john@stiatl.UUCP (John DeArmond) (11/27/88)
Dear Netlanders: A couple of weeks ago, a discussion was started by me comparing the virtues of the Banyan VINES LAN product running on our Convergent MightyFrame with Novell product. I outlined the extensive deficiencies of VINES and made the suggestion that anybody considering VINES not do so. My posting generated some heat and a little bit of flames as I was rebuked by a couple of people on the net who said that I did not know what I was talking about and that VINES did not have the mentioned problems. One posting in particular was from an engineer at Banyan. I took his posting somewhat personally and responded accordingly. Well, the confusion seems to have been on both sides. Below is a copy of an E-mail message I got from Mr Jim Allchin who is VP, R&D for Banyan. This is a very informative note and it resolves some of the confusion generated by the discussion of the last 2 weeks. If you don't want to read the entire note, here is a summary: The VINES product we are running on our Convergent is a port of VINES done totally by Convergent and is separate from anything Banyan sells. Jim states that the Convergent is an older, lower performance version of their product and that I should not judge the product by what we have. Fair enough. I agree. So to the extent my postings have caused confusion to net readers, I offer my appology. So I now modify my advice to say that my posting previous apply STRICTLY to the Convergent product. I have 0 experience with the current Banyan product. So the questions arise again: "would I buy VINES over Novell?" - No, Novell is the 'ole tried and true for me. "Is Novell better than VINES?" - At least for me it is by virtue of it's dominace of the market, its performance, its third party support and my degree of experience. "would I give VINES an evaluation?" - Sure - it's probably a pretty good product. I'd still have to look at how much TPA its DOS driver occupies. "would I buy Convergent?" - Well, you answer that one for yourselves :-) Last comment - The value of the Net never ceases to amaze me. No where else can one tap such a body of knowledge and opinion. EVERY time I've come to the net with questions or issues, they've been resolved in the end. Sometimes it's taken a mild flame of a vendor to get response but this media is orders of magnitude better than any other customer support in existance. This case is classic. It started with a query, then flamed up to full brilliance and finally resolved itself with the delivery of the facts. Everybody, myself included, has learned something. This is a valuable resource that must be protected and nurtured. Jim's posting leads me to believe that the other Banyan employee who posted (sorry, i forgot your name) is in hot water for debating with me. I sure hope not. The level of open discussion that occurs on the net is invaluable and should in no way be squelched. Sure we got a bit heated there for awhile, but things have resolved themselves quite well I think. I daresay that because of the discussion on this subject culminating in this posting, most net readers' opinions of Banyan are much higher than would have been the case if they'd just sat on the side and said nothing - or worse, blindly defended the product. John De Armond Sales Technologies, Inc. Atlanta, GA ...!gatech!stiatl!john ----------------- Message from Jim Allchin follows ----------------------- Hi, First, I wanted to apologize for the latest news group discussion. This was unfortunate and even though Banyan (the company) had no knowledge of the discussions or contents, I feel badly that they occurred. Please accept our apology. (I wanted to do this over the telephone, but I could not reach you today.) Secondly, I think there may be some confusion over VINES (from Banyan) and ports of VINES by other vendors. If a CT box was used as the basis for your discussion, then the "VINES" you are seeing is one by CT -- not Banyan. We do not sell, support, etc. those environments. In addition, the VINES version that is sold under the CT line is several revisions (over 2 years) behind standard available product from Banyan. The way that VINES was implemented on this machine was quite different than standard Banyan products. (For example, even on the same revision of software, the performance improvement between Banyan and CT versions was very noticeable. Another example you noted dealt with printer issues -- same story -- a different implementation. Or, the support of only Ethernet by CT -- Banyan supports something like 25 different LANs. Options are NOT even loaded with a tape with Banyan VINES. The list goes on and on.) The bottom line: many of screens look close, but they are VERY diffent products -- and very different companies. Because of this confusion, do you think it would be possible to add one more entry to the newsgroup and clarify that your involvement with VINES was with the CT related product and not Banyan per se? Banyan, as I mentioned above, does not have control over the implementation or support issues, etc. of any CT product. (Banyan does not sell the software that they are selling.) I believe that this addition would clarify for everyone the basis for your comments. I would be happy to discuss this with you at length. Again, I'm sorry about the confusion over the newsgroup discussion. But, I'm sure that you can see how many people might have thought you were discussing a true VINES Banyan product and Banyan support issues. thanks for your understanding, Jim Allchin V.P. R&D Banyan System, Inc. 115 Flanders Road Westboro, Mass. 01581 ...mit-eddie!banyan!jim