News

Microsoft Offers Discount to Migrate from Novell NetWare

• By Scott Bekker
• 11/16/2004

The kit includes tools, prescriptive guidance, training, newsgroup-based technical support and a financial incentive of $600 to $15,000.

"Customers have increasingly told us that they are looking for ways to make the move to Microsoft's reliable server platform and road map, but are concerned about migration issues," Martin Taylor, general manager of Platform Strategy at Microsoft, said in a statement.

Technologies in Microsoft's laundry list announcement include the free Windows Services for Netware (SFN); a 20 percent discount on the list price of Quest Software's Quest NDS Migrator product for customers with more than 1,000 seats; and Solution Accelerators that provide step-by-step migration guidance.

The financial incentive is called the U.S. Mid-Market NetWare Migration Promotion. It is a $600 partner services subsidy for each Windows Server 2003 license purchased with 50 CALs. The program is capped at 25 subsidies per customer for a total discount of $15,000, which translates to 25 servers and 1,250 CALs.

Just last week, Microsoft and Novell announced a settlement, in which Microsoft paid $536 million and Novell agreed not to pursue antitrust claims involving its current product line or help the European Commission in its antitrust case against Microsoft.

Days later, Novell sued Microsoft alleging that anticompetitive behavior by Microsoft hurt the market share of WordPerfect and Quattro Pro, products Novell owned in the mid-90s. The companies also sparred recently with dueling memos about the business value of Linux.