The best feature of NDS for NT is keeping passwords in synch. Novell says it will do that. The mothballing of redirect is somewhat of an about-face for Novell, which had promised the technology would be there for Active Directory. While some experts dispute Schmidt's assessment, customers committed to redirect may be on a dead end. Two weeks ago, Novell officials admitted that Active Directory redirection is difficult because an entire subsystem has to be replaced.
Some observers go further, saying that redirection is impossible.
But Drew Major, Novell's chief scientist, last week downplayed the difficulty, saying the technology will be developed over the long term. But Novell appears to be hedging its bet that users will eventually accept synchronization, the same technology Microsoft is developing, over redirection. Mass. In addition, synchronization is Novell's strategy as it pushes NDS into the electronic commerce market. DiDio says both vendors know users don't want to run two NOS directory services for the same reasons they did not want to run both IP and IPX protocol stacks. Putting redirect on the back burner is not entirely Novell's doing.