Lotus positions Linux to supercede NetWare

Lotus will release its Domino messaging server for Linux, but not for the latest release of Novell's NetWare operating system (OS).

Lotus president and CEO, Jeff Papows made the announcement on the Web on Tuesday, but top analysts believe this is not the end for NetWare.

Robin Bloor, CEO at Bloor Research said the move away from NetWare makes sense for Lotus. "They are not making as many meaningful sales for that platform, and with no demand, it is still costing a fair amount of money to support it," he said. "People buy NetWare for the directory services, and it will continue to sell in that capacity.

Bloor added that Linux is becoming the dominant platform for Web and low-end servers, claiming: "Porting to Linux will not be a hardship for users."

Derek Zenter, NetWare marketing manager at Novell, suggested Lotus' decision to drop NetWare was based on market positions which have since changed with the slowdown in the growth of NT relative to NetWare.

Zenter said: "By supporting open standards for application development, NetWare will be ready to support such platforms as Java and IP. Things will end up being very compatible with NetWare again."

But Robin Bloor said Linux will emerge as the main competitor to Windows NT. "People are expecting to pay relatively small amounts of money to put in server-based applications," he said. "At the low end of the market, Linux is clearly going to be the dominant platform."

Lotus also announced that Linus Torvalds, creator of Linux, will speak at Lotus DevCon 99 conference later this month.