I agree. I'm not in favor of a buyout of NOVL of any kind. I'm actually thinking they may buy out HP's open management system (OpenView) from them and bolster ManageWise/ZEN offering into the true open management console for entire networks (even telcos and ISPs).
Here's a very interesting article which I think goes a great way into explaining just how you can leverage DIRECTORY services into new businesses...NDS v8 is just the tip of the iceberg so to speak.
Peter Strifas
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This story was printed from ZDNN, located at zdnet.com.
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Novell: Don't buy, rent
By Mary Jo Foley & Deborah Gage, Sm@rt Reseller
March 8, 1999 6:01 AM PT
URL: zdnet.com
Returning to profitability was only the first chapter in Novell's recovery plan. Now the revitalized software company is taking aim at the fledgling application service provider (ASP) market.
ASPs are resellers or software providers that host applications on the Web. ASPs essentially rent the applications to businesses for a monthly fee. The businesses, in turn, access the outsourced applications over the Internet.
While Novell has yet to fully disclose its ASP strategy, the company is laying the groundwork for its resellers to cash in on the emerging ASP trend.
One of the cornerstones in the effort will be the company's next-generation scalable directory services (also known as Scads), which Novell will unveil today. Novell will build on Scads at its Brainshare developer conference later this month, when it discusses several new apps for the directory service.
What's more, Novell will demonstrate its Digital Persona technology, aimed at providing users with a central, single identification over the Internet. And to top off its plan, Novell is prepping some of its Platinum partners to act as its certified ASP partners, targeting small and midsize customers.
If Novell executes on all of those initiatives-which it has discussed with financial analysts and some of its top resellers-the company will deliver an outsourcing plan fit to rival those recently proposed by Hewlett-Packard, IBM and Microsoft.
Like other top software vendors looking to cash in on the ASP craze, Novell is positioning itself as both an underlying infrastructure supplier and an application provider.
During Novell's Q1 earnings call late last month, company officials told financial analysts that Novell is developing 10 new Z.E.N. (zero effort networking) application services. Those apps will expose Novell's directory to end users, who so far have failed to understand the importance of directory services.
Says one Platinum partner: "Novell is considering signing up certified partners to outsource apps-primarily Z.E.N.Works, GroupWise and ManageWise. They are looking to their Platinums first. They are thinking of calling the certification something like 'Internet Enterprise Solution Providers.'"
Novell plans to rent more than apps. Company officials told analysts that Novell likely will OEM its caching technology, thereby providing small and midsize customers with managed storage on remote servers.
"The caching opportunity is even larger than the current hype suggests," said Novell CEO Eric Schmidt during the Q1 financial call. "Caching should be everywhere-at the periphery of networks and not just the data center."
Resellers will be able to offer access to those outsourced applications and services using Scads and Novell's Digital Persona. Novell has been privately touting Scads as a directory that can store more than tens of millions of profiles in a single, LDAP-based directory tree.
Says Robert Drescher, VP of Oblix Inc., a start-up that will roll out new products at Brainshare: "We and Novell are both very focused on using the Digital Persona to advance identity on the network. For example, if you're outsourcing new applications or expanding your capacity, we can manage someone's Digital Persona to control what that person has access to."
"Outsourcing plays directly into the Scads initiative," says another Platinum partner. "They're talking to large ISPs and the leading channel partners about this. They need to be able to put lots of people into the directory and call it a community."
Still, Schmidt conceded that there is "a huge gap" between where Novell is today and where it needs to be.
Or, to put it another way, Novell's ASP initiative-backed by the fledgling Scads directory service-has only just begun. |
