Novell Inc looks set to take a small but decisive step towards making its directory services the ultimate one-stop shop for managing all business processes across the network. The Utah- based company says it is beta testing a new product that will allow its Novell Directory Services (NDS) to be integrated with PeopleSoft Inc’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software. This is a small, but nonetheless significant step. For some time now, industry analysts and pundits have been touting the benefits of directory services as the management consoles of the future. This would mean a central hub into which management data about hardware, applications and users is fed. But that’s a long way off and up till now, directories have typically been used for adding and authenticating users on a network. Initially, NDS will only be able to communicate with the HR (Human Resources) application. However, Michael Simpson, Novell’s marketing manager, said it was feasible that Novell could work on integrating other ERP applications too. Simpson said the idea for the new product came from working on an internal project. Novell uses PeopleSoft’s HR application and we saw an opportunity to streamline the business process side of managing information about employees and managing their indentity on the network. Simpson described the integration as an automated mechanism whereby the minute a new employee is added to the HR system, his or her name will automatically be added to the NDS tree, and hence to the network. The IT administrator can then set up policies which will automatically give those new users access to pre-defined applications or internet connection and so on. Simpson said Novell hadn’t originally intended to make the product available on general release, but having demonstrated it to a few customers the majority had shown lots of interest. We’re now considering making it available to them, probably via our consulting arm, he said, it’s not the type of product that we’ll sell off the shelf as all companies configure their HR systems differently. He didn’t rule out that Novell would also consider working on integrating other ERP applications from vendors like SAP and Baan. Just being able to show the functionality will obviously generate other interest, but at the moment we’re only working on PeopleSoft products, he said. Last week, Microsoft also announced that its upcoming Active Directory will integratte with the major ERP vendors’ software. And Netscape said it planned to do the same.
