Novell and Digital to Cooperatively Develop Enterprise-Wide Networking Solutions Digital To Expand PATHWORKS And Integrate NetWare Services BOSTON, Mass. -- NETWORLD -- February 10, 1992 -- Novell, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corporation today announced a strategic agreement under which the two companies will cooperatively develop enterprise-wide network computing solutions. The two companies said they were expanding their existing relationship to meet customer needs for increased ease-of-use and interoperability between their products. The agreement includes an expansion of Digital's PATHWORKS corporate PC network operating system to integrate Novell's NetWare network services on VAX VMS, RISC ULTRIX and OSF/1 servers. Digital will begin delivering these capabilities in new PATHWORKS products during the second half of calendar 1992. These PATHWORKS products with integrated NetWare services will give NetWare users access to enterprise data, applications and services via Digital's Network Application Support (NAS) products in local and wide-area networks. These enterprise-wide applications include a variety of client/server and group productivity software products such as database query, electronic mail, group conferencing, file conversion and viewing, and distributed transaction processing. As a result of the Digital and Novell cooperative development effort, Digital will introduce new PATHWORKS products that enable PC users and system managers to access and manage file and print services on NetWare-based PATHWORKS for VMS, ULTRIX and OSF/1 servers and Novell NetWare servers in a consistent manner. By integrating NetWare services into PATHWORKS products, users who are already familiar with NetWare retain familiar ways of using networks. Novell and Digital to Cooperatively Develop Networking Solutions The Digital and Novell relationship has been addressing customer service and support needs since 1989. Digital has been providing, managing, installing and servicing Novell products as part of Digital's multivendor systems integration business. Through Novell Labs, Novell has been certifying Digital EtherWORKS network interface cards, DECpc systems and DEClaser 2000 and 3000 desktop laser printers for compatibility with the NetWare environment. Since 1991, Digital has been a member of Novell's Technical Support Alliance, which provides user service and support for multivendor network computing environments. "We are building on our existing relationship with Digital in order to meet the evolving needs of the growing community of computer users who rely on systems products from both companies," said Jim Bills, executive vice president of Novell's NetWare Systems Group. "The closer integration of Digital and Novell products is an important aspect of our efforts to meet customer requirements for comprehensive network computing solutions." "Our strategy is to allow customers to select the most appropriate technologies for building their enterprise PC networks," said John T. Rose, vice president of Digital's Personal Computing Systems Group. "This agreement is an important step in our evolution of PATHWORKS as a truly open network operating system. The networking world is a multivendor world -- that's why we have evolved PATHWORKS to offer the widest array of choices: choice of client, server and network. Now PATHWORKS is the comprehensive PC networking software that incorporates the leading NetWare network services as well as LAN Manager and AppleShare," said Mr. Rose. Digital Equipment Corporation, headquartered in Maynard, Massachusetts, is the leading worldwide supplier of networked computer systems, software and services. Digital pioneered and leads the industry in interactive, distributed and multi-vendor computing. Digital and its partners deliver the power to use the best integrated solution - from desktop to data center - in open information environments. Novell, Inc., (NASDAQ: NOVL) is an operating system software company, the developer of network services, specialized and general purpose operating system software products including NetWare, DR DOS, DR Multiuser DOS and FlexOS. Novell's NetWare network computing products manage and control the sharing of services, data and applications among computer workgroups, departmental networks and business-wide information systems.