Hey there my good friend. How be you? <g>. You son-of-a-gun, you beat me to it! (Grrrr...). Oh, what the h*ll, I know Christine, she won't mind me posting the whole story <g>.
Yes Salah, "more" than apparantly not working.
Hope things are going well with you and the family Salah.
I'm still "plugging away" (a new year you know <smile>).
Regards,
Joe...
PS: Anybody got any comments on this one?
<<<<<<<<<<<<
Novell faces NDS platform
conundrum
By Christine Burns
Network World, 2/9/98
Faced with the reality that its cross-platform directory
plans have met with tepid industry interest, Novell, Inc. is
looking for a more expeditious way to pull Unix servers
and mainframe systems into the NetWare fold.
The company is working on a set of Novell Directory
Services (NDS) authentication modules that will let users
sign on to a network once and tap into data and
applications on NetWare, Unix and mainframe systems.
The plan represents an about-face for Novell, which has a
half-dozen partnerships with the likes of Hewlett-Packard
Co., IBM and Sun Microsystems, Inc. under which these
firms were to port NDS to run natively on their respective
operating systems.
While Novell intends to continue to support these
partnerships, officials appointed by turn-around CEO Eric
Schmidt said they have misgivings about this old approach.
''I can spend all of my resources [trying to get partners to
port] NDS to these garden flavor varieties of Unix, but that
would be a waste of time,'' said Chris Stone, Novell vice
president of strategy.
''Yes, I guess you would have to say that [this approach]
didn't work. We threw a party and not many people
came,'' said A. J. Dennis, a Novell corporate strategist
under John Slitz, newly appointed Novell marketing head.
HP and The Santa Cruz Operation, Inc. are the only
licensees that currently bundle NDS with their Unix
offerings. Despite licensing the NDS code last July, IBM is
not expected to ship NDS on either AIX or OS/390 until later this year.
Fujitsu, Ltd. and Sun also have licensed the directory code but have not
committed to delivery dates. In fact, industry analysts doubt Sun ever will ship
NDS for Solaris, because the company recently shipped its own directory
service.
''The commitment of these third parties to push NDS is just not there,'' said Neil
MacDonald, an analyst with Gartner Group, Inc., in Stamford, Conn. ''If there
was real support behind these deals, you would have seen both product and
corporate deployment by now.''
But despite the lack of movement from Novell's partners, Stone said users still
want a simple way to weave Unix boxes into their Novell nets.
In all likelihood, Novell will build and market these NDS authentication modules
on its own. But officials would not say if these modules would be sold as
stand-alone products or be rolled into future versions of NetWare or NDS. They
would not give a time frame for delivery.
Kansas City, Mo.-based Hallmark, Inc. said it would be interested in single
sign-on capability for its 60 NetWare 4.X network and various Unix application
servers. But Hallmark was put off by the original vision because the cardmaker
uses too many flavors of Unix, said technical analyst Dan Blevins. ''Managing all
of those separate NDS host machines would have been too complicated.''
Novell's authentication-module approach has worked in the past, said Michael
Simpson, director of product marketing for Novell's Network Services Division.
Novell shipped a redirection module for Windows NT servers in early 1997 as
part of a two-phase NT and NDS integration plan. This module, called Novell
Administrator for NT, gave customers single sign-on capability and centralized
user account administration for mixed NT and NetWare nets.
It wasn't until Novell released NDS for NT last December that the directory ran
natively on top of the operating system.
''No, you don't need native NDS support for single sign-on. But there still is some
value in having it there,'' said Simpson.
Specifically, native NDS is useful in remote offices where companies don't want
to deploy multiple operating systems and for running new cross-platform,
directory-enabled applications.
>>>>>>>>>>>
Now I know it's just a story, but somehow I get the feeling that Chris Stone and John Slitz are not very happy about the way things are going. And they are the new kids on the block.
Still say 2/24 will tell a tale.... |
