Delivering on its promise to beef up the number of applications for its Novell Directory Services (NDS) product, Novell Corp yesterday announced it has acquired Ukiah Software, a privately held developer of policy-based network management software. The announcement marks the second NDS-application driven acquisition in the last two months. In May, the Provo, Utah based networking giant bought Netoria Inc for its set of NDS specific applications.
At the time, the company said it planned to add other products to its portfolio and yesterday’s announcement bears that strategy out. Ukiah, based in Campbell, California makes software to enable directories, such as NDS, establish rules, or policies, to automate the management of traffic and quality-of-service across networks. For example, it will automatically allocate bandwidth to mission-critical applications or users when necessary.
Novell, which didn’t disclose the financial details of the acquisition, said it expects to incorporate Ukiah’s technology into a new directory-enabled network management product to be available by the end of calendar year 1999. Meanwhile, it will integrate Ukiah’s operations with Novell product development teams based in San Jose, California. The move is part of Novell’s much hyped strategy to increase the number of applications available on its NDS platform. The more software written and in use on NDS, the less likely companies are to switch to Microsoft’s rival directory product, Active Directory when it ships as part of Windows 2000 later this year.
Earlier this year, at Brainshare, Novell CEO Eric Schmidt spoke of the 10 ZENs, referring to Novell’s successful ZENWorks desktop management application. At the show, Schmidt told users to expect at least 10 other such NDS-based applications in due course.
