NDS allows administrators of large networks to manage them efficiently from a central location. It also helps users, reducing the number of logins and passwords they must deal with and helps them find resources on large, distributed networks.

Microsoft intends their new Active Directory to replace NDS, but it is untested in real life, not as capable and works only with Windows 2000 (not even with NT). Organizations with mixed computing environments will select NDS, a mature product, 6 years in the market place.

When Novell released NDS for Windows NT, Microsoft published articles about it that were blatantly untrue. When challenged, they replaced them with versions that were still untrue, but not so blatant. They also loudly proclaimed that Novell would not be able to make NDS work with Windows 2000. It will be interesting to see how they attack this new product, as they surely will.

How well NDS for Windows 2000 works is yet to be seen. Microsoft has denied Novell access to security features of Windows 2000, so they had to use a different approach from the Windows NT product.