As part of its IT business plan and its aim to determine IS strategy, policy and standards, Eskom recently renewed its Master License Agreement (MLA) with Novell to the value of R8-million. Through this decision, and by investing more than R20-million over the past few years, Eskom has re-emphasised Novell as its basic network architecture.
According to Eskom corporate information manager Etienne Theart, the investment is part of a programme to strategically position Eskom to meet the challenges of the ever changing IT industry. "Rapid changes that have occurred in both the IT and electricity industries have raised questions about how best to provide Eskom`s IT services in future. IT and electricity are similar, users demand nothing less than 100 percent uptime and this is mainly why we opted for Novell. Furthermore, Novell was open to negotiate a solution that meets our very specific needs."
Like Novell`s other licensing programmes, the MLA provides tailored solutions for large customers such as Eskom, and is specifically designed for organisations with a significant investment in Novell software. These umbrella licensing programmes are designed to help IT managers spend less time on software acquisition and more time focusing on their business.
"The licensing agreement gives Eskom access to benefits such as volume savings, product upgrades, software maintenance, technical support, and many additional Novell services not available when purchasing off-the-shelf product. As a large organisation, the time and money Eskom saves by purchasing through Novell`s licensing agreement, is significant," said Novell major accounts manager John Greeff.
Software licensing gives organisations the ability to install and use the software they purchase throughout the company. Acquiring software through a licensing programme benefits them by eliminating the need to buy and store multiple copies of extra documentation and media. It also removes the complexity associated with software acquisition and deployment.
"As an MLA customer, Eskom can predetermine its total cost for the term of its agreement. Apart from Rate-of-Exchange variance, they are not influenced by price fluctuations and when a new version of a Novell product is released, they are automatically licensed to use the new version, eliminating unforeseen software upgrade expenses," adds Greeff.
Novell offers a comprehensive and cost effective range of software licensing solutions tailored to meet the unique and changing needs of its customers. The programme enables customers to simply and effectively plan, manage and protect their Novell software purchases whilst keeping costs to a minimum.
Theart considers Novell products as mission critical, he stresses that Novell is the world`s leading provider of directory-enabled networking software. "Like many other Novell products, we consider GroupWise as a mission critical application and it also helps us reduce the unnecessary use of paper in our company. The product is a fully integrated, easy-to-use messaging system that offers a wide range of powerful communication and collaboration capabilities. Version 5.5 has new features such as added document management capabilities, native Internet addressing and new calendar options."
Novell`s BorderManager Enterprise Edition 3 is the complete Internet security management suite that enables Eskom to effectively use the power of Novell Directory Services (NDS) on a mixed network environment including NetWare, UNIX and NT.
"This standards-based suite allows Eskom to cost-effectively deploy industry leading firewall, virtual private networking (VPN), authentication and caching services for comprehensive security protection," adds Greeff. "Taking advantage of tight integration with NDS, BorderManager 3 is the first security management solution to deliver secure single sign-on for users accessing confidential company information from any location -- the Internet, intranet or extranet."
"Reinforcing its commitment to help companies lower total cost of network ownership, Novell has also delivered an award-winning network management product, ManageWise 2.6. Novell`s comprehensive, standards-based solution for mixed NetWare and NT environments allows Eskom to improve the performance and availability of our network by simplifying network management."
With new features such as NetWare 5 and NT Console support, NDS monitoring and Year 2000 readiness, ManageWise 2.6 helps administrators prevent and resolve network problems, thereby improving overall network productivity and lowering management costs.
"ManageWise 2.6 provides companies with a complete arsenal of tools to lower the cost of network management. ManageWise not only alerts network managers to problems before they occur and isolates problems quickly, but also allows them to gather data necessary to plan network asset purchases," he adds.
ManageWise already saves Eskom countless man-hours with its remote control features because its entire network can be managed from one location. Cost savings like that will be even greater with the NDS monitoring in version 2.6 because it will help Eskom monitor directory events and problems from a central console.
Theart believes NDS is a key technology component that provides network intelligence within systems. "It is a database in which we can define any object within our network irrespective of global or geographic positioning enabling replication and management of data throughout. In other words, NDS provides a global directory and single point of administration."
Theart says today`s industry trend toward server consolidation has made companies such as Eskom realise the benefits of using their S/390 enterprise servers to integrate their LAN data serving functions. "This integration helps companies reduce operational costs and exploit the data access, integrity, management, back-up and recovery capabilities of the S/390. Using Novell Network Services for OS/390 can help simplify this integration and management."
Novell Network Services for OS/390 is a distributed service based on Novell`s multiplatform directory technology, NDS, that stores information about hardware and software resources available within a given network, whether the resources reside on corporate networks, intranets or the Internet. NDS for OS/390 can help businesses reduce IT costs and consolidate their PC-based directory servers on the S/390 platform and can help system administrators better manage their networks.
"Novell`s strategic alliances with big players like IBM, Lucent, Compaq, Cisco, Intel and HP shows that Novell is well positioned and will remain the world`s leading provider of directory-enabled networking software for many years to come," concludes Theart.
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