With recent support for NDS, Novell could be on the verge of a comeback
By Wayne Rash, Jr.
When CommWeek senior writer Sharon Fisher broke the story in last week's issue that both IBM and Sun were ready to
agree to use Novell Directory Service for their Unix platforms, it was big news indeed.
In fact, it was bigger news than it might have been, because Microsoft had just announced its new directory service, Dfs
(Distributed File System), which Microsoft had hoped would become the default standard for directory naming services.
Predictably, IBM and Sun decided to eschew the advances from Microsoft, and instead appeared to go a more proven way.
This should provide a badly need boost for Novell, which has been pounded by dropping sales, executive departures and
boardroom revolts. At a time when it needed a change from news about missed deliveries, shrinking market share and
customer dissatisfaction, Novell is set to get an endorsement from two of the biggest names in computing.
Although the company had already signed up Hewlett-Packard and the SCO, what it needed was a ticket to the major
leagues-and with this signing, it will get that. The question is: What, exactly, will Novell get?
More important, will this mean anything to the IS staffs that have been laboring under the weight of incompatible standards?
Will an NDS announcement bring them a well-deserved rest? Or is it simply another pipe dream in the long history of
undelivered promises that have held back the progression of networking in the corporate world?
Novell, unfortunately, has a mixed record in delivering on NDS. Although the NetWare version of Novell's directory service
has been out for years, it was only with the release of NetWare 4.1 that it worked well enough to be taken seriously. Then
there was the promise of NDS for Microsoft's Windows NT Server. Although you can now get an NDS client for NT, the full
level of support isn't here yet.
Novell also hasn't delivered on other long promised versions of NetWare and NDS. A few packages, such as NetWare for
OS/2, were actualized, but then were allowed to die from malnutrition. So, Novell's track record isn't exactly spotless.
The question, though, is what else is there? Microsoft's Dfs, which isn't exactly the answer to directory services either
(CommWeek, Sept. 23), is being passed around in beta form, but it's not a real product yet. Anything more substantial from
Microsoft is months or years away.
NDS, at least, has been delivered in working form, and users have been working with it for years. Some applications actually
support NDS, although it would be nice if there were more of them. Is creating a cross-platform directory service so difficult
that it approaches impossibility?
Perhaps. Microsoft certainly has not rushed out an answer to NDS. The client support for Novell Networks running NDS
took years to deliver, even with Novell already providing code in earlier versions of Windows, with the result that both
Windows 95 and NT didn't have any NDS support until well into this year.
If that's the case, then Novell is finally in the place it needs to be. It's years ahead of Microsoft, it's been working with Unix for
a long time and it's finally divested itself of all of the distractions that have been dogging the company through the years. Now,
at last, Novell can concentrate on delivering a world-class solution to the administration problems that have been haunting
users everywhere.
So, now Novell is poised. The world of enterprise networking lies nearly at its feet. Can the company this time take the final
steps that will both ensure a standard in directory services, and make life easier for managers everywhere? A year ago, I
wouldn't have thought that they'd be able to pull it off. Now, maybe it can.
Waye Rash is a contributing editor to CommunicationsWeek. He can be reached on CompuServe at 72205,221 or via the
Internet at wrash@mindspring.com. The opinions expressed are his own.
Copyright * 1996 CMP Media Inc. |
