The topic of this article may not meet Wikipedia's notability guideline for biographies .(August 2023) |
Drew Major | |
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Born | |
Occupation(s) | Computer Scientist, Novell, Move Networks |
Website | http://www.novell.com |
Drew Major (born June 17, 1956) is a computer scientist and entrepreneur. He is best known for his role as one of the principal engineers of the Novell NetWare operating system from early in Novell's history. [1] [2] [3] [4]
Major received a Bachelor of Science degree from Brigham Young University in 1980, and graduated with honors in mathematics and computer science. He was born in California but has lived most of his life in Utah. [3] [4]
SuperSet Software was a group founded by friends and former Eyring Research Institute (ERI) co-workers Drew Major, Dale Neibaur, Kyle Powell, and later joined by Mark Hurst. Their work was based on classwork that they started in October 1981 at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA, and upon previous work experiences at Eyring Research Institute working with the Xerox Network Systems (XNS) protocol which led to the development of the Novell IPX and SPX networking protocols, and the NetWare operating system. [3] [4]
In 1983, Ray Noorda took over leadership of Novell and engaged the SuperSet group to work on networking products. The team was originally assigned to create a CP/M disk sharing system to help network the CP/M hardware that Novell was selling at the time. Under Ray Noorda's leadership, the group developed a successful file sharing system for the newly introduced IBM-compatible PC. [1] [3] [4]
The group also wrote a text-mode game called Snipes and used it to test the new network and demonstrate its capabilities. [5]
Major joined Novell in 1983, and his partners Kyle Powell, Dale Neibaur, and Mark Hurst began to work in enabling PCs to share files and other resources via a local area network (LAN). [3] [4] Major was the lead architect and developer of the NetWare operating system for over 15 years. Major left Novell in 2003. [1]
External video | |
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Drew Major Tribute 2005 UTC, posted December 4, 2014 [3] |
After leaving Novell, Major co-founded video networking company Move Networks, Inc. [6] The company began to experience financial problems in 2010 for failing to deliver on key technologies, which resulted in some of its larger customers abandoning the company's technology.[ clarification needed ] [7] The company was subsequently acquired for 45 million dollars by EchoStar, Inc. in January 2011. [8]
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Drew Major Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum Hall of Fame, posted November 4, 2013 [4] |
A network operating system (NOS) is a specialized operating system for a network device such as a router, switch or firewall.
DR-DOS is a disk operating system for IBM PC compatibles. Upon its introduction in 1988, it was the first DOS attempting to be compatible with IBM PC DOS and MS-DOS.
Novell, Inc. was an American software and services company headquartered in Provo, Utah, that existed from 1980 until 2014. Its most significant product was the multi-platform network operating system known as Novell NetWare.
NetWare is a discontinued computer network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, using the IPX network protocol.
Banyan VINES is a discontinued network operating system developed by Banyan Systems for computers running AT&T's UNIX System V.
IPX/SPX stands for Internetwork Packet Exchange/Sequenced Packet Exchange. IPX and SPX are networking protocols used initially on networks using the Novell NetWare operating systems. They also became widely used on networks deploying Microsoft Windows LANS, as they replaced NetWare LANS, but are no longer widely used. IPX/SPX was also widely used prior to and up to Windows XP, which supported the protocols, while later Windows versions do not, and TCP/IP took over for networking.
UnixWare is a Unix operating system. It was originally released by Univel, a jointly owned venture of AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) and Novell. It was then taken over by Novell. Via Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), it went on to Caldera Systems, Caldera International, and The SCO Group before it was sold to UnXis. UnixWare is typically deployed as a server rather than a desktop. Binary distributions of UnixWare are available for x86 architecture computers. UnixWare is primarily marketed as a server operating system.
Raymond John "Ray" Noorda was a U.S. computer businessman. He was CEO of Novell between 1982 and 1994. He also served as chairman of Novell until he was replaced in 1994.
The Canopy Group is an American investment and property management firm founded by Ray Noorda in 1995 through the Noorda Family Trust. It is headquartered in Lindon, Utah. At various times it has consisted of, or been known as, Canopy Technologies, Canopy Properties, and Canopy Ventures.
