Novell Inc. has long been a company acknowledged to provide high quality software products in the networking space. Indeed, in the early years when organisations had a requirement to link together computers, Netware was the market-leading product frequently selected ahead of a host of competing systems. However, over time the company consistently lost market share, especially to Microsoft, a trend that continued almost unhindered until the recent launch of Netware 6. The unveiling of Novell's new baby unleashed a torrent of mostly favourable reviews and a positive deluge of chat room comment hoping that the fortunes of Utah headquartered company could be revived.

Novell's stated aim was to move squarely to become a cornerstone supplier of Internet infrastructure tools and services. An early indicator of the potential success of these moves can be seen in the announcement of a major deal between Novell and Deutsche Lufthansa, one of Europe's leading airlines.

The contract between Lufthansa and Novell is worth an undisclosed sum, but is put in the "several million euro" bracket, and will see the airline use Novell's directory and network services used to provide secure, structured access for Lufthansa's 70,000 employees to the company's intranet. Novell's eDirectory software will be used to construct a meta directory to improve the level of security in systems operations and to simplify and consolidate administration and business processes. EDirectory possesses a simple, centralised user administration and authorisation system that is flexible allowing the use of industry standards such as LDAP and XML to be combined to create a single central reference system covering all user data. To permit integration with certificate-based procedures, a PKI infrastructure from Entrust will constitute part of the deal.

Clearly the demands for security in the whole airline industry have never been more stringent and it is highly likely that the demands placed upon all businesses operating in the sector will rise steadily over the coming months and years. Prof. Dr. Bernd Voigt, Senior Vice President and CIO of Deutsche Lufthansa AG stated: "The directory-based one Net concept from Novell offers us convincing security benefits. As a leading global airline, we have to guarantee that our information and data can only be accessed by authorised users. Novell's solutions assist us in fulfilling our very high security requirements in the IT area. We are setting new standards for the whole airline sector."

All in all, the deal is a significant win for Novell and the final solution will be built in association with Lufthansa Systems Infratec in an advisory role. Clearly Novell hopes that this expansion in the aviation sector will allow them to develop solutions that may be applicable to other airlines. This is a positive step into the complex world of solution selling and will enhance Novell's future prospects. If the company can continue to create excellent software tools and compliment these with solid delivery capabilities Novell will find itself well positioned to thrive in this competitive environment if only it can get the success messages out, a task in which the company usually manages only limited success. Solid tools, strong services together still require good marketing, no matter how much it hurts to admit so. If Novell can strengthen its PR and marketing arm, watch them fly.