using clients as "bridges" which opened the door to even more interconnectivity. (note that "bridges" in this early Novell terminology acted more like what are called routers in contemporary terminology.)

NetWare/86, in the last of the basic and first of the advanced versions, could operate on no fewer than 12 different LAN systems. These systems offered different topologies, transmission speeds, communication media, and protocols. Some were broadband systems; others were baseband systems.

Below is a list of the 12 different LAN systems that Superset succeeded in porting NetWare to in 1983 and 1984. The list shows how fragmented the LAN marketplace was in 1984, how monumental a task it was to realize the goal of hardware independence, and how important the Advanced Netware concept was going to be for further growth:

 

Novell name	OEM	Type of LAN
NetWare/D	Davong Systems, Inc.	MultiLink
NetWare/E	3Com Corporation	EtherLink (Ethernet)
NetWare/G	Gateway Communications, Inc.	G-Net
NetWare/N	Nestar Systems, Inc.	PLAN 2000
NetWare/O	Corvus Systems, Inc.	Omninet
NetWare/P	Proteon, Inc.	proNET
NetWare/PC	Orchid Technology, Inc.	PCNet
NetWare/PCN	IBM Corporation	PC Network
NetWare/SMARCNET	Standard Microsystems	Arcnet
NetWare/ISLAN	3M Company, Interactive Systems Division	PC
NetWare/WD	Western Digital Corp.	PC-LAN
NetWare/UB	Ungermann-Bass, Inc.	Net/One

NetWare was also sold in various modified forms to OEM customers who would then sell NetWare as part of their LAN systems. No significant income was generated in 1984 from the six OEM customers Novell had lined up, but in subsequent years OEM sales would account for a significant percentage of total sales.

Besides NetWare, Novell sold other software products such as communications software, electronic mail, and interpreter programs. Communications software included bridge and gateway products that connected LANs to LANs, LANs to host computers, and LANs to remote PCs. NetWare/EMS was an electronic mail service. Various runtime and interpreter programs allowed application programs written in popular programming languages to operate without modification on NetWare.

Novell customers would also buy various hardware components and equipment from the company. For example, users who added PCs or storage devices to their networks might buy additional network interface cards, disk subsystems, cabling and connectors, S-Net LAN boards, network server memory, or other components from Novell. Such equipment sales accounted for a relatively small -- but nevertheless important -- percentage of total income. In the early years, every dollar was important.

The evolution of Advanced NetWare

By the middle of 82 it was Superset's turn to wrestle with alligators. They had been so successful at proselyting other companies that they now had developed dozens of drivers for various NICs. They were about to get overwhelmed with the dreaded bugaboo of all successful software programs: software maintenance -- if you develop it, and sell it, then you've gotta fix it when it goes wrong. If Novell sold a dozen different kinds of NetWare then it was going to have to maintain a dozen different kinds.

There was another problem with the custom NetWare trend: cost to the resellers. There was no way a reseller or distributor could stock a dozen different kinds of NetWare profitably.

This isn't a new problem and SuperSet applied themselves to the solution: make NetWare modular and design it so that the "custom" parts can be "linked" into a single uniform whole. This solution became Advanced NetWare.

This linking idea had one other benefit: there was no reason to stop at linking just one driver into the whole -- two, three or even four could be linked. Up to four different kinds of NICs could be supported in the same file server box. Advanced NetWare became the tangible result of Craig's "vision" of a year earlier when "all the boards" were supported from a single box. The linking was designed to allow each board to talk to the file server and to each other. Having two different boards talk with each other was called bridging by Superset. With Advanced NetWare bridging between different kinds of hardware was supported for the first time in NetWare.

This linking also took some of the development burden off Novell. Other companies, such as the hardware designers themselves, could design drivers for NetWare. They would put a floppy disk in with the NIC boards they sold and instruct their users to insert it at the appropriate time during installation.

This linking could be used one other way: if the file server operating system part were discarded and only the part that let the boards talk to each other were included, this product would become the "external" bridge product. It would support up to four boards in a workstation.

