"NetWare 4's enhanced services provide more advanced computing functionality than any other NOS:
Imaging, which supports incorporation, identification, storage, and tracking of images on a network. This technology creates systems which nearly replace paper with digital information for industries like insurance, banking, and the medical field.
In the quest to replace paper, document management becomes an important network service. NetWare 4 offers a variety of technologies to support document management, including support for High Capacity Storage Systems (HCSS), which allow mounting of high-capacity optical drives and jukeboxes as NetWare server volumes. NetWare 4 provides a rich set of application programming interfaces to assist in the integrated development of network-based imaging solutions, included as part of Novell's NetWare 4 Software Developers Kits (SDK). Third-party solutions that incorporate a variety of imaging and document management engines are already available for NetWare 4.
To allow networks to better facilitate business operations, a new class of applications called workflow is emerging. Workflow represents an attempt to computerize business processes to make workers more efficient, more productive, and better equipped to complete tasks. It includes document routing and tracking, business process modeling, and a host of other activities that allow the network to move work around quickly and efficiently, while keeping track of what's happening where. Novell has made substantial investments in workflow technology, and its GroupWise and PerfectOffice applications incorporate significant workflow elements. The power and capability of NDS makes NetWare 4 an ideal environment to host such applications. Numerous third-party workflow applications and environments are available for use today with NetWare 4.
High-speed desktops and high-bandwidth networks make graphical networked communications, like video, possible. NetWare 4 supports add-on technology for networked video-teleconferencing applications. Novell expects widespread introduction of high-bandwidth technologies like ISDN and SMDS, along with higher-bandwidth LANs, to increase the public appetite for such capabilities. When that happens, Novell will be ready, working in concert with vendors like Intel, AT&T, and Synoptics.
Most organizations make their largest investments in computers and telephone systems. Until recently, the two have been completely separate. Novell, working with AT&T and other telephone switch vendors, has developed a Telephony Services API (TSAPI) that will help integrate the PBX or local switch with the network. This technology promises to bring the two most important pieces of office equipment on worker's desks - the computer and the telephone - closer together. It's already possible to purchase software that enables a NetWare 4 server to manage a switch or PBX. Novell expects third-party call control, call management, and the integration of NDS with corporate telephone directories or phone books to follow. Graphical, customizable telephone pull-down menus, automatic call logging, and space for entering notes at the keyboard will enable people to work with both systems much more effectively.
Enhanced services are the keys to NOS differentiation and diversity. Novell is proud that NetWare's architecture is powerful enough to support a rich array of capabilities to help Novell customers stay competitive."
