Banyan VINES - VINES Competitors

VINES Competitors

For fully one decade Banyan's OS competitors, Novell and Microsoft, dismissed the utility of directory services. Thus VINES virtually dominated what would come to be called the "directory services" space from 1985 to 1995. While seeming to ignore VINES, Novell and eventually Microsoft – companies with a flat server- or domain-based network model – came to realize the strategic value of the directory services model. With little warning Novell went from playing down the value of directory services to announcing its own flavor, NetWare Directory Services, or NDS (eventually Novell would change their term NDS to mean Novell Directory Services, and then changed it again to eDirectory).

Microsoft had gone through its own round of operating system development, initially partnering with IBM to develop an Intel-based disk operating system called PCDOS and its Microsoft twin, MS-DOS, and eventually by sharing true network operating system development with IBM LAN Manager and its Microsoft twin, Microsoft LAN Manager. Microsoft parted company with IBM and continued its development of LAN Manager into what would become known as Windows NT, essentially its OS 4.0. NT was originally a flat server or domain-based operating system with none of the advantages of either VINES or NDS.

For Windows NT 5.0 (released as Windows 2000) however, Microsoft included Active Directory, an LDAP directory service based on the directory from its Exchange mail server. Active Directory was as robust as and, in several key ways, superior to VINES. While VINES was limited to a three-part name, user.company.org, like Novell's NDS structure, Active Directory was not bound at all to such a limiting naming convention. Active Directory had developed an additional capability that both NDS and VINES lacked, its "forest and trees" organizational model. The combination of a better architecture and a marketing company the size of Microsoft signaled doom for StreetTalk, VINES as an OS, and finally Banyan itself.