The eDirectory 8.5 will support a federated directory, which allows a company to grant access rights to their directory tree to another company also using eDirectory, helping to manage and share directory information between individuals, applications, and business partners.
Programs can meet programs, people can meet businesses, and so forth.
Tao is slated for a summer 2000 delivery date. Partnerships with companies such as Talarian and Red Hat will help extend support of Novell products in enterprise markets. Novell is also integrating Talarian's Smart Sockets real-time event technology with NDS, creating Novell Event Services. An early version of Novell Event Services APIs were in the latest Novell Developers Kit. This technology is going to make implementation of directory-enabled applications much, much easier.