BT, one of the world`s largest telecommunications companies, has renewed its license agreement with Novell and upgraded its NetWare investment in the biggest ever Novell contract outside of the United States.
The project, completed this year and worth more than $5 million (about R30-million), includes the deployment of Novell NetWare 4.11 and Novell Directory Services (NDS) to 70 000 seats throughout the UK, with plans to upgrade to NetWare 5 over the next few years.
Chris McGarr, large system design manager for BT, said, "Two years ago we upgraded over half of our network to NetWare 4.11 and the excellent results made the decision to upgrade the entire network an easy one. NetWare is BT`s platform of choice for deploying directory services and for file and print. NDS also allows us to have a single point of management and control.
"NetWare has proved to be a very reliable and stable platform which has enabled us to network our core business applications with ease and precision. The single point of administration provided by NDS also makes a significant contribution in terms of the total cost of network ownership, as problems in our offices across the country can be dealt with by IT managers at centralised locations."
BT felt that NetWare offered a lower cost of ownership and greater scalability and functionality in comparison to other network operating systems, and thus the decision was made to upgrade the entire network to NetWare 4.11.
Further underlining BT`s commitment to Novell, the company has extended its agreement to utilise Novell`s Premier Support service as well as contracting a dedicated systems engineer to monitor and manage the network.
"Novell UK is extremely pleased to continue the agreement with BT and grow the relationship with the UK`s largest company and one of the world`s largest telecommunications companies," said Steve Brown, Novell UK managing director. He continued, "BT has been an extensive user of Novell Directory Services. We have been using the directory to deploy NT Workstation to support line of business applications, and have been able to realise significant cost savings and benefits to the business."
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