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 : Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tulvio Durand who wrote (18978)	11/5/1998 5:58:00 PM
From: Spartex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 77397

Tulvio, <According to some people Active Directory will offer more capabilities than NDS. Do you concur? >> I don't take a side either way, but until there is an Active Directory on the market, there is no comparison with NDS which is here now, mature and tested IMHO. I'll call on some technicians that may have an interest in the nuts and bolts of this matter. QuadK

To: Tulvio Durand who wrote (18978)	11/5/1998 8:18:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 77397

Tulvio, NDS is 5+ years old as a production released product. During its early months it had to go through some real 1.0 growing pains. Although much of the functionality was there, the actual implementation of NDS into the real world computing demands and limitations needed to be addressed. NDS is now a very mature DS and by far the industry leader for Directory Services. It also spans across more technologies, platforms, services, and business processes than any other solution out there. The key to a successful DS in addition to its maturity is how pervasive it has become. No one touches NDS in this area. Novell LDAP-enabled implementation of NDS for Solaris is simply an extension of the core NDS services currently host on a NetWare server (in a few weeks the NDS structure will even be able to operate without a NetWare server at all - although it will perform much better on NetWare than NT). So even though the Solaris extension might be new - NDS is mature. Active Directory is still a completely un-released product. It will have to go through all the same 1.0 growing pains that NDS had to endure over 5 years ago. In fact Active Directory will have even bigger problems, because MSFT has developed Active Directory to still rely on the old 80's based NT Domains structure. This is not scalable for enterprise solutions. Novell realized that in order to develop a scalable enterprise-wide Directory Service, they had to let go of the past (they had to design NDS from scratch and drop their existing Bindery Services structure). Novell initially tried to do what MSFT is doing now with AD, they developed a solution called NNS (Network Naming Services) that used Bindery Services as the underpinnings. It didnt take long for the NOVL engineers to realize that this was not going to work. So they developed NDS from scratch. This was very painful, but Novell has now gone through it. MSFT is following the same evolution as NOVL and Active Directory will have to learn the hard way that it simply cannot scale and MSFT will eventually have to design Active Directory from scratch as well. By then, I would predict that NDS's marketshare will simply be to dominant for even MSFT to consider it worth their while to start over. Unfortunately for Cisco, they have fallen for MSFT's attractive PR and hitched themselves to the current industry giant - regardless of the maturity of the actual DS technology. Cisco cannot make Active Directory any better than it is design to be. So, the long answer to your question is: NO Active Directory will not offer more capabilities than NDS. Maybe in 7+ years if NOVL completely stops all development of NDS and lets MSFT catchup in its evolution of DS, then Active Directory will offer more. But in the foreseeable future - NO! Lucent on the other hand has realized that NDS is ready now as a mature DS and is actually being used by HUGE organizations and even by ISP's to deliver rented software (MT&T). I predict that Cisco will have to come to the same realization and adopt NDS in order not to lose sales to Lucent in the quickly growing NDS shops. Final prediction - I agree with the article that MSFT will not allow Cisco to release Active Directory on its own port. That would be simply too embarassing for MSFT! So, Cisco will have to sit and wait until MSFT eventually releases Active Directory while Lucent releases a simple NDS extension for their switches and starts making sales at the expense of Cisco's loyality to MSFT. Toy