Mercantile Bank Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Mercantile Lisbon Bank Holdings Limited and one of South Africa`s seven clearing banks, has invested close to R1-million in Novell products over the last year. The bank has, in effect, adopted Novell`s 3-tier model while redesigning its network. According to Mercantile, this decision was largely due to Novell`s proactive marketing approach.
Andrew Scott, Mercantile Bank senior manager for IT network services, says the network is built on the successes of Novell Directory Services (NDS). "It provides Mercantile with a single point of management, from the application to the physical device at all seven layers. Furthermore, it will enable us to use our resources more effectively in future."
NDS is the unifying, cross- platform infrastructure for managing, securing, accessing and development to all major components of a network. NDS supports more APIs, tools, standards, Network Operating Systems (NOS) and protocols than any other directory service. The advanced functionality in NDS offers a strong development foundation for delivering secure, manageable network applications. The market-proven and powerful structure of NDS streamlines administrative tasks to minimise management time and expense.
"We find NDS to be critical in our network, it enables us to manage our operations from a central point, saving us time and money. The new password synchronisation feature is also a definite plus for us as it ensures security, while allowing users to access network resources easily," says Scott.
Scott stresses that NDS is an extremely stable product. "The implementation of NDS went smoothly and according to schedule, there is no other directory service available today that meets the bank`s minimum requirement, specifically for security. Key to our decision was Novell`s excellent track record for releasing products on time as promised."
Novell major accounts manager Justin Foxcroft says the momentum around NDS is evident by the opportunities industry leaders are pursuing with Novell in providing directory-enabled solutions in an e-commerce world. "Like Mercantile, more and more companies recognise the vital role the directory plays in managing information resources, relationships, security and identity in the Internet-enterprise environment. After all, the Internet is a network which needs a stable directory service to be efficiently managed and secured."
"NDS will play a much larger role in the future of the Internet. This is reflected in the increased customer demand we are seeing for NDS. We currently have more than 40 million NDS users and this number will continue to rise as partners develop more NDS solutions," says Foxcroft.
Novell is focused on making the directory`s proactive solution that links the entire network together, making management of all the hardware, users and applications easier and more cost-effective. With each additional platform and network resource that NDS integrates, the directory becomes exponentially more valuable. The availability of NDS on yet another platform demonstrates that Novell is years ahead of its competition and continues to lead the network software market.
Mercantile has also invested in 1100 licenses for BorderManager, the complete Internet security management suite that uses the power of NDS to enable a total and seamless solution to all Internet users spanning over 42 NetWare servers countrywide. Scott says this standards-based suite enables him to cost-effectively deploy industry leading firewall services for comprehensive security and protection, virtual private networking (VPN), remote access and authentication through NDS, and caching services for performance.
Taking advantage of the tight integration with NDS, BorderManager Enterprise Edition is the first security management solution to deliver secure single sign-on for users accessing confidential company information from any location on the Internet, Intranet or Extranet.
"Customers are looking for tightly integrated, best of breed security services without the implementation headaches and premium costs associated with individual product purchases. BorderManager delivers the total security management solution that will further accelerate Novell`s growth in the Internet security marketplace," added Foxcroft.
BorderManager is the only Internet management solution that delivers true single sign-on for users across network services. >From an office, home or remote location, users can access their ISP using BorderManager VPN Client services or Border Manager Authentication Services.
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