Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? Message Board

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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy?

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To: David who wrote (28093)	9/14/1999 11:47:00 AM
From: Paul Fiondella	Read Replies (1) of 42771

DigitalMe and banks and wallets Novell is going after exactly the right partners. Banks and credit card companies are already well equipped to deal with the "you are who you say you are" aspect of ecommerce. Novell is also going after vendor integration with standards like XML and ECML and is promoting an LDAP internet directory standard which cannot be locked up by Microsoft. The issue of trust is fundamental to ecommerce. People will not trust Microsoft to handle their personal information. Nor will they trust startup.com! People do trust their banks and credit card companies because these people provide them with money --- there is a known quid pro quo for giving them your identity information --- they give you credit and loans. Startup.com and MSFT give you nothing. They take. Moreover Novell is emphasizing existing business relationships and expanding them to the web. This extends their existing enterprise base. You take Citigroup and you put them in charge of an identity vault. They have every reason to keep that vault secure. Novell's technology prevents intrusion. That is the type of interest based partnership that makes sense. I expect that initial implementations of an identity vault will be too open in the sense that the individual will be able to set himself up. That is why its a good match to bring in a bank or a credit card company at the beginning. They have no interest in phony accounts. A digital wallet approach on the other hand allows as Scott Lemon said 'virtual communities of crooks'. The main thrust of DigitalMe has to be a secure digital identity for use in transactions over the internet. For this to work, you have to be who you say you are, and your personal information cannot be shared with insecure sites to prevent identity theft. These are the two basic principles of an identity vault. Verification methods will need to be perfected. (I favor letting the credit card companies establish the identity vault customer by qualifying the users and then letting the users set up 10 questions to be asked for verification of transactions --- like what is the color of my dogs hair). That way no credit card company employee can compromise the identity vault. Whereas Microsoft and other companies can come up with wallets, no one can possibly trust them with social security numbers and credit card numbers. Moreover they cannot come up with the secure transaction system that a functioning internet directory system allows. It will take some time to transition to vendors adopting an identity server approach vs building their own back end database verification system as now. If Novell concentrates on developing an identity server appliance utilizing NDS and identity vaults, they will be correctly positioned. In fact that is where I would be placed resources at Novell. I personally congratulate the Novell personnel responsible on for getting First USA and Citibank on board. That is the way to go!

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