Novell Inc is pushing hard to get its Novell Directory Services licensed widely across the industry, and yesterday it won Fujitsu Ltd as its latest convert. Fujitsu will embed a single server version of NDS, royalty free, into the Unix-based operating system that runs on its DS/90 series of HyperSparc multiprocessor servers, making NDS its LDAP lightweight directory access protocol-compliant directory of choice. Fujitsu will also license add-on directory functionality from Novell, including directory- to-directory replication. Of late, Novell has been redefining itself as an intranet networking company, and sees NDS as a central piece of technology for intranet-based networks (CI No 3134). NDS stores all resources and their attributes or systems and services available on the network, enabling controlled access to network resources by specified users or groups. Novell claims to have over 20 million NDS users worldwide, although most of these are currently also NetWare users. Fujitsu joins the likes of Hewlett Packard Co (CI No 3,090), Sun Microsystems Inc, and the Santa Cruz Operation Inc in the NDS camp. The Provo, Utah- based company teamed up with Oracle Corp earlier in the year to integrate and ship Oracle’s Web Application Server 3.0 with Novell’s IntranetWare, Web Server and Novell Directory Services. (CI No 3127). Novell said having Fujitsu as a licensee was an important addition to its plan to install NDS in major server systems. It now claims that NDS is available to 70% of the world’s Unix users.
