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Novell IntranetWare

At the heart of IntranetWare is NDS, Novell's X.500-like directory service that's used as a single repository of information about users, groups, applications and access control on objects on the network. NDS, like other directory services, is a fully distributed, replicated directory service. When working with NDS, one sees its strong potential. Its functionality, such as the NetWare Application Launcher (NAL), shows the real benefit of a directory service. With NAL, applications can be made available to users based on th eir rights to the application object. Both the application and the user are objects within NDS and can be managed from a single utility.

NDS is not without its shortcomings. It should operate faster, and its containers holding thousands of objects experience stability and performance problems. Also, until recently, NDS ran only on NetWare 4.x. Other directory services offer a secondary repository that's used to improve data lookup time. Banyan's StreetTalk has a product called StreetTalk Directory Assistance (STDA) that uses indexed, flat files. Novell also is considering offering a similar product, called Catalog, but it won't be available anytime soon.

Additionally, the management of NDS is not simply plug and play. To start, NDS introduces terms and planning considerations that standalone operating systems don't face--that's the cost of an enterprise solution. Also, NDS uses partitions--parts of the NDS tree that reside on different servers. Partitioning the NDS tree correctly facilitates data redundancy and performance improvements, since users can access NDS information on their local network. But this adds the complexity of managing not only the servers but the partitions as well. Novell has made management of NDS partitions easier, but more work needs to be done in this area.

One of Novell's biggest hurdles has been its inability to get ISVs to jump on the NDS bandwagon and fully exploit the capabilities of NDS. This can be traced to several events. First, customers did not implement NDS right away and Novell was not as aggressive in selling NDS as a viable solution as it should have been. In addition, NetWare 4.0 was not as complete as it could have been. Compared with Microsoft's and IBM's domain technologies, NDS is quite superior. Although Banyan's StreetTalk competes on a technical level, StreetTalk really hasn't taken off.

Even more frustrating, Novell has not been able to make its own applications fully NDS-aware. GroupWise, Novell's flagship messaging product, has only the most basic integration with NDS, and maintains a secondary directory of its own for per formance reasons. Only now are we seeing products and technology that exploit NDS. For example, Novell has released a beta version of its Replication Services, which takes advantage of the directory to replicate files and directories between servers.

Novell's Network Application Launcher/Network Application Manager (NAL/NAM) makes applications available from a user's desktop. NAL is the client application and NAM is the tool used by administrators to create application objects and set permissions. Windows 3.1, Windows95 and NT are the only clients currently supported, but these represent the lion's share of the desktop market. Novell has indicated that NAL might become available on other platforms when there is sufficient user demand. What is exciting about NAL is that configuration is not required on the client side, beyond running the NAL program. NAL is an effective application delivery mechanism that utilizes NDS.

Besides NDS, IntranetWare includes a variety of other applications/services. IntranetW are consists of several once-separate products. There's Novell's WebServer 2.5, NetWare/IP, a Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP)/BOOTP server and an IP/IPX gateway. In addition, there is a Multiprotocol Router (MPR) that can support a variety of WAN connections, such as frame relay, ISDN, leased lines and ATM. We don't see many corporations deploying IntranetWare as a replacement for their dedicated WAN equipment (such as Cisco Systems or Bay Networks routers), but it can provide a reasonable platform for small remote offices or small companies that wish to save the cost of a dedicated router.

These tools are especially useful services for companies just getting on the Internet/intranet information highway and they make IntranetWare a great value. The IP/IPX gateway allows for access to IP-based resources, such as Web or FTP servers by clients that have only the IPX protocol stack loaded. Howe ver, a new version of the WinSock application must be loaded that allows for communication over IPX. In a rudimentary way, the gateway acts as a firewall, since IP packets never run on the IPX network. Further integration of these tools with NDS would be helpful so that management could be handled by NDS Manager.

To round out its Internet appeal, IntranetWare supports NetBasic and Perl scripting. In addition, its WebServer makes use of the security of NDS but to a limited extent. Novell has stated that IntranetWare eventually will support the Java Virtual Machine, allowing for Java programs to run on the server.