Unix System Laboratories (USL), sometimes written UNIX System Laboratories to follow relevant trademark guidelines of the time, was an American software laboratory and product development company that existed from 1989 through 1993. At first wholly, and then majority, owned by AT&T, it was responsible for the development and maintenance of one of the main branches of the Unix operating system, the UNIX System V Release 4 source code product. Through Univel, a partnership with Novell, it was also responsible for the development and production of the UnixWare packaged operating system for Intel architecture. In addition it developed Tuxedo, a transaction processing monitor, and was responsible for certain products related to the C++ programming language. USL was based in Summit, New Jersey, and its CEOs were Larry Dooling followed by Roel Pieper.
Ralph J. Yarro III is founder/CEO and chairman of ThinkAtomic, Inc. an early stage venture accelerator and incubator of technology firms. He was previously chairman of the board and the largest shareholder in The SCO Group, Inc. and CEO of The Canopy Group, Inc.
Snipes is a text-mode networked computer game that was created in 1983 by SuperSet Software. Snipes is officially credited as being the original inspiration for NetWars. It was one of the earliest text mode multi player games, running on Novell NetWare systems.
The NetWare Core Protocol (NCP) is a network protocol used in some products from Novell, Inc. It is usually associated with the client-server operating system Novell NetWare which originally supported primarily MS-DOS client stations, but later support for other platforms such as Microsoft Windows, the classic Mac OS, Linux, Windows NT, Mac OS X, and various flavors of Unix was added.
Univel, Inc. was a joint venture of Novell and AT&T's Unix System Laboratories (USL) that was formed in December 1991 to develop and market the Destiny desktop Unix operating system, which was released in 1992 as UnixWare 1.0. Univel existed only briefly in the period between AT&T initially divesting parts of USL in 1991, and its eventual outright purchase by Novell, which completed in June 1993, thereby acquiring rights to the Unix operating system. Novell merged USL and Univel into their new Unix Systems Group (USG).
AppWare was a rapid application development system for Microsoft Windows and the classic Mac OS based on a simple graphical programming language. Applications were constructed by connecting together icons representing objects in the program and their commands. The resulting logic could be compiled on either platform and typically only required minor changes to the GUI layout to complete the port.
Caldera OpenLinux (COL) is a defunct Linux distribution. Caldera originally introduced it in 1997 based on the German LST Power Linux distribution, and then taken over and further developed by Caldera Systems since 1998. A successor to the Caldera Network Desktop put together by Caldera since 1995, OpenLinux was an early "business-oriented distribution" and foreshadowed the direction of developments that came to most other distributions and the Linux community generally.
Novell Embedded Systems Technology (NEST) was a series of APIs, data formats and network protocol stacks written in a highly portable fashion intended to be used in embedded systems. The idea was to allow various small devices to access Novell NetWare services, provide such services, or use NetWare's IPX protocol as a communications system. Novell referred to this concept as "Extended Networks", and when the effort was launched they boasted that they wanted to see one billion devices connected to NetWare networks by year 2000. NEST was launched in mid-1994 countering Microsoft's similar Microsoft at Work efforts, which had been launched in 1993.
NetWare Lite and Personal NetWare are a series of discontinued peer-to-peer local area networks developed by Novell for DOS- and Windows-based personal computers aimed at personal users and small businesses in the 1990s.
Novell BrainShare was a technical computer conference sponsored by Novell during the years 1985 through 2014. It was held annually in Salt Lake City, Utah, most often in March of each year, and typically lasted for much of a week. During its early years it was held in a hotel; then for much of the 1990s the conference was held on the campus of the University of Utah; finally beginning in 1997 it was held in the Salt Palace Convention Center. During the keynote addresses for the conference, Novell would present its vision of the direction of the computer industry and how its products fit into that direction. There were then many highly technical breakout sessions where Novell technologies were explained in detail and customers and partners could engage Novell engineers regarding them. Typically some 5,000 to 7,000 attendees came to each BrainShare.
Novell, Inc. v. Reimerdes was a federal civil action, "inter alia", under the Copyright and Trademark Laws of the United States.