To Complete Its Comeback, Novell Still Has Several
Holes To Fill
SATURDAY, JUNE 05, 1999 1:06 AM EST
- CMP Media
Jun. 04, 1999 (InternetWeek - CMP via COMTEX) -- As my last column
pointed out, Novell has performed a significant turnaround, giving itself
an opportunity to carve out a share of the rapidly evolving directory
marketplace. Having an opportunity and seizing it are two different
things, however.
Novell is at a delicate point in its turnaround. Any misstep will be
magnified many times, and old questions about the company's future
can easily resurface. This is particularly true of the next 12 months as
Microsoft rolls out its own directory products. We can poke fun at
Microsoft all we want for being late, but anyone who thinks Active
Directory won't have a significant impact on the market once it does
ship is living on a different planet.
To deal with Active Directory effectively, Novell must transcend its NOS
roots, offering a much larger value proposition than Active Directory can
offer. Active Directory will be the default directory for Windows 2000
Server and important applications such as Microsoft Exchange. Many
customers consider these strategic parts of their network, so they will
deploy it. Novell must be able to establish a value proposition for NDS in
that world, or its newfound luster will fade. The best way to build that
value proposition is to bridge the NOS, e-commerce and extranet
directory worlds.
In addition to a NetWare-independent version of NDS, there's a laundry
list of things Novell must deliver in the next 12 to 18 months to
accomplish that goal. IT managers should carefully monitor Novell's
progress in completing the tasks on that checklist, which includes, but
is not limited to, the following items:
Metadirectory services: Metadirectory tools are an essential component
of identity and relationship management, and Novell's metadirectory
strategy is incomplete. The NetVision products that Novell licensed
provide point-to-point synchronization with important products such as
Domino and Exchange. But Novell needs a more comprehensive
metadirectory product.
Public-key infrastructure: Novell also lacks a coherent PKI strategy,
which is essential to its efforts to manage identity and enable
e-commerce. Novell must integrate both its directory and "digitalme"
technology with PKI if it's to succeed. Neither Novell's relationship with
Entrust Technologies nor the limited certificate server it included in
NetWare 5 provides this level of integration, and Novell needs to build,
buy or partner to gain it.
LDAP support: Novell vastly improved its support for the Lightweight
Directory Access Protocol with NetWare 5 and NDS 8. But there are
administrative functions, such as modifying schema and creating
indices, that Novell could enable via LDAP that today are available only
using Novell's proprietary protocol. Novell also should make sure that
any LDAP application that runs on Netscape Directory Server runs on
NDS 8 without modification.
DNS name space support: NDS 8 supports the domain-component
objects that allow managers to map Domain Name Server (DNS) names
to directory containers, such as organizational units. But NDS doesn't
use the DNS namespace as its native name space. To compete as an
Internet directory over the long term, NDS must support better
integration with DNS, including support for the native DNS name space.
Federated (non-global) schema: Novell has long promised to deliver a
version of NDS that would support different schema in different partitions
of the directory. It must deliver on that promise.
Application development road map: Novell's decision to license IBM's
WebSphere app server has the potential to unify Novell's framework
around a single run-time environment. But Novell gave no details for how
it will fulfill that promise. It needs to publish a road map of how and
when it will integrate all of its products and services with that platform
and how third parties will get the tools and support they need.
None of the items on this partial list is a no-brainer. While Novell's
turnaround is great news for the market, no one should assume that the
battle is over or that Novell's future is assured. To their credit, Eric
Schmidt and his management team have turned Novell around and put
the company in a much better position. Now comes the even harder
part: doing the work necessary to stay there.
Jamie Lewis is president of The Burton Group, a research firm
specializing in network computing technologies. He can be reached at
jlewis@tbg.com. |
