Open source has encompassed all areas of software applications and services, so there was little doubt that authentication would, sooner or later, be part of this fast growing movement. OpenLDAP, the open source directory project, has been with us for quite some time. But there's a new movement to create an authentication protocol, to standardize how authentication data is exchanged.
There was a neat new product released and an intriguing announcement made recently, both involving Windows' Active Directory.
It's the holiday season, a time of good cheer and gift giving. I wish I could give each and every one of you a gift, but that's well beyond the means of this newsletter. Still, I can tell you about the Christmas present Novell is planning for you. In fact, it might already be unwrapped (as we went to press, the release date still wasn't set).
Never underestimate Larry Ellison. Former PeopleSoft CEO Craig Conway is the most recent of those vanquished by the rogue from Redwood City. But there's another triumph coming that might be sweeter for Ellison if only because other people thought he stumbled badly a half-dozen years ago when he might have been ahead of his time.
I spent a very interesting hour with Phil Libin, president of CoreStreet, learning about the company's method for providing "massively scalable validation products for identity management and access control" - that's how CoreStreet describes its business. First, though, we had to get over a couple of semantic hurdles which points up one of the things slowing down the convergence of pure security products with pure identity management tools.
Two very different people -- Burton Group's Jamie Lewis and O'Reilly Media Inc's Tim O'Reilly -- took on similar themes during keynote addresses at the recently concluded Catalyst Conference (Lewis) and the Open Source Convention (O'Reilly). In essence, both said the computing stack had grown, Web services was at the top and everything else was on its way to commodity status.
I have, in past articles, taken a part in the rumor that Sun might be about to acquire Novell by looking at what Sun would have to pay compared to the value of the products that it might get - and be able to use. Today, we'll look at some of the intangibles that might also be part of the deal.
The marketing mavens at Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, Novell, IBM and Apple Computer are looking at the removal, by a rival, of support for older operating systems as an opening to a "year of opportunity" (Steve Ballmer's words at Microsoft's recent Partners Conference) for moving corporations to new server operating systems.
You've got a smooth running Windows network. Now some exec decides that a Unix/Linux application has to be brought in as a business-critical platform. Not that they know it's a Unix/Linux app, just that they went to a conference and someone told them (or they saw a presentation) and it was just the application your organization needs to achieve some corporate goal. It just happens to only run on Solaris or Red Hat or SuSE or AIX. You know that it's fruitless to argue that introducing a non-Windows box will create some management issues, some technical issues and, possibly, some security issues. The only answer you'd get would be a directive to solve the issues.
The news lately has emphasized "search" as the next battleground in the war for dominance on the PC desktop. At least, that's what you'd think if you believed every analyst who is still allowed to use a pen. Frequently, though, it's the same people who told you there was no dotcom bubble who now find search so sexy: Will Google Inc replace Microsoft Corp as the platform of the search, or will Microsoft launch new and improved searching and steal Google's business?
For the developer - whether an in-house member of staff, a part-time coder, an independent one-man shop, or someone involved with writing applications and services for major vendors - the problem of finding a directory to hold identity information isn't difficult. In fact, it isn't a problem. All the major directory vendors have programs to supply free copies of their directories to developers. But even if you don't qualify for one of those programs you can still download, for free, the OpenLDAP directory. However, there is a problem with some of these programs and services: How do you administer the directory outside of your own application?
We've talked a lot lately (well, in the last year) about Linux on your servers - but what about on your users' desktops? The biggest prize in Novell's acquisition of Ximian last year is thought to be the GNOME user interface for Linux. This graphical user interface (GUI) makes a Linux desktop seem friendlier (and easier to use) for a person reared on Windows than the traditional command-line that gearheads and geeks say they prefer.
It's always sad to note the passing of an era, but that's what we need to do as Novell has finally announced its "end of life" plans for NetWare 4.
An interesting quote showed up in a Novell press release last week. The release touted the fact that the Georgia State Court of Appeals (identified as the "third-busiest court in the U.S.") had recently adopted NetWare 6.5 for its docketing system, porting an old mini-computer system to modern technology.
In talking about patch management (and we seem to be doing a lot of that lately), I'd be remiss if I didn't mention Microsoft's own Software Update Service (SUS), part of the System Management Server (SMS) package.