I wish my dreams had something to do with this whole discussion but I'm not trying to rain on our parade here, I'm just trying to acknowledge the truth about directories in the Enterprise (or corporate networks).
There WILL be companies who will hold out and hold their breath for Active Directory and MSFT's product WILL be playing catch up. See, you can't produce the SAME results with Active Directory that I can with NDS today. I've tried the Beta 3 and seen what others have tried to do with it.
I feel for those companies that are looking for NDS-type functionality from AD because they just won't find it. Eventually MSFT will produce AD but it will in no way, shape or form be on any level as good as NDS unless the beta I've seen falls off the face of the Earth and MSFT pulls a bunny out of a hat.
Aside from that, I'm not going to stick my head in a hole and say that AD is not going to be a factor. It will have an impact on the directory market but Novell has a mature, reliable, scalable product TODAY. It's the ONLY directory product shipping worth talking about. Of course, until MSFT comes to the ballpark, this is all just speculation :) but when they do show up, they will HAVE to endure the comparision to a superior product in NDS no matter what their PR hype says.
I don't see them winning this market the same way they have won other markets in the past. They haven't done it with NT in the past, I don't see them doing in now either. NT's success has come from NetWare stumbles but that won't be the case any longer. Also, with LINUX making more noise, I can't see NT taking over the world anytime soon either.
But getting back to my analogy, NDS would be that supermodel :) and if that scares you, remind me not to introduce you around :)
Also, I have to ask, we are comparing AD's solidity to NDS right? The only other comparision would be Windows 2000 vs. Windows NT 4.0 and in that scenario, AD makes good sense and any IT manager that "settles" for AD in that scenario is betting his career that MSFT can pull that bunny out of it's hat. Otherwise, I don't see many IT managers choosing vaporware to NDS and sleeping good at night.
But if we are comparing NetWare vs NT/Windows2000...well, I don't see how AD could win that one at this time (or in the near future). Let's remember that Novell had to start from a clean slate to create NDS while MSFT has spent too much time dealing with the inadequencies of its past to move forward.
So if NDS is to be the yardstick for all directory services, I don't see AD stacking up at all. I'd be more than happy to share my technical perspectives on this in any forum you desire as this would not be the right place to do so right now :)
Peter Strifas |
