What are some of the current tools out there to migrate from a NetWare NDS environment to AD 2003?

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Spin

What are some of the current tools out there to migrate from a NetWare NDS
environment to AD 2003?
 
No one knows NetWare anymore, it's easier and cheaper to support and
standardize on Active Directory.
 
So what are you doing here ?????

I mean..You are surrunded by dudes knowing NetWare
 
That's crazy. "No one"? I guess you're not looking any further than
your own small circle.

"cheaper"? Check out http://www.iwantnetware.com and you'll get a
decent idea of how much more expensive it is to go with Active Directory
and Windows (viruses, exploits, etc). BTW, the last exploit, as all
others, gave yet another reason to not go with Windows / AD.

What kind of "support" do you need?
 
True that. I don't know of any statistics on the installed Netware base out
there versus Microsoft. I mean, in the business world, I assume Microsoft
just dominates now and Netware doesn't. Their company is down to 6,000
employees. I don't want to see them go, because MS will only jack up their
prices. In contrast, I would rather see Netware survive and thrive. They
had a better directory services out of the box, their servers stay up a lot
longer, and probably less prone to hacking too.
 
I thought this was a newsgroup for people who wanted to migrate off of
Netware? If I'm wrong I am a little embarrassed, to say the least.
 
Maybe I am completely off-base, but I have been in this industry for 15
years with 12 of that full-time and the other 3 doing freelance gigs out of
school. This is what I have seen over the years:

Speaking as a former Netware (3.x, 4.11, and Moab) dude, Microsoft has
definitely marketed themselves well. While I haven't done an exhaustive
analysis, I will say that Microsoft drives a better marketing machine.
According to their site, Novell still has 50,000 clients in 43 countries.
That is a pretty huge International base. In addition, they are targeting
China's desktop market much more aggressively that other vendors.

Novell has a great product, and always has, be it Netware, Groupwise,
DirXML, Zenworks. Up until last year I knew of a Novell 3.2 server that was
still operational!

Several clients/employers used Novell servers with Microsoft desktops
(Windows 3.11, 95, 98, 2000, and XP) and Mac workstations and it worked
great! Novell's downfall was not that they did not have a good product. A
large .com and a large defense contractor I worked for both agreed that
Zenworks beat out the other desktop management solutions they tested.
However, it all boils down to marketing.

Example:
In my career, I have never seen a Novell sales person at a customer site. I
have, however, seen quite a few channel partners selling Novell.
Microsoft has several Gold Partners operating in Georgia. A few years back
I only knew of one Novell Platinum partner, and they were in Savannah with
limited Atlanta presence.
In my career, I have seen plenty of Microsoft Account Managers (AMs and
TAMs), various sales people, Tech Specialists, etc. at client sites.
I have seen Cisco sales people at client sites even though they funneled all
of the sales through their channel partner.
I have seen IBM sales people (and quite a few at one client) even though all
of their sales goes through their channel partner.
I have not seen many Compaq or HP reps, but have seen a lot of channel
partners selling their products.
I have seen a few Dell salespeople during the beginning of a sales
engagement, and always available when you need to add extra RAM and disks to
that bare bones Poweredge that they gave away for buying a few hundred
desktops.
....don't get me started, but Apple did a real good job marketing to the
schools back in the late 80's and early 90's.

Then there is the training...
Brainshare used to have upwards of 7,000 attendees, but now has just under
4000 (Novell.com). Microsoft's TechEd has around 9,000 registered
attendees. (2003 data from Exhibit Surveys).
Both Microsoft and Novell suffered from paper certifications. However, the
hype behind the certifications drove some technical centers to cater more to
Microsoft classes.
The early Novell tests were much harder than the early Microsoft tests.
Desktops are more plentiful than servers.
Apple had some amazing hardware for it's time, and was in a lot of schools,
but the Amiga graphics could not be beat at the time. I digress...

Then there is licensing...
Back in the late 80's there was a company called Psygnosis. They had nearly
uncrackable games. Around that same time Novell required a licensing disk
for the users. Microsoft, on the other hand, had a very weak licensing
model.
Both IBM and Microsoft had versions of DOS and they were good for their
days. Novell even had a DOS-like OS if memory serves me correctly. From
that point, essentially you could buy one copy of software and, if you
needed another server, you could install it and purchase the license at a
later time. Granted, this piracy adversely affected profitability, but the
install base increased. The NT$ and W2K License Logging service was darned
near useless and did not enforce limits, but filled up the event log when it
was running.

Corporations had Microsoft on the desktop and several wanted one primary
vendor for their Intel platform and one primary vendor for their *nix
platform. It made it easier to get a break on licensing.

....and then there was the career progression...
The natural progression when I started in the corporate world (Fortune 500)
was helpdesk to Level II, or deskside, to Jr. Network Admin OR Helpdesk to
Jr. Mainframe Operator OR to Jr. UNIX admin. Programmers were mostly UNIX
and Mainframe. There was a high ratio of desktops to servers and desktops
to Mainframes or UNIX boxes. From there they moved to Level III support or
full Network Admin. So, here you have a kid, in the early 90's, who is
trained on Apple and Microsoft and their salary is paid on that knowledge.
Take a wild gander what they will lean towards. Microsoft software also
worked pretty well with Apple and Novell systems once it was configured
right.

I could go on and on...but I am not a writer and the horse is dead and I am
going to stop kicking it...

Cheers,

Bob
 
You can still use eDirectory in a pure Windows environment (or Pure Unix
/ Linux, AS/400, etc).

NetWare is not required.
 
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