Novell wins Tivoli support

Novell has won the support of IBM subsidiary, Tivoli, in its bid to establish its network directory services software before Microsoft enters the market.

Tivoli has agreed to integrate Novell Directory Services (NDS) into its enterprise system management software, while future versions of Novell's NetWare 5 will include Tivoli's Management Agent.

The companies also intend to work together on creating industry standards.

The deal is another vote of confidence for Novell, and follows last month's announcement of a collaboration with Cisco, which had previously worked exclusively with Microsoft on its Active Directory, due to ship next year.

Pim Bilderbeek, network analyst at IDC, said: "Novell has seen reasonable results in terms of revenue and profit, and seems to be on the right track again. More and more companies are recognising NDS while other market products either don't work or are not available yet."

Most importantly, said Bilderbeek, Novell is "forging the right relationships and gaining more strategic credibility".