Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : How high will Microsoft fly? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Moominoid who wrote (6106)	4/24/1998 9:56:00 AM
From: Spartex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 74651

NDS use expands; NT interest dulled April 21, 1998 ComputerWorld via NewsEdge Corporation : Once upon a time, businesses used Novell, Inc.'s Novell Directory Services (NDS) almost exclusively as a tool to manage NetWare file and print services. Not anymore. Users have shifted attitudes. They are expanding their NDS usage and taking advantage of its abilities to solve a lot of thorny business problems. Those include automatic directory replication and synchronization, wide-area and Internet access management, proxy caching, automatic software distribution and the repair of damaged applications. Eleven Fortune 1,000 businesses told Computerworld that NDS and its adjunct product, NDS for Windows NT, have helped slash management time and costs by as much as 70%. "Without NDS, we'd have to double or triple our administrative staff and add support staff to the branch offices," said Thad Hymel, a distributed systems manager at Hibernia National Bank in New Orleans. NDS lets the bank centrally manage NetWare servers at 250 remote offices in Louisiana and Texas with fewer than 20 network administrators. The service also cut help desk calls in half. New lease Jon Oltsik, an analyst at Forrester Research, Inc. in Cambridge, Mass., said the success in using NDS is recasting NetWare's image. NetWare is no longer just a "legacy file and print network operating system," he said. But the real test, Oltsik said, will come late this year when Novell delivers the native version of NDS for NT, which won't require NetWare. The efficiencies delivered by NDS and NDS for NT already have helped information systems departments convince upper management that NetWare is a viable strategic platform and not an interim solution until Windows NT 5.0 and its Active Directory ship next year. "NDS and NDS for NT are here now. Windows NT 5.0 and the Active Directory are still slideware.' Users can't deploy promises," Oltsik said. "Fifteen months ago, when Novell hit bottom, we were considering becoming an all-NT shop," said Matt Rice, vice president and senior network manager at USTrust Bank in Cambridge, Mass. "Because of NDS for NT, that's not going to happen." For example, Rice said, he could prove to management that 30% of the calls to USTrust's help desk are related to password-synchronization problems. "It [now] takes 20 minutes to fix, and we have 2,000 users. Native NDS for NT will eliminate [that problem] entirely," he said. Avoiding the pain of a wholesale migration also is cementing users' loyalty to Novell. The first three releases of NDS in the early 1990s "were pretty ugly, "Rice said. But now, "Novell has a five-year jump on doing directories with NDS. I don't want to start all over again. There's just not a compelling reason for us to install Windows NT 5.0 as an enterprise [network operating system], especially since by the time it ships in 1999, we'll be running into the year 2000 issue," Rice said. NDS is helping Novell lure crucial third-party developers back to the NetWare platform. One reclaimed developer is Bentana Technologies, Inc. in East Hartford, Conn., which develops Internet-based programs for employer services and human resources providers. <<ComputerWorld -- 04-20-98, p. 4>> [Copyright 1998, ComputerWorld]