[MarkL]

I completely agree, but what can you do? I'm guessing - because I'm a newbie - but I'm guessing that virtually every office in the US is built on Active Directory. Is there even anything else that comes close to AD?

Iagine everything that MS promises with AD, but with about a 6 year technological lead. That's eDirectory from Novell. It scales far better than AD (it's been tested in a tree of over 2 BILLION objects!), it's a lot more resiliant to problems, less traffic in synchronization, and it will run on UNIX, Linux, Win2K Server (and I belive 2003, but they still may be working on that), as well as Novell servers.

The one thing that Novell has is terrific technology. They one thing they don't have is any sort of decent marketing capabilities. The marketing guys in Provo couldn't figre out how to market ice water in the Sahara!

Mark

[Musket]

Thanks Mark,

I'm gonna have to learn about the Novell products. From what I understand, MS pretty much ripped off Novells directory stategy for AD, but I was under the impression that Novell was losing ground. But now I'm learning they're bouncing back. That's cool.

[Bush2000]

The one thing that Novell has is terrific technology. They one thing they don't have is any sort of decent marketing capabilities. The marketing guys in Provo couldn't figre out how to market ice water in the Sahara!

Novell does have some pretty good technology. I used to write server NLMs back in 1992, I've written a fair amount of software for Novell -- so I have a healthy respect for their technology. However, as you suggested, Novell shot themselves in the foot big time with NDS. They should have given it away for free as a loss leader back before AD was released. But nnnnoooooooo ... they thought they could milk their existing customers and continue to build directory market share. It was a monumental mistake for them. It almost certainly guaranteed that they would lose to AD. And once you lose that race, you can forget about interop. Companies will find ways to replace you.