NetWare 4.1 Earns Four New "Product of The Year" Honors

Press Release

NetWare Also Sweeps Brand Preference Study, Remains the Favorite of IS Professionals

PROVO, UT--April 4, 1995--Novell today announced that NetWare 4.1 has earned four new Product of the Year awards from three leading industry publications, InfoWorld, LAN Magazine and Network Computing. These awards join the top product honors already awarded to NetWare 4 this year from PC Week, Personal Computing and VAR Business. Novell also announced that NetWare has swept Computerworld's Brand Preference Study for Local Area Networks, earning top marks from IS professionals in five categories.

"The momentum behind NetWare 4.1 is growing at a phenomenal rate," said Toby Corey, vice president of marketing for Novell's NetWare Products Division. "NetWare 4.1 builds on the reliable, high-performance foundation of NetWare 3 to make networks easier to use, easier to administer and less expensive to own, operate and maintain. Customers, trade press and industry experts alike are recognizing NetWare 4.1 for both its real-world business benefits and its technical excellence."

InfoWorld Readers, Test Center Name NetWare 4.1 Top NOS

In its March 20 edition, InfoWorld gave NetWare 4.1 top honors in two categories, Readers' Choice Networking Product of the Year and Test Center Award for Network Operating Systems. For its Reader's Choice Award, InfoWorld asked 100,000 of its readers to select the product that showed superior achievement for the previous calendar year. Readers selected NetWare 4 for the second year in a row, with this year's prize going to NetWare 4.1. The InfoWorld Test Center Award is given to products that distinguish themselves by leading their product category in innovation and real-world usability. This year the Test Center staff selected NetWare 4.1 over competitors including Windows NT Server 3.5, IBM LAN Server 4.0 Advanced and NetWare 3.12. "[NetWare 4.1's] centralized NetWare Directory Services (NDS) administration paves the way for all future NOSes," InfoWorld concluded. "Simple changes to the NDS database are now possible, such as moving or renaming subtrees. Changing the network to reflect organizations is now an easy task."

LAN Magazine Cites NetWare 4.1's Directory Flexibility

"The networking world is full of good products--so we have to look for great products, ones that have distinguished themselves from the rest of the pack," wrote LAN Magazine about its search for the 1994 products of the year, published in its April 1995 edition. In the Enterprise NOS category, LAN Magazine's top pick was NetWare 4.1, based on LAN Magazine editors' testing as well as feedback from VARs and integrators and the opinions of industry experts. One reason for the selection was the flexibility NetWare 4.1 added to NetWare Directory Services (NDS), the global directory that provides a single point of network access and network administration.

"Unlike its 4.0x predecessor, NetWare 4.1 includes utilities to modify, move, create, and merge directory objects . . . users can install a straightforward #best guess' or even a simple default [directory] configuration , and then modify it if, and when, necessary."LAN Magazine also cited the importance of network services integrated with NDS: "Among NDS's advantages is software that takes advantage of the directory. NetWare 4.1 includes NetWare MHS Services, which handles messaging without requiring a separate directory or separate administration utilities."

Network Computing: "NetWare is Still King of Network Operating Systems"

Network Computing, which called NetWare 4.1 "The Boss NOS" in its Jan. 15, 1995, product review, further honored NetWare 4.1 by giving it the "Well Connected" product of the year award for network operating systems, published in the April 1995 edition. In addition to praising NetWare Directory Services and NetWare 4.1's security, performance and support of client environments, Network Computing also cited NetWare 4.1's industry support: "NetWare also still leads by a wide margin in third-party support, both in software and hardware products that can augment the functionality of the NetWare environment. There are more backup and storage options, more management utilities and more NOS-aware applications for NetWare than any other NOS."

NetWare Sweeps Computerworld's IS Brand Preference Study

NetWare remains the favorite network operating system of information systems professionals, according to Computerworld's Brand Preference Study for 1994, which was conducted among Computerworld subscribers to determine which product brands are preferred by IS. Novell swept the PC LAN Operating System Category, earning top honors in all five categories: Best Technology, Best Price/Performance, Best Service/Support, Best Documentation and Prefer to Do Business With.

NetWare 4.1: The Only Network Ready for Tomorrow, Today

Released in December 1994, NetWare 4.1 is the latest version of the NetWare 4 network operating system. NetWare 4.1 simplifies network access, simplifies network administration, and reduces the cost of network ownership for businesses of all sizes while retaining the performance, reliability and scalability that have made NetWare the overwhelming NOS leader. As the only network operating system that provides the seven essential network services--file, print, directory, security, messaging, multiprotocol routing and management--NetWare 4.1 lays the foundation for pervasive computing, Novell's vision of connecting people to other people and to the information they need, allowing them to act on it anytime, anyplace.

In Novell's first fiscal quarter of 1995, sales of NetWare 4 more than doubled over sales in the fourth fiscal quarter of 1994 and increased to represent 30 percent of the company's total NetWare NOS revenue. Fueled by the shipment of NetWare 4.1 and the product's positive acceptance by customers, trade press and the sales channel, this aggressive market growth signals the industry's growing recognition of NetWare 4 as the emerging NOS standard. More information about NetWare 4 and the awards it has won can be found on Novell's NetWare.com World Wide Web server at http://www/NetWare.com