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

To: harmonaronson who wrote (30550)	3/1/2000 10:05:00 PM
From: Paul Fiondella	Respond to of 42771

What defining eventss must occur for Directory Services to cros the chasm A brief answer --- a compelling directory based application must emerge, preferably more than one, that will tie ichain,DirXML,eDirectory and other Novell products into customer demand for Novell directory based solutions. This will allow marketing to get behind something. One hot product from Novell and NOVL takes off again.

To: harmonaronson who wrote (30550)	3/1/2000 10:23:00 PM
From: PJ Strifas	Respond to of 42771

Directory Services are now just gaining the rightful attention they deserve so in that light, Directory Services are just getting started. It's the opinion of many of us here on this thread that NDS is the clear leader in full-service Directories. With the latest version of NDS, we now have LDAPv3 capabilities as well so that adds metadirectory as well. What NDS (and Novell) needs..... The right (suite of) applications that are components of a solution (or different solutions that exist within a single network) that companies can use to create value-add services to their networks. For example: Applications (or components for applications) that a company can use to create a webstore front with fulfillment & billing conduits (to existing services), customer relationship profiling and e-catalog services. Another example: Applications (or components) to create specific solutions for a small/medium sized company (following the new GroupWise component ideal) aimed at enhancing that company's ability to do business. I'm thinking web services such as email, online storage & internet access for users as well as other network-based services beyond traditional file & print services. Another example: Tools and applications for service providers to develop network services for clients (think outsourcing here). Ok - enough thinking for today. Regards. Peter J Strifas

To: harmonaronson who wrote (30550)	3/2/2000 2:51:00 AM
From: jwright	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42771

For those of you that don't quite understand what Directory Services is this is the analogy that I use to use. On your Windows machine all of your desktop settings and application configuration information is stored in the registry. You know the registry the thing that keeps getting corrupted when you install alot of applications. The registry is just a programmable datastore (i.e. database of your settings) stored locally on your PC. So think of the registry as your PC management. This is what directory services is. A programmable distributed datastore containing settings for your network. You store Users, Groups, Servers, router, DNS, DHCP, Licensing, Applications, ... etc. Directory Services is your NETWORK REGISTRY. Besides being a NETWORK REGISTRY, DS also provides secure access for limiting access to information. In addition DS replicates the datastore to provide fault tolerance. Think of your Windows Registry. If you didn't back it up and something got screwed up more than likely you will be re-installing Windows and all of your applications. DS will transparently replicate the NETWORK REGISTRY in the background. Your PC Registry is centrally managed by 1 person you, and stored 1 place on your local hard disk. The NETWORK REGISTRY can be managed by multiple administrators and can be replicated to many servers for fault tolerance. Have you ever heard of Novell's product ZenWorks or Zero Effort Networking. What it basically does is store parts of your PC Registry (I'm simplifying here) into the Network Registry. So when you log into the network from your PC the Network Registry will push/download your desktop settings to your PC Registry and define your desktop environment for that session. So you can see DS is all about management and security of your network resources. Traditionally Novell has sold DS to the corporate customer for their private network. Now Novell want's to push the concept of NETWORK REGISTRY to the ISP so that the ISP can provide INTERNET REGISTRY SERVICES to its customers. Now Novell has done a good job up to this point of defining the NETWORK SCHEMA on the main things that need to be stored for the private corporate network. Now there is a need to allow the ISP to customize its INTERNET SCHEMA so that it can define the data it needs to store in its INTERNET REGISTRY. So the 2 things holding Novell back at this point are the following. 1) Most ISPs are Unix shops. They are not interested in running the NetWare platform no matter how fast it is. So this is why you see Novell decoupling E-Directory from NetWare platform. Novell needs to make E-Directory run just as well on Solaris, and Linux as it does NetWare. 2) The customization of the INTERNET REGISTRY has to be easy for an ISP to use. This relates to CNN. Quite alot of effort was spent by Novell to customize the INTERNET SCHEMA for them. So Novell either has to make it easier for others to customize it or hire alot of Directory Consultants to do the customization. Now I didn't talk about B2B. B2B is just an E-COMMERCE REGISTRY allowing 1 business to exchange it's BUSINESS REGISTRY with another BUSINESS REGISTRY. Personally I think Novell is focusing to much on the security aspect of the REGISTRY. I know the power users like Paul, Scott, Toy, Peter and others are concerned about security but I don't think the average user is concerned that much about cookies. How could they be concerned about it they don't even know what it is. So if your a developer and want to capitalize on DS think of the PC REGISTRY and how to extend this type of functionality to the INTERNET. Sorry for the long post, spelling, and grammatical errors. I'm to lazy to do the spell check. Jimmy