World-renowned Hilton International has reaffirmed its commitment to Novell Africa with the rollout of NetWare 5.1 in various hotels across the continent.
Novell is a leading provider of Net services software, a new category of software that secures and powers all types of networks - intranets, extranets and the Internet; corporate and public; wired to wireless - as one Net across all leading operating systems.
According to Chris Marshall, area director IT Middle East and Africa for Hilton International, no fewer than nine African hotels are to upgrade to the NetWare 5.1 platform. "We have already completed rollouts in Nigeria, Cameroon, Sudan, Mauritius and Kenya," he says. "Madagascar, Ethiopia, and the two hotels in Durban and Sandton, South Africa are to follow soon. The entire project is scheduled for completion by early 2002."
Marshall says Hilton International is upgrading its Novell software to NetWare 5.1 in countries all over the world, bar the UK, which will remain on NetWare 4.11. "We decided to renew our Corporate License Agreement with Novell because we have found it to be the best platform on which to run the Micro Fidelio hotel management system," he continues. "Fidelio is used worldwide by Hilton International, as well as other leading hotel chains such as Sheraton and Sun International to manage the reservation, house-keeping, billing and other functions associated with hotel management."
Although Fidelio was originally written for the Novell platform, Marshall points out that a version has been developed to run on Windows NT, but that this did not influence the hotel`s decision. "Our experience with previous versions of NetWare has been sound, and we have found the Novell platform to be extremely stable," he says. "Besides Fidelio, we also run other applications on Novell and see no reason to change."
Graham Hallworth, Novell regional manager for sub-Saharan Africa, says the company is extremely pleased with the group`s decision. "Many users see the expiry of a license agreement as the perfect opportunity to migrate to another platform. The fact that the Hilton International has decided to continue its six-year association with Novell is proof of the product`s reliability and stability," he says.
Hallworth adds that all the IT managers of the various African hotels will gather in Nairobi during March for a week`s training on NetWare 5.1.
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