(Online News, 10/11/99 04:24 PM)
Schmidt: Novell to Release
Net-based Management Tools
By Robert L. Scheier
LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. -- Novell Inc., hoping to
leverage the strength of its Novell Directory Services
(NDS), will release within the next three months a set of
network-based tools to manage everything from single
sign-on for users to digital security certificates, Novell
Chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt said today.
``We will be an infrastructure supplier" to not only
corporate ITorganizations but to application service
providers (ASP), which host corporate applications and
data and deliver them through the Internet, Schmidt told
attendees at the Gartner Group's Symposium/ITxpo 99.
Using NDS as a low-level system to track users, network
devices, applications and other IT components, said
Schmidt, the new tools will help IT administrators
implement features such as single log-on, which allows
users to sign on only once to access all their
applications, as well as managing their public key
infrastructures (PKI) for security.
When quizzed by Gartner analysts about where this puts
Novell into competition with systems management
vendors such as Computer Associates International Inc.,
Schmidt said Novell is aiming for the ``low-end, but
high-volume" market for tools that do basic tracking of
objects such as users on a network. That leaves the
market for specialized management applications to
more specialized vendors such as CAto build, he said.
Schmidt was noncommittal when asked by Gartner
analysts whether he would end a practice that requires
customers to pay for a separate per-user license to run
NDS on either Microsoft Windows NT or on Novell's own
NetWare operating system. Customers have
complained about that practice.
``We've been taking steps toward that," Schmidt said,
but gave no time frame for when Novell might allow such
a single license for running NDS on multiple platforms.
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