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9/23/2003 -- The juxtaposition of a couple of Novell stories recently -- more layoffs and the rumors that further development in NetWare may be suspended -- highlight the decisions that those of us working in the IT field must make in determining which technologies to concentrate on, and when. Of course, NetWare has been in decline for a number of years, and many have already left the fold for greener pastures, but for those who still primarily work with this technology, they need to make a decision on where to head next.
Now, I've been accused before of being a Novell-hater, but I have to tell you that nothing could be further from the truth. As the holder of the Master CNE certification, it certainly would be in my interests for NetWare to continue to prosper. Also, there were a couple of times in the mid-'90s when I came very close to working for Novell. But the sad reality is that the market has decided to move to other platforms.
This isn't just an issue for those working with NetWare. C/C++ programmers have to decide whether they should move to Java or C#, or perhaps stay where they are. Of course, there is no reason why someone can't learn the basics of all of these languages, but to really master them professionally takes considerable time and lessons that can only be learnt from using them in major projects.
Continuing on from the NetWare example, many of these folks are becoming Windows AD experts (which leverages their X.500 directory knowledge from NDS/eDirectory) or moving to Linux. The Linux option seems to be attractive since as well as being a growing in usage it is part of the Novell product plans. (Many long-term Novell watchers would recognize the similarity to how Novell had earlier hoped to catch the Java wave to boost the usage of NetWare as a platform for applications, and how this never caught on).
But there's always the timing issue. I recently had to hire a senior NetWare support person for our team, and I really struggled to find someone with the depth of skills required for the job. So while it is certainly true that there still are NetWare implementations out there, it seems that the people are moving to other areas faster than the underlying technology is. The irony here is that the dearth of senior skilled people available to support it may hasten the decline of NetWare. For example, my team still has some OS/2 servers supported for one of our clients, and although these still run well, it is exactly because of the lack of talent that the client plans to have these migrated onto other platforms by the end of the year.
Technologies move in cycles, and whether we make conscious decisions or not, our careers need to move on from one to another to stay employable. What are you thoughts on this subject? When do you know when a technology is in decline? How do you know when a new technology has reached critical mass? When is the right time to move to a new technology? Let me know by posting below. 
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Greg Neilson, MCSE+Internet, MCNE, PCLP, is a Contributing Editor for Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and a manager at a large IT services firm in Australia. He's the author of Lotus Domino Administration in a Nutshell (O'Reilly and Associates, ISBN 1-56592-717-6). You can reach him at Attn: Greg.
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