Talk about the Novell comeback strategy (an issue that MSFT should take note)...
As Novell turns: AT&T, Lucent alliances boost
company
By Emily Fitzloff
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 5:06 PM PT, Oct 23, 1998
Two crucial pieces of Novell's five-pronged turnaround strategy have fallen into place
with the development of a far
more robust version of its Novell Directory Services (NDS), called Scalable Directory
Service (SCADS), that is aimed
at ISPs and other enterprise service providers; and the signing of partnerships with
network hardware vendors such as
Lucent to integrate NDS with its equipment.
Novell's surround and conquer approach -- through which it wants to populate all types
of networks with NDS --
includes recruiting partners across five primary markets.
The company already has a deal with AT&T to provide the latter with a
high-performance version of NDS to be
deployed by AT&T across its WorldNet service.
This SCADS flavor of Novell's directory for ISPs is slated for release in the first quarter
of 1999. SCADS supports
between 1 million and 2 million objects and could reach as many as 1 billion objects,
according to company officials.
Frank Field, vice president of IP platform deployment planning at AT&T Labs, in
Menlo Park, Calif., said this
implementation "gives mobile users selective access to corporate intranet applications,
extranet applications, and the
Internet."
Like AT&T, MCI WorldCom is also seeking a directory partner, but is pursuing NDS
rival, Microsoft's Active
Directory. This choice has to do with MCI WorldCom's wide-scale use of Cisco
Systems equipment, and its active
involvement with the Rapid Deployment Program for Windows 5.0.
But MCI WorldCom has not ruled out also using NDS, said Skip Taylor, director of
switched virtual private network
services at MCI WorldCom Advanced Networks, in Columbus, Ohio.
In addition to service providers, Novell hopes to ink deals with networking hardware
vendors.
Novell recently signed an agreement under which Lucent Technologies will bundle NDS
with its Cajun switches, and
the company is also working with Lucent's development team on a policy-based
bandwidth management application,
code-named Cajun Rules, that is set for first quarter 1999 release, according to one
Lucent executive.
Another key networking partner would be Cisco, although interoperability between
NDS and Cisco hardware is
already planned via the Directory Enabled Networks (DEN) initiative. DEN was
originally a Microsoft-Cisco project
but was passed to the Desktop Management Task Force and now has a Novell
executive as its chairman.
Kurt Dahm, senior product manager at Cisco, acknowledged that Cisco customers
have asked Cisco to form an
alliance with Novell, as it did with Microsoft.
"We're responding to these concerns by driving interoperability through the [DEN]
standards process," Dahm said,
although he added that a Novell deal is also possible.
Further extending NDS' reach, Novell also plans to target the enterprise resource
planning (ERP) market by integrating
NDS with ERP and database applications.
The company will announce at next week's PeopleSoft conference in San Francisco an
integrated solution for unifying
directory data with information stored in PeopleSoft's human resources applications.
Novell is also in talks with SAP, which has traditionally been allied with Microsoft, and
expects to solidify a partnership
early next year, said Dave Shirk, Novell's vice president of product management.
On the database side, Novell wants to extend its relationship with Oracle in order to
NDS-enable the Oracle database.
Operating systems, including Microsoft's Windows NT, are another place in which
Novell will leverage its directory.
Novell already offers native NDS on NT and plans to release similar solutions for
platforms including Linux and Solaris.
Novell also plans NDS integration with Sun's forthcoming Jini Java-based distributed
computing environment,
according to Novell's Shirk, and is working on directory-based relationships with
systems management vendors
including Computer Associates and Tivoli.
Currently, CA integrates with NDS via its DirectIT product. Future plans will likely
involve placing NDS information
into the Unicenter repository, according to Yogesh Gupta, senior vice president of
product strategy at CA, in Islandia,
N.Y.
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