Don't expect Novell, Microsoft, or IBM to make your life easier anytime soon by linking their e-mail, networking, and Internet directories. And kiss the ideal of a single, unified directory service goodbye.
By Mary Jo Foley
Dueling Directories
When it comes to directory services, bigger vendors don't mean
better products. LAN operating system giants like IBM, Microsoft,
and Novell are lagging behind Banyan Systems, Hitachi Computer
Products, and WorldTalk in directory synchronization and
interoperability.
And despite lots of rhetoric from the big guys to the contrary, the
situation is unlikely to change anytime soon. Novell is promising to
port NetWare Directory Services (NDS) to NT and the Java virtual
machine. IBM plans to move its Directory and Security Server (DSS)
to various flavors of UNIX and NT. And Microsoft, while conceding that it can't provide--as originally promised--a unified object-based metadirectory service as part of Cairo in 1997,still dangles the idea of its Open Directory Services Initiative APIs like a carrot in front of hungry users and ISVs.
To IS managers, the idea of standardized directory services for tasks such as network administration, better messaging and groupware interoperability, and lower system/network maintenance costs is
seductive. But while IS managers and vendors agree that the limitations created by maintaining multiple, incompatible directories are untenable, they don't agree on how best to solve the problem.
THE GOOD OLD, NONDISTRIBUTED DAYS
"It was easier with mainframes, when you had a single user log-in for everything," laments Tony Neal,manager of integration services with the Information Systems and Technology division of Marriott in
Bethesda, Md. "Now, we have dual databases in e-mail, dual databases in Notes. We're going to roll out some NT application servers--and there's another directory."
Marriott relies on Notes and cc:Mail to host the more than 10,000 e-mail addresses employed by users throughout the corporation. A combination of NetWare 3.X and 4.X connects 4,000 mostly Windows desktops to more than 65 networking servers. Consequently, it's no surprise that Neal sees NDS as the best candidate to become the supreme directory integrator. "We'd like to see support in NT--either native or through emulation mode--for NDS. We'd like to see NDS support in UNIX, as well," he says. "And we'd like to see proprietary database-type applications be able to hook directly into the NDS structure."
Another user with the same kind of problems favors a more Microsoft-flavored focus. "There really isn't anything for people with mixed environments to do," says Mark Kapczynski, an independent
consultant and president of the Los Angeles-based Windows NT User Group. "There's a huge hole in the market. X.500 isn't the best long-term architecture. Neither is X.400."
One major financial firm for which Kapczynski has done work found itself face to face with the problems caused by multiple, incompatible directories. "They had 10 different mail systems. The best they could do would be a dump of all the mail addresses and then find a way to put them into a single SQL database," he says. Microsoft's Exchange could help alleviate the incompatibilities, too, he adds, by acting as a centralized X.500-based switch among the different messaging systems.
In the not-too-distant future, customers may not have to side with a particular vendor's product line in order to benefit from its unique directory service. Banyan was the first company to decouple its
StreetTalk directory service from the Banyan VINES operating system. Last June, the company debuted a separate directory product called Universal StreetTalk.
In a similar vein, WorldTalk last May launched an X.500-based Open Directory Server strategy, aimed at storing, consolidating, managing, and distributing the name and address books of cc:Mail, Microsoft Mail, Lotus Notes, Novell GroupWise, and HP OpenMail. Products started shipping in March.
Hitachi Computer Products is delivering on a similar directory synchronization strategy called SyncWare. And although its progress has been slow, Novell is working to separate NDS from NetWare and port it to a number of different operating environments.
Novell isn't the only major networking vendor company that has been slow to deliver a unified directory service, however. "None of the big vendors is even half close to delivering metadirectory functionality," says Jamie Lewis, president of The Burton Group, a Midvale, Utah, networking consulting firm. "The big vendors are just trying to unify namespaces within their own product lines." (See sidebar, How To Pick a Network Metadirectory )
The job of unifying directories even across a single vendor's product line is nothing to sneeze at. Ask IBM, which is faced with the challenge of providing a unified directory service across all of its
operating systems (OS/390 through Warp), as well as across Notes, SystemView, DB2, the Tivoli Management Environment (TME), and a whole raft of other IBM middleware and application products.
IBM's DCE-based DSS For Warp, which is slated to ship by the end of June, is aimed at providing a foundation for a common directory across all of these products. DSS is one of the seven IBM Software Servers that IBM formally launched in March. Designed as a more robust version of the directory database than is built into Warp Server, DSS will be backward compatible with the directory database product for AIX that is already shipping, according to Sandy Carter, DSS product manager with IBM's Software Group in Austin, Texas.
IBM announced at its Software Servers launch in March that it plans to port DSS to NT, but it did not reveal a timeframe. "DB2 administration will be integrated into DSS," Carter adds, "and we're still evaluating how we'll tie in Notes." IBM also is evaluating the possibility of making DSS compatible with Novell's NDS, Carter says, "but it's going to be tough, since the NDS directory is still very integrated with NetWare, not separate, like DCE and security services."
Tough or not, the task of separating NDS from NetWare is a priority for Novell. "The goal is to extract NDS from the operating system," says Michael Simpson, product line manager with the company's NetWare Products division in Provo, Utah. "The idea in 1997 is to get NDS on UNIX." Because 80 APIs make up NDS--only 10 of which are standard X.500 ones--the project will take some time, Simpson concedes.
