By Siobhan Kennedy
Cisco Systems Inc last week denied it was in further talks with Novell Inc to integrate its Novell Directory Services (NDS) with the networking giant’s core operating system, IOS. Instead, a spokesperson for the San Jose, California-based Cisco said the company will continue along its integration path with Microsoft Corp’s forthcoming Active Directory, which will ship as part of Windows 2000 later this year.
Last November Cisco announced a partnership with Novell whereby the networking vendor said it would make its IOS software interoperate with Novell’s NDS through an LDAP interface. Since that time, Novell has been pushing Cisco to take that relationship a step further and give its NDS equal billing alongside Active Directory. Although Cisco resisted for a while, industry rumor has it that the two are now in secret talks about taking their relationship a step further.
The talks have reportedly included meetings between Novell’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Cisco CEO John Chambers. Although both sides deny anything is going on, it would make sense for Cisco to consider making closer ties with Novell. With the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system being continuously delayed, Novell’s NDS has already gained a strong foothold in the directory market and Novell says its customers are clamoring for integration with Cisco hardware.
From Novell’s perspective, at least treating all directories equally would be a good and logical step for Cisco to take, Michael Simpson, Novell’s director of strategic market planning told ComputerWire, they pride themselves on being customer driven and it seems a great number of their customers love NDS. I doubt they would completely abandon active directory because they have invested a lot of effort there over the last couple of years, but if I was in their shoes, I would be looking for a way to address a larger market.
Simpson said Lucent’s, Nortel’s, Texas Instruments’ and Cabletron’s endorsements of NDS prove there is real value concerning NDS and network infrastructure devices, a fact which Cisco doesn’t deny. It simply thinks Active Directory is the best product to do the job on its hardware, a spokesperson for the company said. She said the choice of Active Directory over NDS was an engineering decision…based on the coding structure, adding that Novell always goes out and says a lot of things….that [the integration] is not going to happen.
But Simpson is hopeful: There is currently no Active Directory market, and it will take a long, long time for it to reach where NDS is today, he said, the folks at Cisco are very smart. I’m sure they’ll do whatever it takes to capture the largest potential market for their solutions. It remains to be seen whether a forthcoming announcement from Cisco about its directory strategy will have anything to do with Novell. Cisco says no, but sources close to the company say it will announce an NDS offering that stops just short of licensing the directory; a move that will allow the company to stay in bed with Redmond and appease Novell customers at the same time.
