Red Hat next month is expected to provide a missing link in the open source software infrastructure with its release of source code for the Netscape directory server it acquired last year from AOL.
A few weeks after that free server is made available, Red Hat is scheduled to release a commercial version of the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)-based directory called Red Hat Directory Server. This will include services and support for a monthly subscription fee, and give Red Hat another piece in its evolving middleware stack.
Red Hat is expected to make the announcement at its Red Hat Summit June 1-3, although the company would not confirm that timetable.
Besides creating a data store to manage user and policy information for authentication and authorization, the addition of an open source directory could lead to an expansion of security and identity management tools on Linux and other open source platforms that may raise their enterprise value.
“Without a directory, it’s been difficult to position Linux as an enterprise system,” says John Enck, an analyst with Gartner. “The directory is core to everything. If you look at where all the vendors are going, everybody is trying to create the directory as a foundation piece and tie their stack of software to it.”
The open source community has been trying to address the directory issue, but the OpenLDAP project, which Red Hat implements and ships with its operating system, has been criticized for not providing scalability to complement the so-called open source LAMP stack: Linux, Apache, MySQL and Perl/PHP/ Python.
In comparison, Netscape released its Directory Server in 1996 and pundits hailed the scalability and administrative controls of the standards-based software, which ignited centralization of corporate directory information. The directory was the foundation for a major U.S. Department of Defense project in the late 1990s to secure military information systems.
Red Hat’s commercial version of the directory is a challenge to vendors that have commercial Linux-based directories but do not open the source code for public consumption. Those vendors include IBM, Oracle and Sun and Novell, which has ported eDirectory to Linux along with a complement of identity management and security tools.
“Their challenge is the other parts of identity and access management and security around this directory technology; how do they plan to [develop] that aspect of it?” says Ashish Larivee, director of product marketing for Novell.
While the directory only is infrastructure, what it supports in terms of security and access control is mandatory for today’s Web-based distributed corporate networks. It is those directory-enabled tools that are key not only to the success of LAMP but also to Red Hat, experts say.
“This is part of Red Hat evolving from just an operating system company to more of a software company,” says Gordon Haff, an analyst with Illuminata. “The more significant issue is the difficulty of tying all the pieces together into a single stack that really works together. That’s where Red Hat is moving.”
That stack competes with those from IBM, Microsoft, Oracle and Sun.
Red Hat’s plan is to open source all of the Netscape technology it acquired under the General Public License (GPL), says Leigh Day, a company spokesperson.
“Open source architecture is our long-term strategy,” Day says. “[Red Hat Directory Server] is going to provide another critical piece of business infrastructure that’s standards-based for open source architectures. Red Hat is very committed to making sure all of the software that we deliver for enterprise infrastructure is made available under the GPL. We think that’s just better business. “
Last September, Red Hat spent $23 million to purchase from AOL the Netscape directory technology along with the former dot-com darling’s Certificate Server for handling digital certificates.
Industry experts say the transition to a directory vendor won’t be an easy one.
“They are going to face all the same integration problems that every other directory vendor has faced,” says Jackson Shaw, vice president of product management for Vintela, which develops technology to integrate Unix, Linux, Java, and Macintosh with Windows-based systems. “How do I integrate with heterogeneous systems? How do I integrate with the Microsoft directory, the Novell directory? They will have directory synchronization issues, meta directory issues, authentication issues,” says Shaw, who helped architect Microsoft’s Active Directory.
Red Hat has begun the work. Last month it released a technology preview with updates to Red Hat Directory Server that included Windows user synchronization, rights control and replication features.
Tim Howes, the co-author of the LDAP specification and architect of the original Netscape Directory Server, says the directory will be good for the open source community. “Like other infrastructural components it is important the directory be robust, stable, and this will help get it there,” says Howes, who is now the CTO of automation software company Opsware.
Industry observers say only time will tell the significance of an open source directory.
“If it became a hot open source project, then maybe you build a virtualization engine that competes with virtual directory vendors or a synchronization engine that competes with meta-directory providers,” says Jamie Lewis, president of Burton Group. “If it really caught fire, those are the kinds of things that would show this is a significant effort.”
Competitors say Red Hat is in catch-up mode.
“Red Hat’s move doesn’t address the real customer need for a complete directory service or other key identity management requirements customers are looking for like provisioning, access management, federation and identity auditing, all of which Sun provides,” says Don Bowen, director of marketing for Sun’s Directory Server Enterprise Edition.
“Adding one more LDAP directory to the mix of existing LDAP directories doesn’t help customers with single sign-on, access management, secure wireless and remote access, desktop management, managing security updates, information protection, smartcard logon, printer discovery,” says Michael Stephenson, Microsoft’s group product manager for Windows Server. “Active Directory provides customers with these capabilities and more without requiring the customer to do the costly integration work.”
