PeopleSoft and Novell enhance e-business collaboration across enterprise boundaries

A new software bundle brings together Novell`s cross-platform NDS eDirectory and PeopleSoft`s 8 eBusiness applications, enabling PeopleSoft customers to lower cross-enterprise network costs.

This is according to Jan Coetzee, MD of PeopleSoft South Africa. "This partnership marks the first time a major eBusiness application company has bundled Novell NDS with its product offerings," he says.

Novell NDS eDirectory aims to reduce the complexity and cost of managing multiple user identities and profiles, across numerous applications. Integrated with PeopleSoft 8, Novell`s solution allows the unification of employee, customer, and partner directories or passwords, based on existing business processes. In addition, users can access all PeopleSoft eBusiness applications through a single profile.

Novell and PeopleSoft share a large mutual customer base that considers directory-enabled applications to be mission-critical, according to Richard Beytagh, managing director of Novell South Africa. "Direct NDS eDirectory integration will provide PeopleSoft customers with the ability to manage and protect their identities," he explains, "giving them the functionality and flexibility needed to easily and safely utilise the Internet for business growth."

The inclusion of Novell`s eDirectory technology into PeopleSoft`s platform enables clients to address their needs in improving user identity and management capabilities, central to any e-business strategy. Companies can integrate customers into their directories, and business partners can combine their e-business solutions to communicate with each other via shared directories. The PeopleTools 8 Internet architecture, which shipped in December last year, leverages Novell`s cross-platform LDAP directory and security foundation for integration across both applications and networks.

"This is key to enabling the virtual enterprise and providing value to our customers," concludes Coetzee.