Linking and Advanced NetWare were a powerful breakthrough that saved Novell Engineering from getting bogged down under the task of supporting dozens of LAN boards. But it had draw backs, too. Advance NetWare shot the disk total in a NetWare package to over thirty disks and added "diskarobics" to the battery of skills needed to accomplish a successful NetWare installation. (diskarobics: the exercise of inserting floppy disks in and out, in and out, of the disk drive -- preferably under the driving beat of something emanating from a Walkman. Symptoms of overindulgence: glazed look, frayed tempers, calloused finger tips and "disco elbow".) NetWare became something more easily installed from one file server to another rather than from floppy disk.

Advanced NetWare allowed NetWare to become comprehensive, but some of the complexity it unloaded from Novell engineering it threw to the reseller's installers. Installing became a complex task, and NetWare started it's evolution from being a simple extension of a personal computer operating system to becoming a complex minicomputer-like operating system that supported PC-compatible personal computers well.

Parting the Waters: NetBIOS and DOS 3.1

In 1981 the personal computer industry cried out for a standard... and IBM produced the IBM PC. IBM asked for help from Microsoft and Microsoft produced MSDOS. Many buyers cheered and bought; many manufacturers wepped and gnashed their teeth; the industry churned and grew immensely. A standard was made.

In 1983 the LAN industry cried out for a standard... and IBM produced PC LAN Program featuring NetBIOS. IBM asked for help from Microsoft and Microsoft produced MSDOS 3.1 to replace MSDOS 3.0. Many buyers cheered and bought; many manufacturers wepped and gnashed their teeth; the industry churned and grew immensely. A standard was made.

NetBIOS was a standard communications driver program IBM produced as part of PC LAN program. It defined a standard way to talk with a LAN board. MSDOS 3.1 added "hooks" to the operating system that defined standard places to make networking "calls".

Hooks and Calls A hook is a piece of code that is not complete in and of itself, but it provides a convenient place to add features later. It's the software analogy of an expansion bus. A call is a command in a program to call in a feature from another piece of code. For instance when an word processing program is ready to print a character on a screen it calls the video display function from the operating system and hands it the character to print. The word processing program itself contains no code to display characters on the screen, it counts on the operating system to carry out that function.

In the case of networks, the MSDOS calls meant that network programmers would no longer have to pry apart the MSDOS operating system and fit their network calls into the system in various customized ways, they could all use the same, standardized framework. Applications programmers wouldn't have to be detectives and figure out how their applications would interact with these various customized ways of calling a network. They could count on network commands responding in a standardized way.

Superset had already pried MSDOS apart, so for them this new feature offered little technological improvement, but for the marketing side of networking this was manna from marketing heaven. IBM had spoken and when IBM speaks a standard is created.

It was manna, if Novell chose to take advantage of it. The reflexive impulse when something new comes on to the market is to say, "Ours is better, why are you considering that product?" Novell could have done this. Over the years it's been shown that NetWare did have some distinct feature- and performance-advantages over IBM/Microsoft's various offerings. Adding to the "trample on it" temptation was the fact that PC LAN program, IBM's first offering, was a lightweight item. (It lasted only about six months as a serious LAN operating system contender before being replaced by Microsoft's MS-Net offering.) Novell could have trampled all over it, and "won" the argument about which operating system was better. But, would doing so have sold more NetWare? Probably not. Instead, thanks to the open system's orientation that Craig brought to Novell and Ray's sensitivity to the importance of what it means when IBM moves, a different solution was developed: the "jujitsu" or "join 'um" solution. Novell declared that it was supporting the NetBIOS and MSDOS 3.1 standards, and that these standards were good because they would help the industry grow. Novell took this jujitsu one step further: Novell pointed out that IBM had decided that file service was the "right" way to handle a LAN operating system and the Novell had been doing file service for two years now. This was jujitsu! Novell customers could have their cake and eat it too: They could use Novell equipment; still be IBM compatible; and get the technology that IBM had blessed in a package that worked better than IBM's offering.