I hardly know where to begin.

First, I'm amazed that anyone would be so adamant about supporting only one operating system that he or she would give up a perfectly good--and probably well understood--system like NetWare just because this person decided to use an application that doesn't run on NetWare.

In no way, shape or form do I think NetWare is perfect. But I do know that it is superior to NT in many ways, and ripping it out without fully understanding what you're getting into is just asking for trouble.

Case in point: One of the organizations mentioned had to go back and re-install some of its NetWare servers. The other two organizations have had to adjust their time table for deployment, for a number of reasons, not the least of which is figuring out how to handle the differences in capabilities between NetWare and Windows NT.

One OS--One Special OS I can't blame folks for trying this. It's a really nice thing to have one operating system for your network, and it's becoming clearer every day that it's unlikely that NetWare will be the single operating system to drive any organization. The applications just aren't there, and I doubt that the upcoming support for Java in NetWare will do much to correct the situation.

Unfortunately, this leaves you IT pros in a very sticky situation. If you continue to run NetWare, then it will be quite some time before you'll be able to deploy a major application like Exchange, which would be your major reason to rip out NetWare.

But if you do rip out NetWare, then you'll be stuck relying on Microsoft to support all those good NetWare features you've come to know and love. Oh sure, Microsoft will get around to supporting you someday.

But when someday comes, will Microsoft get it right?

If you happen to be a Unix shop where NT has made it through the door, you'll find that the issues are still very similar.

Unix does a ton of things to which Windows NT can presently only aspire. So, ripping Unix out right now will probably cause real pain to the majority of your user base. Unix--just like NetWare--has plenty of weaknesses, including an application base that grows at a significantly slower pace than NT's.

Weighing Your Options So what should we do? The first solution seems relatively obvious. You have to realize that you'll probably have to live with more than one network operating system for some time to come. NT has no directory, poor print spooling and user administration can be a pain. Novell has no application support and still is a flaky directory system at times. Unix remains specialized, expensive and arcane for network managers to administer, while its application base still isn't what it could be. There just aren't any silver bullets here.

Expecting the folks at Microsoft to eventually get everything right is probably a very reasonable assumption. But even if Microsoft doesn't, it'll probably convince you--and me--that we really didn't want whatever was missing anyway. Microsoft isn't lacking for good marketers, whereas Novell and most of the Unix houses are dreadfully lacking in that department.

Either way, until you really think through all of your NOS needs, don't go ripping out NetWare in favor in NT. Chances are, you'll end up with a lot of sleepless nights.

Art Wittmann can be reached at awittmann@nwc.com.