The landscape of enterprise computing has changed significantly during the past 12 months. But in the world of network operating systems, change has seemed to come a little slower. The NOS remains the central nervous system of an enterprise computing environment, providing user authentication and directory services, file storage, printing services, application hosting as well as remote access. Once again, we deem Novell's IntranetWare to be the year's boss NOS, and it receives our 1998 Well-Connected Award.

Although IntranetWare is just a prelude to the pending release of NetWare 5.0--which will bring several significant new features, including native IP support for clients and NDS--it provides the key network services and reliability that make it stand out from the crowd.

Key Directory Service Alliance For example, as corporate network operating systems get larger and more sophisticated, a directory service is a must. IntranetWare is allied with one of the most scalable, most reliable directory services available--NDS. But even more important, more applications than ever now take advantage of NDS' power. One example: Novell's Z.E.N.works (Zero Effort Networks), which brings software distribution and inventory management facilities to NetWare networks (see "Z.E.N.: Novell's New Management Philosophy," at www.NetworkComputing.com/907/907sp1.html).

Novell also has been busy integrating NDS with Windows NT to make NDS the underlying directory service for a Windows LAN Manager/Domain network. Applications that used the NT Domain for directory services functions can continue to do so, but now the information will be stored in and managed from NDS.

Other Outstanding Features While NDS is a major component of IntranetWare, it's not the only feature that makes the application a winner. Capabilities such as a configurable file compression system, high performance and a central GUI management console also earn outstanding marks. Like other leading NOSes, IntranetWare comes bundled with an assortment of TCP/IP-related services, such as a BOOTP/DHCP server, an FTP server and an HTTP server.

IntranetWare was designed to handle the largest of networks, but it's equally as effective as a platform for smaller networks. IntranetWare can run on far less hardware than that required by competitors like Windows NT. It also supports all popular third-party hardware devices. In addition, support for SMP (symmetric multiprocessing) allows IntranetWare to run some of the most demanding applications, as well as messaging or collaborative computing systems.

IntranetWare, $1,095 to $47,995 (depending on number of users),
Novell,
(800) NETWARE, (801) 368-7000.
www.novell.com