With the launch of Microsoft’s Active Directory looming ever closer, Novell Inc yesterday invested $100m in systems integrator Whittman-Hart to train its consultants on Novell directory Services. Under the terms of the agreement, Novell will purchase $100m worth of Whittman-Hart stock, which will give the networking firm approximately 6% of the company’s outstanding capitalization. The deal is expected to close in November.
In return Whittman, which has about 3,000 consultants, said it would set aside a dedicated team of around 600, including new recruits, to specifically concentrate on integrating NDS within enterprise networks. Prior to that, only a small number of Whittman’s consultants concentrated on Novell systems, but typically worked with Netware, not NDS. In order to get the consultants up to speed, Novell said it has been working with Whittman over the past few months to develop a training program which all employees will be required to undertake.
The move is part of Novell’s stated intent to seed the market with its NDS platform (and as many applications as possible to run on top of it) before the launch of Microsoft’s Windows 2000 operating system which includes its active directory product for the first time.
Richard Nortz, senior vice president of customer services said the deal with Whittman would be the first of many such agreements that Novell plans over the next months. He said that the company is already in talks with two or three large system integrators and that announcements will be made soon. In addition, Nortz said that Novell has stepped up the training of its channel partners, VARs and resellers, the majority of whom also have consulting and integration divisions.
Nortz said that Whittman has lots of mid-sized customers who use ERP, supply chain and CRM systems and who would like to use NDS but have no experience integrating their applications with directory software. Today those customers typically run their ERP systems in isolation, department by department, but they want to use NDS to enjoy the benefits of centralized management, single sign on and security and so on, he said.
