SALT LAKE CITY - Novell's announcement last week that it would migrate NetWare file and print, collaboration and security services to Linux could have created a lot more buzz among industry watchers and customers if only it had come sooner.

Instead, the move was met with a mixture of applause and skepticism.

Novell announced at its annual BrainShare user conference that it would continue to develop and support products and services for the NetWare operating system and also migrate them to the increasingly popular Linux platform.

"As Linux increases its presence in the corporate world, we are actively building out our services to work on Linux," says Jack Messman, Novell chairman and CEO. "It's all about choice. If customers want to go to Linux, we will get them there without a lot of pain and aggravation."

Within 18 months, Novell promised to introduce a raft of services that run natively on Linux. The first will be NetWare 7, code-named Uinta, a version of its flagship operating system that will be available on NetWare and Linux kernels.

"It's a fairly clever move, but only if they can pull it off," says Earl Perkins, an analyst for Meta Group. "Novell has had mixed results in the past being able to do these things. The big problem is we are looking at 18 months before they will have significant services working on Linux. It would have been better if they made this decision a little bit sooner."

Just last year Novell promised that NetWare would compete head to head with products from Microsoft and IBM thanks to its acquisition of Web services company SilverStream Software. In 1998, when Novell shipped NetWare 5, the company said it had a strong application server platform that could compete with Microsoft. However, those visions have gone unfulfilled.

Although Novell officials say they have not decided which Linux distribution the NetWare kernel will use, they say NetWare users have been asking for this capability.

"We see Linux as a good migration path for NetWare users, who were worried about where we were heading with NetWare and were worried that there might not be a migration path beyond a certain version," Messman says. "We wanted to give them comfort that they could get all the services they have with NetWare."