News Burst: Novell gives away NDS

Networking monster Novell announced Thursday that those who buy Windows 2000 server within 90 days of its launch or Solaris 7 before January will be entitled to a free 100 user copies of its NDS directory software.

This is a flamboyant response to Microsoft's forthcoming Active Directory technology and illustrates a likely battle between these networking titans.

Novell has a number of heavyweight vendors on its side, at least; at Comdex on Tuesday a whole menagerie of Net companies voiced their support for the new NDS eDirectory and NDS Corporate Edition applications.