As its position in the market slips, Novell changes direction with
its Denim strategy. Cliff Saran reports
Novell presented a new vision for the company based on directory
services rather than its core strengths of network services at last
week's BrainShare conference in Salt Lake City.
The proposed new architecture - Directory-Enabled Network
Infrastructure Model (Denim) - is built on the company's
e-Directory and an extensible set of network services. Through
Denim, Novell plans to offer services for network security,
management, storage, publishing and the delivery of data and
services for e-business.
In his keynote presentation at BrainShare, Eric Schmidt,
Novell's chairman and chief executive officer, described the
company's strategy as "one Net". By using Denim, Schmidt said, "All
the relationships people have can be managed through a single
network on a one-to-one basis."
Schmidt said Novell would paint a picture of a new Internet
through its Denim strategy, one that would allow a business to
treat its customers, business partners and end-users as one entity.
"The Net has to be available to everyone all of the time," he
explained.
The question is whether Netware has a future. The message from
Novell at the conference was that Netware would be the reference
operating system platform for Denim. But it would also provide
versions of the Denim architecture on Windows NT, Windows 2000,
Solaris and Linux.
Users are clearly concerned about the viability of Netware as an
operating system platform.
According to analyst group IDC, users are buying fewer Netware
servers. And in recent years Novell's position as number one
network operating system supplier has been undermined. In 1997, 27%
of new server operating systems shipped came from Novell, in 1998
this percentage fell to 21%. In 1999, just 19% of new systems
shipped were Netware.
But Novell insists Netware has a future. In March it began
shipping Clustering Services for Netware 5.1 and has recently
reached the "code complete" stage of Six Pack, a performance
upgrade to Netware. According to Craig Miller, Novell's vice
president for engineering, "Six Pack will provide Netware with
support for symmetric multi-processing."
Novell's goal is for Netware to run faster and more reliably
than Windows 2000. Using Six Pack, networking services built on the
IP network protocol would be able to run across multiple servers to
achieve scalability.
An example would be Novell's Groupwise e-mail server, based on
the IP protocol. "We are proving multi-processor support for all
the [network] performance services," said Miller. An open beta
release of this product is due in the summer. But final shipping
code is not expected until this time next year.
As far as 64-bit computing goes, Novell gave a mixed message at
BrainShare. While it is steaming ahead with the development of
Modesto, the 64-bit version of Netware for Intel's IA-64
architecture, the company's message is that 64-bit computing does
not enhance networking. While high performance applications could
benefit from a 64-bit architecture, Novell plans to deliver
networking with 99.999% uptime, a feat it claims to have
demonstrated in its labs.
As for its Denim strategy, industry experts acknowledge that
building a network infrastructure on a directory is beneficial as
it simplifies network management. Users, departments and business
units can be grouped in the directory and the information and
applications that they can access controlled.
Through Novell's strategy, this directory can be extended
outside an organisation, allowing business partners and teleworkers
to log into internal networks and thus share information.
Dan Kusnetzky, research director at IDC, said users will have to
look at what Denim will give them above equivalent Microsoft
directory technology.
Microsoft operating systems are installed on the vast majority
of desktop PCs and the company's share of server operating systems
is increasing towards 40%. When users begin deploying the Active
Directory both on their desktop PCs and their servers, they will be
able to create a directory-enabled network infrastructure. "Why
would anyone pay more to use a directory such as one from Novell,
when they get they Active Directory free with Windows 2000?"
Kusnetsky asks.
CNN is using Novell's directory technology to provide customised
Web content to people accessing its financial news Web site. The
site tailors online advertising based on a user's profile which is
stored in Novell's e-Directory. It uses Netware 5.0 running on two
Compaq 5400R dual processor Proliant servers configured with 2Gbyte
memory and 76Gbytes of Raid 0 disc arrays. The new site is expected
to grow to handle 6 million subscribers by June 2000.