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

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (30490)	2/24/2000 4:19:00 PM
From: PJ Strifas	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

eDirectory is a grand example of the type of web-based service a website can develop from a full service, extensible Directory. I believe this is just the first step for CNN.com and eDirectory. Think what happens when they begin to develop content that is not solely presented via a browser on a computer (I'm thinking handhelds and IP-enabled microbrowsers in cellular products). Substitute the personalized news content on CNN.com with specialized content for a customer at say Amazon.com! Heck that's even a very small slice of how eDirectory will affect e-commerce. Let's move this into large scale apps for businesses.... Has anyone ever used www.pricescan.com to comparison shop on the interent (or equivalent services)? Imagine leveraging a "filter" within my personal profile that will search out and discover these types of services (or allow me to specificly identify the service(s)) then utilize them to find the best price for a product?!?! There's no need to re-build the service if it is openly available in the internet. All that would be necessary is a way to exchange data (XML?) in a structured way that allows me to view (in HTML) the results in a relevant manner. Further move this into the B2B e-commerce and the potential market for Directory apps and the Directory itself grows larger and faster than we can imagine! I'll wait for Whittman-Hart's eCatalog to really see if what I'm thinking of can become a reality. I am happy to see this news regarding Novell's work with CNN.com to further eDirectory's capabilities. Let's not forget that the core technology is NDS while the use of that technology is not traditional. I expect to see more and more of this type of work from Novell as a way to solidify Novell's current position and leadership role. Novell MUST TAKE the lessons learned here (and experience) and translate that into continued growth for the consulting services arm. They must move these people out into the field creating SOLUTIONS based on NDS and other Novell products. I wouldn't even limit the solutions to Novell products -- what a coup that would be if Novell could showcase the ability of their products to manage a solution that incorporated products from other companies?!?! It would place Novell in a space all to itself -- capable of providing what most companies need while able to incorporate existing products and/or services into a new bundle. Regards, Peter J Strifas [PS - yesterday I received my OmniSky package and now my Palm Vx is fully internet capable. Very interesting.

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (30490)	2/24/2000 6:39:00 PM
From: Scott C. Lemon	Respond to of 42771

Hello Paul, > How digitalme opened the door to eDirectory So the first thing that I'll say is that the "pre-Brainshare 1999" digitalme team deserves credit for opening this door. That appears to be the momentum that got things going ... the engineers who worked on last years Brainshare demonstration should be proud ... > So in the process of demoing digitalme, CNN said hey here > is the app we are working on, what's the engine under the > digitalme hood, our database solution is too slow, can > you do something. Yep ... it appears to be that way ... > Along came eDirectory --- Yep ... > user authentication, Whoa!!!!!!! Who said anything about user authentication???? I've read through the articles a couple of times and have realized that there appears to be NO user authentication ... just indexed attribute access ... > and profile information stored in the directory at CNN so > that customized info will pop up on the initial screen. Yes ... via object/attribute access ... without any form of authentication from what it appears. > My only question is what did they do about the user login > procedure? There appears to be no login procedure ... > Do they still store the user id and password in the > cookie to allow the user not to have to enter both > everytime the visit the site? I don't think so. "Note that CNN uses a cookie as a unique identifier so that each visitor does NOT have to "login" each visit to the site. The cookie is only a GUID (global unique identifier) that is "looked up" in a database and allows the web servers to personalize content based on the returned preferences." My guess is that they are simply saving the GUID as a directory object reference, and then pulling up the attributes of that object using this name. So as of today, I would guess that I could copy your cookie, and see your page ... ;-) Also, notice that they are probably operating completely out of cache memory: "CNN is running Compaq 6400s with 2GB RAM - 1.5GB dedicated to NDS cache (set dstrace = !mb1500000000) and 500 MB for NetWare 5." > Or have they replaced the whole thing with an NDS > solution that has something else at the front end? If you read the technical implementation doc ( novell.com ) you can see that they are using the indexes and access of NDS to grab the information. It seems to say that the "front-line" web servers are all making requests to the NDS servers ... simple indexed look-ups. (The performance is still very impressive ...) Scott C. Lemon

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (30490)	2/24/2000 9:58:00 PM
From: jwright	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

First off way to go Novell on the CNN deal. My impressions from reading Paul's post are: 1) The solution CNN needed is quite complicated. 2) A good deal of customization was needed to provide the right solution for CNN. 3) Because of 1 & 2, Novell definitely needs more Directory Service consultants to swarm all the web sites to find out their needs and propose solutions. This seems to be a given if they are serious about their new NET Services initiative. 4) How does this relate to IChain. It seems like any potential web site customer is going to need a certain amount of customization. Besides the customization it appears that the deployment and schema setup's will need to be handled by Novell engineers. Does IChain alleviate this? As you can tell I'm still confused just what IChain is. Saying it's a B2B platform solution with no details is useless to me. 5) The importance of getting your message out. A few weeks back I was fighting the NOS Showdown review done by NetWork World on their message board. I received 3 emails from customers of Novell saying that they hadn't planned on upgrading their network from NetWare 5.0 to NetWare 5.1, but because of my passionate arguments they were now going to upgrade. These 3 customers totaled 97 NetWare servers according to their email. So assuming they upgrade I spent about a total of 1 hour of my time which resulted in 97 sale opportunities for Novell and I don't even work for Novell anymore. Where is my sales commission? I guess my point is with an army of people delivering your message you could have a real impact on sale revenues and I'm not even a sales guy. 6) Not really related to CNN per say but how difficult it is to sell a software only plumbing/infrastructure solution without hardware. Microsoft can do it but they have a monopoly in desktop machines and have the ability to require the tieing of solutions to meet their end needs. Novell really needs to partner with either SUN or IBM to tie Novell software with their hardware. Later Jimmy

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (30490)	2/27/2000 8:17:00 PM
From: Spartex	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

FWIW, speaking of Digitalme, Citigroup increased novell holdings 44% this quarter and are up from 1.7 million to 10 million shares over the last 4 quarters. insidertrader.com One could infer these actions are linked to the Citigroup division that is involved in the digitalme tests. This would indicate that Citigroup is very impressed with the DM product, right? We'll find out more by Brainshare, I'm sure. Background: links to digitalme with citigroup info novell.com novell.com novell.com novell.com