Novell's eDirectory share grows

Novell Tuesday announced that sales of its eDirectory technology have reached over 300 million licenses as a result of it allowing independent software vendors to include the metadirectory software at no charge within their products.

Novell's eDirectory has been adopted by over 40 ISVs since last summer, when Novell belatedly decided to distribute the software at no cost to application vendors.

Analysts had long recommended that the company increase the use of eDirectory by distributing it freely to customers.

Novell has signed distribution deals with Yahoo! and TIBCO, a business process integrator, as well as with Caldera and NTT Software, to integrate eDirectory within their applications.

Among the partnerships developed are ones with Ayeca, which makes wireline and wireless billing software, Caldera, which uses eDirectory in its Volution Linux network management package, and Intellium, which offers Java middleware software.