User project should send up red flags at Novell

I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago for Converge 05, Courion's annual user conference. It's always educational to listen to users talk about their experiences finding, designing, testing and implementing the identity management projects that Courion's tools (PasswordCourier, AccountCourier and more) make possible. But there was a subplot to the presentations that should have had ears twitching down the road in Waltham, Mass., where Novell is headquartered.

Only two of the presentations I listened to indicated specific products that caused Courion trouble with their identity integration projects, and both implicated products from Novell as the culprit. Both also indicated that they were migrating from Novell products to Microsoft products just as quickly as they could. That's bad enough, of course, but when they explained the difficulties they were having it seems it wasn't a problem with NetWare or eDirectory (the two products mentioned), but in the understanding of how those products worked and a lack of experience with them on the part of the current IT staffs at the two Courion customer sites.

One company indicated that it was dumping eDirectory because it was "location specific." What the company meant was that the directory tree had been structured so that containers were location specific - but that, of course, can be changed. The second company was dumping NetWare (in favor of Windows) because the provisioning tool it was using would create a NetWare account but not a logon script, home directory or other appurtenances that NetWare's own tools create when initiating a new account. And the provisioning tool would do those for their Windows/Active Directory accounts. But, again, it would simply require a couple of hours work on the provisioning connector to link in the NetWare API calls that create home directories, logon scripts, groups and all the other features of a NetWare account.

To continue reading, register here and become an Insider. You'll get free access to premium content from CIO, Computerworld, CSO, InfoWorld, and Network World. See more Insider content or sign in.

I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago for Converge 05, Courion's annual user conference. It's always educational to listen to users talk about their experiences finding, designing, testing and implementing the identity management projects that Courion's tools (PasswordCourier, AccountCourier and more) make possible. But there was a subplot to the presentations that should have had ears twitching down the road in Waltham, Mass., where Novell is headquartered.

Only two of the presentations I listened to indicated specific products that caused Courion trouble with their identity integration projects, and both implicated products from Novell as the culprit. Both also indicated that they were migrating from Novell products to Microsoft products just as quickly as they could. That's bad enough, of course, but when they explained the difficulties they were having it seems it wasn't a problem with NetWare or eDirectory (the two products mentioned), but in the understanding of how those products worked and a lack of experience with them on the part of the current IT staffs at the two Courion customer sites.

One company indicated that it was dumping eDirectory because it was "location specific." What the company meant was that the directory tree had been structured so that containers were location specific - but that, of course, can be changed. The second company was dumping NetWare (in favor of Windows) because the provisioning tool it was using would create a NetWare account but not a logon script, home directory or other appurtenances that NetWare's own tools create when initiating a new account. And the provisioning tool would do those for their Windows/Active Directory accounts. But, again, it would simply require a couple of hours work on the provisioning connector to link in the NetWare API calls that create home directories, logon scripts, groups and all the other features of a NetWare account.

It appeared that neither organization's IT folks had any NetWare experience and weren't interested in getting any. Or, Novell wasn't interested in giving them any help. Novell wants to move NetWare customers onto the SuSE Linux platform, and people with loyal ties to Novell may be listening to that pitch, but those without a stake in NetWare don't seem to be.

Tip of the Week

If you are sticking with NetWare, Novell now has available an online deployment guide with multiple upgrade path scenarios to help you get started with Open Enterprise Server.

Read more about software in Network World's Software section.