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

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (25728)	3/2/1999 1:35:00 PM
From: ToySoldier	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Iscor and its fellow competing companies/products are classified as Meta-Directory vendors. Their purpose in life is to provide "Gateway" like services for the current and up-and-coming Directory Service vendors (like Novell NDS, Netscape Directory, IBM E-network, Active Directory when it ever shows its ugly face). They are currently filling a need in the infancy DS techology by being able to link DSes together like an X.400 Gateway links mail systems together. Some are utilizing LDAP and the protocol that lies the two together, BUT, the DS vendors are embedding LDAP into their products so their is no value in the Meta-Directory vendors to link via LDAP. They are link the DSes with different and unique variations of protocols to provide a more full-featured service interface between two DS vendors. The reason is because LDAP is a protocol that provides bare-bones inter-linking capabilities and is therefore very limiting to cutomers that want to link DSes together. They need something much more robust to provide the appearance of near-native linkage between the DSes. That is where the Meta-Directory vendors step in. The problem with this robust solution is that the solutions become very much a "point-solution", meaning that the product will likely only link one specific DS to another (i.e. NDS to Netscape). This is a similar analogy to the countless Mail Gateways that each mail system has (i.e. X.400, SMTP, PROFS, MHS, ec.). For the next year or so I see that the Meta-Directory Vendors will flurish in the light of the immature phase of the DS life-cycle. BUT, as the LDAP standard matures (i.e. with the release of LDUP and other DS linkage solutions) the Meta-Directory vendors will disappear as the DS vendors will embed this linkage technology into their products. This will choke off the demand for 3rd pary Meta-Directory vendors like Isocor. The evolution of DS is for organizations to move to "Keystone" DS structures which means a movement to only a couple major DS products and standards (possibly NDS, Netscape, and Active Directory). Thats my look on it Paul. PS - C.A. and Digital-Me are very different in offering. A CA is a method of assuring proper security and authentication for communication transactions. Digital-Me is an actual product deliverable that allows a customer to log into it securely and then the Digital-Me ENVIRONMENT (which operates on an XLM browser) provides the customer to quickly and efficiently enter several Internet services without having to provide login and other cutomer prompted querys (like Credit Card information, address information, etc.). That is because the XML/NDS solution will take the information for the NDS for a specific Web-Site and use XML to by-pass the site's prompting for security entry and ecommerce information. In that way the customer only needs to maintain ONE Digital Personna on the internet (even though the several actual personna's required for each site are stored in NDS for that customer). Digital-Me is a front-end and very visible service offering to the Internet Community. Certificate Authority service is a very back-end customer doesnt really see it service offering to the Internet community. Thought I would throw that in as well. Toy