Event Summary
"PHOENIX, Ariz., January 20, 2000-Novell, Inc. and Talarian Corporation announced
a technology and marketing alliance in which the companies will work together
to embed Talarian's real-time infrastructure software in Novell products and
make it available to the worldwide community of Novell developers and users.
The alliance combines Novell's strengths in directory technology with Talarian's
leadership in real-time middleware to provide developers and business users
with an enhanced software infrastructure for applications spanning the enterprise
and the Internet.
With
Talarian's advanced middleware technology, developers can efficiently create
distributed applications in which information moves in real-time across business
networks and the Internet in an event-driven manner. For example, selected information
such as a stock quote or news bulletin might be pushed out over the Internet
in response to a user request. These "event system" capabilities will speed
development and deployment of enterprise and Internet applications linked to
Novell Directory Services (NDS), the NetWare Net Services platform, and other
leading Novell products.
Toward these goals, Novell and Talarian are working together in several areas.
The two companies will port Talarian technology to Novell's NetWare platform;
embed Talarian's real-time infrastructure software into Novell Net Services
products; and make it available to the Novell developer community. The two companies
expect to make announcements in the near future about specific plans and timing
for product rollout.
"This
alliance brings together two leaders in Net Services and infrastructure software
used to create and support eBusiness applications," said Carl Ledbetter, Novell
senior vice president for business and corporate development. "Talarian's advanced
middleware technology will bring new developer and application capabilities
to Novell's Net Services platform, accelerating the development of directory-enabled
solutions used for messaging, finance, Ecommerce and many other areas of eBusiness."
Market
Impact
The combination of a leading Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) product
with Novell's NetWare Directory Services (NDS) should appeal to existing Novell
customers. One of the requirements of successful EAI is the ability for applications
to be able to "find" each other in order to exchange messages and NDS should
simplify this greatly.
Novell
expects to give applications that run on NDS an integration layer by building
Talarian SmartSockets into NDS. Other EAI vendors will have to investigate whether
they need to make a similar alliance with network operating system vendors (most
likely Novell or Microsoft). What remains to be seen is whether the alliance
will help attract new customers to Novell NetWare and help Novell start to repair
its sagging market share .
User
Recommendations
Customers with NetWare installations using NetWare Directory Services should
benefit from this development. However, they should regard it cautiously until
the technologies have been merged and tested. Then beta or production reference
sites can be questioned about the quality of the product integration. If the
products are properly integrated, EAI should be simplified somewhat. In addition,
Talarian's product features such as load balancing and dynamic message routing
bring much to the table that Novell doesn't currently have.