Drew Major (born June 17, 1956) is a computer scientist and

entrepreneur Entrepreneurship is the creation or extraction of economic value. With this definition, entrepreneurship is viewed as change, generally entailing risk beyond what is normally encountered in starting a business, which may include other values t ...

. He is best known for his role as one of the principal engineers of the

Novell 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. Under the lead ...

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. The original NetWare product in 19 ...

operating system from early in Novell's history. He currently resides in

Orem, Utah Orem is a city in Utah County, Utah, United States, in the northern part of the state. It is adjacent to Provo, Lindon, and Vineyard and is approximately south of Salt Lake City. Orem is one of the principal cities of the Provo-Orem, Utah Me ...

with his wife, Mary, and their four sons.What Novell Founder Drew Major is Up To
/ref>Drew Major Utah Valley Entrepreneurial Forum Hall of Fame
/ref>Drew Major Tribute 2005 UTC
/ref> Major received a Bachelor of Science degree from

Brigham Young University Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...

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.

SuperSet Software

SuperSet Software was a group founded by friends and former

Eyring Research Institute Eyring Research Institute (ERI) was founded as an American non-profit organization, on September 6, 1972, in Provo, Utah. Carlyle Harmon established the Eyring Research Institute with Ronald G. Hansen as President. This institute did consult ...

(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

, Provo, Utah, USA, and upon previous work experiences at

working with the

Xerox Network Systems Xerox Network Systems (XNS) is a computer networking protocol suite developed by Xerox within the Xerox Network Systems Architecture. It provided general purpose network communications, internetwork routing and packet delivery, and higher level f ...

(XNS) protocol which led to the development of the Novell

IPX Internetwork Packet Exchange (IPX) is the network layer protocol in the IPX/SPX protocol suite. IPX is derived from Xerox Network Systems' IDP. It also has the ability to act as a transport layer protocol. The IPX/SPX protocol suite was very p ...

and SPX networking protocols, and the NetWare operating system. In 1983,

Ray Noorda Raymond John "Ray" Noorda (19 June 1924 – 9 October 2006) was a United States of America, U.S. computer businessman. He was chief executive officer, CEO of Novell between 1982 and 1994. He also served as chairman of Novell until he was rep ...

took over leadership of

and engaged the SuperSet group to work on networking products. The team was originally assigned to create a

CP/M CP/M, originally standing for Control Program/Monitor and later Control Program for Microcomputers, is a mass-market operating system created in 1974 for Intel 8080/ 85-based microcomputers by Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. Initial ...

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. The group also wrote a text-mode game called

Snipes Snipes may refer to: * Snipe, a wading bird * Snipes (surname) * ''Snipes'' (film), a 2001 film * ''Snipes'' (video game), a 1983 text-mode networked computer game * Snipes Mountain AVA Snipes Mountain AVA is an American Viticultural Area l ...

and used it to test the new network and demonstrate its capabilities.

Novell

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). Major was the lead architect and developer of the

operating system for over 15 years. Major left Novell in 2003.

Move Networks

After leaving Novell, Major co-founded video networking company Move Networks, Inc. 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. The company was subsequently acquired for 45 million dollars by EchoStar, Inc. in January 2011.Echostar Paid 45 Million for Move Networks
/ref>

External links

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Major, Drew 1956 births Living people American Latter Day Saints Brigham Young University alumni Novell people