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Technology Stocks : Novell (NOVL) dirt cheap, good buy? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DJBEINO who wrote (27307)	7/3/1999 11:11:00 AM
From: DJBEINO	Respond to of 42771

Novell, IBM extend directories to extranets -iChain- By Cara Cunningham NOVELL IS readying an Internet-commerce strategy to position its Novell Directory Services (NDS) as the centerpiece of a comprehensive extranet management system. IBM, meanwhile, plans to offer its own set of tools for directory-based management of extranets. Novell's iChain initiative, scheduled for launch this summer, assembles a number of existing Novell products, along with additional tools and services, into a system that centrally manages both internal and extranet users. The value proposition to NDS customers is to provide a single point of user administration -- for those inside the firewall as well as for the increasing number of business partners who require access to company information from outside the network's borders. The iChain plan avoids much of the duplication that other extranet management systems can cause, according to Lubor Ptapcek, product marketing manager at Novell. "With other solutions, you have two firewalls and a demilitarized zone in between, and they are protected from both sides. Essentially it means two entities that are completely separate with duplicate hardware, data, and teams of administrators, and this is adding cost," Ptapcek said. "[iChain] would provide the opportunity to give the extranet users access to data inside the company without having to duplicate the data," Ptapcek added. One analyst said this plan makes sense for IT organizations. "It's rational if you think about it: In the world of extranets, the internal user is a small part of the total user base. If you think of it from purely a technical and efficiency point of view, the two [user types] should be integrated," said Richard Villars, director of networking software at International Data Corp., in Framingham, Mass. Novell's iChain will pull together NDS, plus features from other existing Novell products, such as the authentication capabilities found in BorderManager. With this capability, external users will be able to access NDS by starting a Secure Sockets Layer session in a browser. External users would then be assigned policies stored in NDS so they see only the applications to which they have access. Given the large NDS user base, a market may emerge for third-party tools to work with iChain. "Of course, it comes down to how friendly Novell's going to be in that area," Villars said. Indeed, Novell views iChain as a tool for I-commerce systems. "We're trying to give those applications [such as supply-chain management] plumbing below to provide additional service," Ptapcek said. IBM also sees the value in leveraging directories to manage both internal and external users, said Jamil Bissar, directory product manager at IBM, in Austin, Texas. For customer sites with more than one directory running -- for example, a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol directory and a Resource Access Control Facility directory that works with IBM host systems -- IBM in the first half of 2000 plans to release a set of meta-directory tools, Bissar said. These would complement metadirectory services provided by IBM's professional services organization. Novell Inc., in Provo, Utah, can be reached at www.novell.com. IBM Corp., in Armonk, N.Y., can be reached at www.ibm.com. infoworld.com

To: DJBEINO who wrote (27307)	7/4/1999 8:14:00 AM
From: EPS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

"Let me just say up front that things are going well with Cisco. We invented some technology which allows the directory to directly manage their routers. . . .It's a configuration manager in the sense that it can manage alerts and manage the settings of various switches and so forth." Schmidt said the new tool would not replace Cisco's own router and switch tracking mechanism-Total Control Manager/SNMP-but would run in conjunction with the router. Cisco could not be reached for comment. This is absolutely huge. Can anyone give a very rough estimate on how much $ this could mean to NOVL? How do you price these things? Now back to BBQ preparations.. VD