Cisco security plan for directory stalls
By Benjamin Keyser
InfoWorld Electric
Posted at 2:43 PM PT, Oct 29, 1998
Cisco Networking Services for Active Directory (CNS/AD) will not be capable of implementing security until a Windows 2000 (formerly Windows NT 5.0) domain controller is up and running.
Speculation has been rampant that the release date of CNS/AD may precede the release of Windows 2000 because of Cisco Systems' knowledge of the inner workings of Active Directory. But CNS/AD will not become fully functional until the release of Windows 2000, company officials said.
Without the security piece in Windows 2000, which is an implementation of the Kerberos security specification, CNS/AD will not be able to implement policy-based network management.
Policy-based network management is the holy grail of directory services, without which its usefulness is minimal.
"Cisco made the decision to integrate with Active Directory at a time when Novell's future was uncertain," said Jamie Lewis, an analyst at the Burton Group, in Midvale, Utah.
"They felt they needed to get under the covers of the directory in order to tightly integrate to get the functionality they wanted ... so they made the agreement with Microsoft for Active Directory," Lewis said.
Now that Active Directory is late, and Novell Directory Services is already shipping, many customers and analysts are asking whether Cisco will change course and make a deal with Novell.
"We are talking with Novell and the directory is one of the things we're talking with them about," said Cisco representative Erin Bergamo.
Even though there have been no public partnership announcements, Novell and Cisco are cooperating on network device management standards. Both sit on the board of the Desktop Management Task Force.
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