Novell Inc is ready to unveil its strategy for Novell Directory Services, software that manages huge directories of electronic addresses, and the trump card it forlornly hopes will keep Windows NT at bay in the fight for the local area network. A spokesperson for Novell said the company will outline its plans to weave the technology into a broad range of communication products. The company is also expected to announce an NDS port to Sun’s Solaris operating system, broadening out the number of platforms the software runs on, and thereby pleasing the Wall Street analyst community. Network Directory Services currently runs on top of NetWare, Novell’s proprietary network operating system, and also on SCO’s flavour of Unix. Back in Redmond meanwhile, Microsoft has revealed its intention to leapfrog the functionality in Network Directory Services, with its own brand of directory services built into Windows NT 5.0. Don’t hold your breath though, Windows NT 5.0 only has an Alpha version at the moment, is scheduled to go into beta next year and the bets are on as to when it goes to general availability. Bets are also being placed as to who will buy Novell, trapped as it is in a downward revenue spiral. The rumor mill has prospective buyers for the networking supremo down as IBM and Netscape.
