Novell to port NDS to NT

Salt Lake City - Novell Inc. will release a native NT version of Novell Directory Services before the end of the year and is developing a version of NDS on Solaris, an executive said at the company's Brainshare developer conference.

Meanwhile, IBM Corp. is developing a version of NDS on AIX and NDS on System 390, Novell's Chief Technology Officer Glenn Ricart said in an interview in which he discussed upcoming technology plans for Novell products.

Novell currently sells NDS for NT, which offers directory services for Windows NT via a separate NDS "box" running on a NetWare or Unix network, Ricart explained. NDS on NT would serve only shops running Windows NT and the NDS "box" would run directly on top of Windows NT, not separate from it, he said.

SCO, Hewlett-Packard Co. and Fujitsu also offer versions of NDS on their variants of Unix, according to Ricart.

In other NetWare-related plans, Novell will extend its Novell Storage Services (NSS), which allows NetWare to quickly handle large files, to similarly handle system data known as Sys Volumes and compressed data, he said.

With ManageWise, Novell will extend that product "to cover more aspects of the network," Ricart said. Quality of service will be improved and it will enable "management all the way to the desktop."

"You're going to see a lot of action in the security area," he said. To begin with, BorderManager will be enhanced so that multiple BorderManager products can be used together, he said.

In addition, Novell will work more closely with the Internet Cache protocol to "make BorderManager more friendly to Internet Service Providers and build a market with ISPs for BorderManager," Ricart said.

On Wednesday, Novell will reveal a roadmap for its partnership with Intel Corp. regarding support for the upcoming Merced processor, he added.

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