Novell sees its Destiny

Novell has revealed more details of how it plans to compete with its rivals in the web services sphere.

Just months after announcing the launch of its One Net strategy, the company has now outlined plans for its directory services offerings over the next 18 months.

Code-named Destiny, the strategy includes the release of a UDDI server built on Novell e-directory, the next version of e-directory, v8.7, and add-ons for its current web services products.

In addition, the company intends to integrate a whole raft of development tools inherited from the takeover of SilverStream.

At the heart of Destiny is the promotion of single sign-on user identification for internal and external web services through the use of UDDI.

Support for XML and SOAP will be added at a later date to ensure single sign-on for all areas of web services.

Peter Joseph, director of corporate strategy at Novell, said: "UDDI servers are used predominantly internally but over time this will extend to external usage. Single sign-on is absolutely crucial to us."

However, Novell is alone in talking about using UDDI today, said Neil Ward-Dutton, research director of e-infrastructure at Ovum.

"Destiny's real challenge is not the technology but saying what is needed in the language its rivals - BEA, IBM, Microsoft and Sun - have used.

"They have preached that UDDI in the mind of corporates is not for use today but for tomorrow but Novell is trying to change this. The question is whether anyone is listening."

He claimed Novell's strategy to put user identity and policy at the centre made a lot of sense.

Novell is trying to tie UDDI into a wider role in which it will manage user identification and policy for all applications and services within organisations and between businesses, and not just in web services, Ward-Dutton claimed.