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: Don Earl who wrote (14594)	7/14/1997 12:24:00 AM
From: Jim McCormack	of 42771

NDS is Marketing at its best... NDS is Novell's effort to answer the call to market "Vaporware" to create a product feature out of "Specifications" to distance themselves from the competition - ie. Microsoft. I endorse it. If you can't beat them join them. NDS is a good effort at a standard Directory service that needs to be implemented. It just will not provide revenue anytime soon - unless selling tool kits and API's and consulting is the kind of revenue you had in mind... Lets get on thing clear NDS is a specification - not a product per se. Sure Novell provides example code that composes the model but the written spec is the "Standard" - the code a vendor writes implements it. NDS doesn't do anything unless you build links to and from your products to use and comply with it. Example: Novell has the Netware Administrator - This is a product - it manages objects in IntraNetware(Another Product)that follow the NDS object model. You have an NDS complient Object Manager and a set of Objects that are NDS compliant and thus can be managed. It takes two to tango.... Sun has now said it will follow the Specification and so has IBM and so have others. Great News but - Where are the products? Where are the NDS Object managers and NDS compliant NOS? Ask yourself - when you fire up the Netware administrator can you manage (Users, groups, rights, permissions, printers, disks, modems, resource level controls) on the "New" NDS vendor platorms? On Solaris? On OS/400? On AIX? On HPUnix? On MVS? This is not just about adding users to a system through a master program - it is much more complicated. You have to write programs that are deeply embeded into your OS to implement the NDS model and retool you existing products. This will take a while - How often do these vendors update the NOS? This is an excellent effort to invent a feature long before it will materialze. The day when you use the Netware administrator (Or any other compliant NDS Object administrator from Sun or IBM) to manage all the reources of the enterprise network are YEARS away. E-mail me when all you need to manage your multivendor corporate network is Netware Administrator. Think about it - you have to replace every separate vendors management tools ( Front end GUI and backend hooks) for users and network hardware and software with this global NDS manager. Yes it is vendor independent and will allow you to manage everything from a single interface across all platforms. It will be a great step forward. It will take many years for the platforms to be rewritten to use the spec and interoperate. NDS is hype - It plays on a concept we all inherently want - a unified directory of all network resources and single source management of them. However it ignores the complexities of implementing them. I can't see it going anywhere - except as a marketing tool. It will remain an important Netware specification that vendors will write to when they make products for Novell. The vendors will build gateways from their proprietary DS to NDS (Using LDAP) long before they go native on NDS. Think of it like e-mail system address setup, syncronization, and admin. Ever wonder why we still have e-mail Gateways? We can't even unify e-mail directory standards and management. Unifying the entire directory (E-mail is a subset) will take many years - and the politics may make it impossible. NDS revenues will not save Novell... However, if proper Marketing can turn NDS into a feature for IntraNetware that results in more sales then IntraNetware - that can save Novell. It is about Intranetware not NDS. Very good marketing! I am hopeful! Look for increased Intranetware sales as a result of NDS marketing. Jim McCormack PS - No time to spell check....

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