Novell Removes the Barriers to Widespread Adoption of Directory Services for
Networks
Novell Offers Feature Rich LDAP Directory Server Free of Charge
OREM, Utah -- November 12, 1996 -- Novell, Inc. today announced an
aggressive distribution strategy for Novell Directory Services (NDS) to accelerate its adoption by
the industry's leading operating system vendors, creating a common directory service across
heterogenous environments. Starting immediately, operating system developers can obtain a
royalty-free source code and distribution license for NDS. Novell also disclosed its plans to offer
a royalty-free binary distribution license for NDS on NT.
As a cross-platform directory service, NDS provides a single point of access and management,
increasing user productivity, reducing network administration costs and easing application
development. In parallel with the new distribution strategy, Novell and its partners are creating
new businesses through the licensing of replication, file, print, certificates and other directory-based products as add-ons to NDS.
"NDS is years ahead of other directories in terms of technology and market share," said Tom
Arthur, vice president and general manager of Novell's Internet Infrastructure Division. "Novell
understands that the value of a network directory depends on the extent of its adoption. While
other vendors are hoping to make a business of selling directories as servers or embedding them in
proprietary operating systems, Novell is taking a different approach and seeding the market with
NDS for directory-based applications and services."
Novell is committed to integrating NDS into all major server platforms. The company has taken
the first step by allowing the NDS source code to be licensed by industry-leading operating
system providers, royalty-free. The company will also distribute a single server binary version of
NDS on NT over the Internet and through agreements with independent software vendors (ISVs)
and independent hardware vendors (IHVs). Partnerships with major ISVs and IHVs will be
announced over the next several months.
Customer Benefits
Novell's platform-independent directory strategy will significantly increase user productivity by
making it easier to find information on the network, regardless of where the information resides
(corporate networks, intranets and the Internet). The directory will also help administrators to
decrease network administration costs by reducing the time and complexity of managing disparate
corporate networks.
"As one of the world's largest network integrators we have been providing NDS solutions in the
NetWare environment for many years," said Stan Ratcliffe, vice president of EDS' Client/Server
Group. "We are very encouraged to see that NDS is becoming widely available on Unix and NT,
thus providing simpler access, administration and development for heterogeneous networking
systems."
"The availability of NDS on multiple operating systems gives us an opportunity that we've never
had before to merge disparate platforms in our company under a single directory service," said
Lee Roth, LAN Systems group leader, Southwest Airlines.
NDS is an Open Directory
By basing NDS on X.500 naming, Novell anticipated the industry's adoption of industry standards
thus allowing NDS to be one of the first directories to offer LDAP support. To further its
commitment to open standards, Novell plans to open NDS access APIs to Internet/intranet
standards and ruling committees. The API documentation for NDS, including all of the directory
service APIs for both client and service facilities are openly available on Novell's Web site at http://devsup.novell.com.
Developer Benefits
Developers will finally be able to exploit new market opportunities by creating networked
applications that leverage the performance benefits of distributed computing. NDS enables
networked applications to share objects, such as Java applets, across networks, including intranets
and the Internet. Novell's plans to openly distribute NDS, and its commitment to LDAP and
X.500, offer a compelling, open environment for developing directory-enabled applications.
Novell is also offering developers the opportunity to bundle NDS with their applications. This will
provide the administration and security features they require, thus reducing the time and expense
to develop and implement user account databases. With its directory services strategy, Novell
provides a common directory infrastructure for developers to incorporate LDAP-compliant
directory services into their networked applications and solutions, paving the way for developers
to designate NDS as the LDAP directory of choice.
Novell is (NASDAQ:NOVL) is the world's leading network software provider. Novell software
provides the infrastructure for a networked world, enabling customers to connect with other
people and the information they need, anytime and anyplace. Novell partners with other
technology and market leaders to help customers make networks a part of their everyday lives.
Novell is a registered trademark. Novell Directory Services, NDS are trademarks of Novell, Inc.
All other registered trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
Press Contacts:
Pattie Adams
Novell, Inc.
(408) 577-6056
Internet: padams@novell.com
Lori Hafen
Cunningham Communication, Inc.
(408) 764-0787
Internet: lori@ccipr.com
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