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

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (26069)	3/17/1999 12:15:00 PM
From: Spartex	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Industry baffled by Novell's claims for directory services by Andy Donoghue, Network News UK Confusion and scepticism from competitors and users greeted claims by Novell that version 8 of its directory services software will scale to one billion objects and be suitable for use by ISPs. Novell claims the improved scalability will make the software a potential tool for ISPs looking to manage the millions of objects on their networks. However, Karl Meyer, business development manager at UUNet, said he was doubtful that software conceived in the enterprise could translate to the complex network management needs of the ISP world. "The ISP and enterprise worlds are very different. Our users are transitory and drift in and out of the network. I would be very interested to see how NDS will translate over," he said. Novell's rival in the directory services space, Netscape, has also criticised version 8 for being too heavily tied into Novell's NOS NetWare. Netscape claims that users will need to adopt NetWare in order to take advantage of NDS, which could be a real problem for companies using an exclusively NT environment. Dusan Rnic, product marketing manager for Netscape, said: "The problem is that NDS isn't cross-platform. If you are targeting large corporations you are not going to convince them to solely use NetWare. NDS is multi-platform in terms of OS but not in terms of NOS." Peter Joseph, corporate strategist at Novell, admitted that NDS version 8 would not work without NWadmin - a component of NetWare - and that the company was using this fact to "further advantage" NetWare's future. Derek Venter, Novell's marketing manager, claimed version 8 was infinitely more scalable than Netscape's offering. "We are much bigger than they are. The performance of the Netscape directory dips at a certain number of users, while ours remains constant." Rnic attacked what he termed "holes" in Novell's announcement, particularly if the one billion object scalability was on one server or across several. But he applauded Novell's decision to move away from its proprietary access protocol, which will allow it to provide native support for version 3 of LDAP. webserv.vnunet.com ==================================== Paul, thanks for earlier comments. Also, here are some competitors'/users' thoughts on NDSv8. Directory battles appear to be heating up, as is the stock-- $26 1/8th!

To: Paul Fiondella who wrote (26069)	3/17/1999 12:19:00 PM
From: Spartex	Respond to of 42771

Microsoft attempts to spoil Novell's NDS party at Brainshare by Linda Leung in Silicon Valley Microsoft has offered its Dir Sync specifications to the Internet Engineering Taskforce (IETF) in an attempt to spark interest in its forthcoming Active Directory, which is integrated into Windows 2000. The specifications are intended to link Active Directory with third party directory services, including the Novell Directory Services (NDS), but analysts believe Microsoft is pushing its protocols because it refuses to embrace the industry standard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (Ldap). And Bob Sakakeeny, analyst at the Aberdeen Group, believes Big Green's latest announcement is aimed at spoiling Novell's preparations for its Brainshare user conference in Utah, which starts this weekend. "Dir Sync is an attempt to synchronise NDS with Active Directory and to avoid Ldap standardisation. Ldap is supported by other players, but Dir Sync is Microsoft's version of Ldap which does not provide full synchronisation, only top level synchronisation," he said. But he does not believe that Dir Sync will be popular because developers have to customise every link they make to Active Directory, although there are ways to bypass Active Directory, for example, by using NDS for NT. IBM is also expected to announce ways of avoiding Active Directory in its own directory services for DB2. Although Microsoft refused to comment on the situation, it would appear to be in danger of falling even more seriously behind in the directory services race if Windows 2000 is delayed further. Novell has been busy bolstering its defense by promising a raft of NDS announcements at Brainshare, including the demonstration of NDS version 8, which, it claims, can manage one billion objects. © 1999 VNU Business Publications Ltd