Re: Netware? Less than 20 years ago? Where was he working - Jurassic Park?
Ahem, I got to set up a greenfields AD to transition from Novell in the year of our Lord twenty-nineteen. The only reason they did it is they wanted free Office, so of course MSFT was dangling good-old O365 AND you can buy this edu license plan with Windows licenses bundled and yadda yadda. (Too bad you have to pay $$$ on top for the AV/security licensing to match up with the requirements for govt orgs).
To be honest, it was very, very fortunate we had it all up and running before La Covid came to town - being able to work in O365 and leverage remote access for staff (the student learning system was already remote-accessible, as they mostly are these days) was a life-saver. I can't imagine what would have happened if it'd been pure Novell still.
It still persists with some file and print, although the reason it hasn't shifted is because no-one wants to take it on with "these uncertain times". And because certain managers have completely drunk the MSFT Kool-ade of "ALL files go to Sharepoint Online". Yeah, sure Adobe suite products and similar work great if they're having to pull huge project files down from the interwebs. Standing up an AD-joined NAS and print servers would have enabled us to have Novell completely out by now.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
