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Netscape, Novell to team up
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March 21, 1997: 12:28 p.m. ET
Tech giants plan to form joint company to battle Microsoft, IBM
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Networking software giant Novell and Internet browser leader Netscape on Friday announced an agreement to form a software company to compete with Microsoft and IBM.
Company officials said the jointly- owned, Utah-based company, to be called Novonyx, will develop a version of Netscape's SuiteSpot package of communication software that will run on Novell's Netware network operating system.
Novonyx's offerings are aimed at blunting the impact of Microsoft's thrusts into the intranet market through server software included in Windows NT. It would also compete against communication software packages from IBM's Lotus Development software division, the companies said.
The Netscape-Novell combination is potent because Novell has the largest number of installed network servers and the greatest number of users, 5 million and 60 million respectively.
"The thinking behind this deal was Novell has more than 5 million network servers installed which is more than (Windows) NT or UNIX. So it's a huge, fertile territory for us," said Netscape Vice President and co-founder Mark Andreessen.
"Companies can now build intranets easily," he said.
Andreessen said the cooperative effort would give corporate customers currently using Novell's Netware more options to use in administering their networks.
"The fact is, with all those servers in addition to strong positions on Windows NT and UNIX, we're the choice for any company with a large-scale network made of different kinds of systems. That's basically all of the Fortune 1000, so it expands our reach quite a bit," he said.
In an appearance Friday on CNNfn's "Digital Jam," Andreessen said the partnering provides equally-attractive advantages to both companies. (273K WAV) or (273K AIFF)
Novonyx's products will ship this fall, although the companies will begin demonstrating the offerings to corporate customers next week.
The companies declined to disclose financial terms. They also declined to specify the stake each company will hold in Novonyx.
Novell's Netware program is the core network software at departments in many of the world's biggest companies using machines linked into networks.
The product has been losing market share to Microsoft's Windows NT operating system, however, partly because Novell has not been able to develop innovative communication and Internet software on its own.
Netscape recently has been focusing its efforts on selling communication software for internal corporate networks, or intranets. Until now, its products did not run on top of Novell's software.
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