Novell ships eDirectory for Win2k, claims sales victory

Novell has started shipping NDS eDirectory for Windows 2000, and is offering a free 100-user licence to those who acquire Windows 2000 before mid-May. It is charging $2 per user for additional licences - the same as for running with other platforms. This gives users an alternative to Active Directory, and allows users with networks containing non-Windows 2000 machines to manage them from a single point. A related product in beta testing is the migration and management tool that should make it easier for users to switch to NDS. Novell seems to be somewhat laid back about not having this ready earlier, but says it hasn't seen many organisations using Windows 2000 server yet. The DirXML product should be shipped later this year, although it is already available for NT, Solaris and NetWare. Linux and Tru64 versions are also expected later this year. Another reason for the delay may well be that Novell wanted to be sure that there were no last minute changes in the shipping version of Windows 2000 that might interfere with its product. Novell also said last night that IDC will release next month data that shows that "NetWare outperformed all the competition including Windows NT for all recorded node shipments last year" and that Novell's market share "increase[d] from 50 per cent in 1998 to 55 per cent in 1999". So far as the number of nodes per licence, IDC will apparently say that NetWare does 84 per cent better than NT, with an average of 35 nodes per licence, compared with 19 nodes per licence for NT. Last year the network operating system market grew 8 percent in licences and 13 percent in nodes, according to IDC. Novell has also just got around to announcing that in the IPCache Web Cache Bake-off [really] in January, the company's Internet Caching System (ICS) received "top honours" and "the highest performance and scalability levels ever obtained" - but to be fair, this was only the second bake-off. ICS, on Intel only, is sold through OEMs, and Novell says it can be fitted in ten minutes in any Web environment. The fastest response time for an Internet request was 0.04 seconds, with ICS running on OCD's Stratacache. Collaborative Research estimates that the caching market will reach $2 billion in 2002, and that caching appliances will have 80 percent of the market. ®