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13 May 2002 "Our overall raison d'etre is one Net," said Gerard Van Kemmel, Novell's president of EMEA, at the networking software vendor's user conference in Barcelona.

One Net is at the heart of Novell's pitch to grab a part of the emerging web services market. The moniker unashamedly echoes those adopted by rivals Microsoft and Sun Microsystems in marketing their own web services visions; but the substance of Novell's one Net, and the definition of web services upon which it is based, are peculiar to Novell.

Novell claims to have recognised the march toward web services more than four years ago. Then it was dubbed 'net services' by the Provo, Utah-based company.

Today, net services survives as the first iteration of Novell's 'basic' web services offering. 'Basic' web services are, according to CEO Jack Messman, "services and capabilities that any user experiences when using the web," and mark the first step toward more familiar 'advanced' web services. Products serving this 'basic' market include IBM's and BEA's application servers.

Novell claims to have taken a different approach, by adopting a services platform that allows "networks of all types - corporate and public, intranets, extranets, and the Internet - [to] work together as one net and securely connect employees, customers, suppliers and partners across organisational boundaries," said Messman. Essentially, this means joining networks together irrespective of where users are and which platforms they use.

The cornerstone of one Net is Novell's eDirectory, the directory services software which boasts 432 million users worldwide. The one Net product family also includes DirXML, which through eDirectory provides XML connectors; iChain, a security and management infrastrucutre product; Novell SecureLogin; Portal services; and Volera, the caching technology which has evolved into a content management platform. The final component is Zenworks OnDemand. This allows organisations to deliver and manage applications, resources and content to mobile users through their laptops and handheld computers.

Messman claimed that one Net will evolve as advanced web services are introduced. The company is working on providing a univeral description, discovery and integration (UDDI) wrapper around eDirectory, slated for release toward the end of 2003. The next step will be to introduce authorisation and security for UDDI, which will be submitted to standards bodies for approval, says Ed Anderson, director of Novell's net directory services group.

Despite trumpeting the interoperability of its products with Microsoft's .Net and Sun Microsystem's Sun One web services initiatives, it is in the areas of security, authentication and identity management that Novell stands the best chance of standing out from its bigger rivals.

Messman believes that the potential market for one Net is big enough to deliver long-term growth for Novell. The company has been on a revenue slide ever since Microsoft Window's NT began challenging its flagship Netware network operating system in the mid-1990s.

But one Net is just the latest in a series of product avenues that Novell executives have explored as they struggle to reverse the long-term decline in the company's fortunes. The challenge is "to prove we can execute," said Messman.