BrainShare Africa, Novell`s fourth annual convention touted as the biggest networking conference in Africa, kicked off yesterday at Helderfontein Estate, Johannesburg.
Richard Beytagh, country director of Novell SA, said over 500 delegates were attending the three-day BrainShare, "the network conference for serious networkers".
Major highlights include the new version of Novell`s NetWare network operating system, code-named Cobra, and version 8 of the company`s fledgling Novell Directory Services (NDS). Beytagh said Novell will demonstrate NetWare-based clustering services on the Compaq platform as well as the new scaling capabilities of NDS, which Novell says scales to one billion objects.
Keynote speaker Michael Simpson, director of strategic planning for Novell, said Novell has positioned itself as the directory leader, with over 90% of its revenue related to directory products, consulting and education. "Novell is making a shift to being almost exclusively a directory services corporation," he said.
Novell is also readying itself for the era of ubiquitous connections, which Simpson explains as a trend to create a consistent network experience for the user, regardless of the device or the location. "[We are able to] integrate the entire network around a person`s identity and give you the opportunity to spontaneously compute, creating a common identity in every single layer of the network."
According to Simpson, leadership in directory services puts Novell in an ideal position to capitalise on the e-business/e-commerce explosion. "E-commerce is a directory problem," he said, as it is about finding "who is who, who wants what and how they want to get it".
NDS has evolved from being a network management tool to enabling a new class of cross-platform applications.
With the newly launched DigitalMe concept, a free online service that allows users to manage their personal information and relationships, Novell has put the directory on the Internet.
Stephen Bannister, manager of corporate system engineering for Novell, who was closely involved in the development of DigitalMe, explains: "Eric Schmidt [Novell CEO] wanted us to make the directory ubiquitous in 18 months, and we`ve developed DigitalMe."
Bannister adds that Novell is working closely with a number of partners to make the technology widely used. "In theory, you could have a single directory with NDS for the entire world," he says.
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