On the road to decoupling the directory service from the OS, Novell will continue to enhance NDS, Simpson says. The next release of NDS, code-named Green River and due inmid-1996, will include a number of NDS enhancements. These include improved NetWare Administration directory viewing; a new directory-service manager for partitioning directories; and exposing NDS at the client level, which will open the NDS APIs to developers programming at the client level. "We'll do
directory-service enhancements post Green River, too," says Simpson. The enhancements will include improved log-in performance for NDS authentication and improved cross-directory resource sharing via support for multiple directory trees and nonglobal schema. Novell had originally targeted these latter two features to ship as part of Green River.
Microsoft, likewise, has been forced to scale back on the rollout
schedule for its next-generation NT directory service, despite
claims from company officials to the contrary. In March at its
Internet Professional Developers conference, officials conceded
that the company would not provide a new, object-based metadirectory as part of its Cairo release of NT. Cairo is slated to ship in 1997. Instead, Microsoft will base Cairo's directory service on the existing NT Directory Service (NTDS), combined with the X.500-based service provided as part of Exchange Server, officials said. And the distributed Object File System (OFS) that Microsoft promised for the Cairo release will be replaced with more modest object enhancements to the existing NT File System, officials added.
"Our goals for Cairo have not changed," counters Mike Nash, group product manager for server products with Microsoft's Desktop and Business Systems division in Redmond, Wash. "We are still going to provide a single, logical view of the network. It'll look like one big hard disk with a number of different directories." Nash says that Microsoft's plan all along was to use the Exchange directory
service as Cairo's directory service. He also denies that Microsoft has changed direction on providing an object-based repository for storing directory information. "There will still be content indexing and searching, and the NTFS will be what lets you find things across directories," Nash says.
But industry watchers aren't convinced by Microsoft's spin on the topic, and IS managers should be wary, as well. "The Microsoft stumble on directories gives Novell an opening with high-end customers that value directories and partners looking to enhance their applications with a directory," wrote Charles Phillips, an analyst in the enterprise software research section at Morgan Stanley in New York City, in a recent report on Novell. "The Novell sales force has been aggressively calling on enterprise accounts with news of Microsoft's change of course on global directories."
Burton Group's Lewis is also wondering about Microsoft's shift in plans. "The Internet seemed to impact Microsoft's Object File System--its ability to deliver it and the need for it." While Exchange
Server's directory service does a decent job of integrating names in the e-mail space, "it can't handle changes in the names of sites, merging of trees, and dragging and dropping users--all things that NDS
could do in version 4.0." His conclusion: "Microsoft still has a heck of a lot of work to do--a good 18 months at least-to deliver a metadirectory-level solution."
Microsoft also has a long way to go to deliver the range of
components it outlined as part of its Open Directory Services
Interfaces (ODSI) initiative, announced last July. As envisioned
by Microsoft, ODSI is a set of APIs for users and ISVs to create applications that can register across multiple directories.
It includes a network provider interface; the WinSock RnR or RPCs; OLE DB for database-to-directory interfacing; and OLE DS, an OLE Automation interface for automating schema across multiple directories. The network provider interface and RnR/RPC are shipping today, but Microsoft is still in the design-preview phase with the other components.
Several of those involved in the design previews claim that ODSI seems to have dropped off Microsoft's radar screen. "ODSI was a great announcement with no follow-through. Conceptually, it's great, but where are the products?" asks consultant Kapczynski.
COMING OUT OF THE SHADOWS
For users in dire need of directory synchronization and
interoperability today, there's hope. In the shadow of the Big Three, a few vendors already are delivering products that handle some of these chores.
Most visible among these is Banyan. The first production release of Universal StreetTalk was expected to ship in late April or this month for NT and HP-UX. "We will do ports with other major vendors, too, in the Internet and UNIX space," says Elaine Haney, product line manager for StreetTalk clients and connectivity. (See sidebar, And What About the Internet? p. 50.)
Banyan also is working to sign up application vendors to integrate their apps with StreetTalk. The company already provides for integration with Oracle and its own BeyondMail product. While most
of these early adopters are integrating their applications with the version of StreetTalk that's integrated with the VINES LAN operating system, future partners are likely to be equally interested in integrating with Universal StreetTalk, say company officials.
However, although Banyan's technology is impressive, the company's financial situation is less sanguine. Rumors that Microsoft or some other corporate rescuer might acquire the Westborough, Mass., company continue to fly around the Route 495 high-tech belt.
Santa Clara, Calif.-based WorldTalk, meanwhile, unveiled in March its Network Application Router access unit for Banyan's VINES on HP-UX. The access unit provides bidirectional directory synchronization between StreetTalk, various e-mail and groupware directories, and native X.500 directories, in addition to providing e-mail links between Banyan's Intelligent Messaging, X.400, Internet Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), and other e-mail systems. In February, WorldTalk went public with plans to enhance the Notes 4.0 and Microsoft Exchange links to its Network Application Routers. And it recently made available for download (http://www.worldtalk.com ) its
NetConnex Internet mail connector for Microsoft Mail, the first of a series of NT Server gateways it's building.
Synchronization of directories will be the only tangible deliverable for quite a while, acknowledges Burton Group's Lewis. "Users will need cross-directory lookup capabilities as long as there will be
multiple directories," he says. And, if the rollout pace of Novell, IBM, and Microsoft is any indication, multiple directories will be the status quo for the foreseeable future.
Illustration by Boris Lyubner
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