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

To: EPS who wrote (26867)	5/10/1999 11:28:00 PM
From: EPS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

Novell Bets the Farm on NDS Is Novell a NOS company or an applications company? Back in the firm's ill-fated WordPerfect days, nobody really knew the right answer. Today, Novell is both—but this time the glue holding everything together is NDS. By moving it from the LAN to the WAN to the Internet, Novell plans to become the world's favorite directory company. “Directory and identity are just two sides of the same coin,” says Novell CEO Eric Schmidt. “The question ‘Where do you want to go today?' is the wrong one to ask about networks. The right question is, ‘Who do you want to be today?'” At BrainShare—Novell's annual conference that was held in March—Novell showed digitalme, a Java-based tool that gives consumers single sign-on to multiple Web sites, plus extensive control over what information they collect. To be released in open-source format over the next few months, the tool employs Extensible Markup Language (XML) to store objects in NDS directories. Also demonstrated was NDS 8, which searched through a billion-user tree—approximately 2Tbytes of data—and retrieved desired information within seconds. “A billion is just the start,” Schmidt says, noting that NDS will need to scale as users add more and more properties to the tree, ranging from a new cell phone's IP address to a UPS package tracking number. NDS 8 is merely one aspect of Novell's “six pack” update to NetWare 5. Now being beta-tested, this includes a significantly improved multiprocessing kernel, multithreaded Java, native Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) support, and more applications for its graphical management console. It will also offer HTTP as a core protocol, increasing the range of operations that administrators can perform remotely. The 64-bit Novell Storage System file system supports compression and offers volume sizes up to 8Tbytes. Novell disappointed those who expected it to start giving away NDS for NT. It doesn't need to, says Adam Smith, marketing manager, noting that “the all-NT enterprise hardly exists.” That said, Novell will soon offer a version 8-enabled version of NDS for NT that, since it includes native graphical tools for directory administration and repair, no longer requires a NetWare server. Also at BrainShare was Z.E.N.works 2, a forthcoming update of Novell's NDS-enabled, policy-based desktop management tool. New features include the ability to push new software to desktops that are unattended and not even logged in. According to Lubor Ptacek, marketing manager, Z.E.N.works 2 is merely a portion of an overall management platform—currently dubbed K2, and yet to be formally named—that will be able to push service packs and other software from server to server. Ptacek says K2's NDS-based configuration of network devices, such as switches recently announced by Cabletron Systems, Lucent Technologies, and others, will greatly simplify network management. Novell's GroupWise collaboration software is another piece of the NDS pie. Tom Rhoton, marketing director, says planned enhancements include “updating the Web access clients for increased speed and functionality, plus adding Java applets to maintain state.” Rhoton adds that Novell will leverage GroupWise's Web publishing capabilities in a product code-named Magellan. This will be aimed at workgroups whose members must maintain Web pages collaboratively. Finally, Novell's Internet Caching System (ICS) combines the disk-caching software from BorderManager with a file system that is pared down for extra speed. Dell Computer and Compaq Computer have both built ICS into caching appliances that can be run headless and configured remotely. Although caching doesn't seem obviously related to NDS, Steve Rokov, product manager, points out that “NDS helps implement reverse caching, where you place the cache at your ISP to speed access for remote users. Your actual Web servers can be kept safely behind the firewall.” To some observers, Novell's current success seems the temporary result of Microsoft's inability to deliver. “I disagree with that premise,” says Schmidt. “We are in the business of building a directory-centric computing model, and right now there's no one else in that space. Once customers deploy the directory, they are customers for many years to come.” —Jonathan Angel networkmagazine.com

To: EPS who wrote (26867)	5/10/1999 11:30:00 PM
From: EPS	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42771

OS-ENABLED SECURITY A recent, yet very interesting development in the PKI market is the trend toward integrating PKI features into server-based operating systems. A PKI encompasses a number of components within a network, including servers and directories, so it makes sense to build the features right into the OS. Novell is leading the way with its Public Key Infrastructure Services (PKIS) 1.0, which comes free with NetWare 5. PKIS allows the use of digital certificates and public key cryptography within an NDS-based network. And since there are more than a few companies that rely heavily on NDS to manage their user information, weaving in PKI capabilities makes sense for companies that want to use existing products. Certificate management occurs through NetWare's NWAdmin utility, which provides a single, central point of administration for public keys and certificates. PKIS supports in-house CAs and lets companies send internally generated certificates to a third party such as Verisign or GTE Cybertrust for an additional signature, but product features also eliminate the need for a third-party CA. Companies can use products like Netscape's Certificate Management System, and integrate its certificate generation capabilities with NDS. Public and private key pairs can be generated on a NetWare server, which in turn sends the keys to PKIS. PKIS will then get an associated certificate either from within, or from an external CA. It also provides certificate and key storage through NDS, secure management of private keys, and certificate renewal. When a certificate's predetermined expiration date approaches, PKIS lets administrators check the certificate's attributes and change any parameters. PKIS also lets administrators create a completely new certificate based on a new key. Novell has also announced that it is working on supporting digital signatures, which provide for nonrepudiation in electronic communications. The company also plans to support different classes of certificates, much like Verisign has been doing from the beginning; this class distinction will translate to different levels of trust associated with a particular certificate. As you might expect, Novell's chief rival in the OS market, Microsoft, is also dealing with the issue of PKI. Microsoft already includes integrated PKI services through a service pack to Exchange 5.5 that upgrades the key management server component of the popular messaging software. This key management server is compatible with Microsoft's Certificate Server, which is an option to Windows NT and Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 that issues, renews, and revokes X.509 digital certificates without the need for an external CA. The next logical step is to integrate PKI capabilities into Windows 2000 (the new name for Windows NT), which most observers expect by the end of 1999. Microsoft has announced it will integrate the Certificate Server with Active Directory, also due by the end of 1999. Not to be left in the dust, Sun Microsystems has said it will embed support for PKI services in its Solaris operating system by mid-1999. Sun plans to let users create public keys and make it much easier to implement a PKI. Because Solaris supports LDAP, third-party PKI products can be integrated. Also, Solaris' PKI services will support smart cards for authentication. Built-in PKI support in some of the most popular operating systems could give established PKI vendors a reason to look over their shoulders, but it can also lead to greater understanding of the technology and jump-start the entire market. WHO DO YOU TRUST? As the need increases for secure applications, and for the ability to conduct electronic transactions with a high level of trust and security, companies will realize that a public key infrastructure is the architecture that will let them do everything from secure single sign-on within their company to bulletproofing e-mail and Web services. Standards immaturity and high implementation costs and complexity have kept PKIs from rapidly evolving, but vendors' efforts to simplify the technology and embed it into a variety of products is an encouraging sign of things to come. Anita Karvè, associate editor, can be reached at akarve@mfi.com. networkmagazine.com