Any OS will do as Novell bids for Net standard.

Novell will stop banging the Netware drum, and promote the use of its flagship Novell Directory Services (NDS) on platforms including Windows 2000 and NT, Sun Microsystems' Solaris, and Linux.

Novell will stop banging the Netware drum, and promote the use of its flagship Novell Directory Services (NDS) on platforms including Windows 2000 and NT, Sun Microsystems' Solaris, and Linux.

The company is also weighing up the pros and cons of giving away NDS free - a move which analysts have long advised Novell to do in its fight against Microsoft's Active Directory, which will be released as part of Windows 2000.

'We don't care what operating system you write to,' said Carl Ledbetter, Novell's senior vice president, business and corporate development. 'The old world was about desktops or servers. Now we want applications to be written to run on the network, which means writing to any operating system.'

Novell wants to recruit a new breed of applications developers to create Internet services. Its aim is to make NDS a standard directory for the Internet. The company has also launched NDS eDirectory, providing directory services to Net portals.

Novell is pursuing aggressive sales for eDirectory. It will give a 100-user licence free to customers buying Windows 2000 Server within 90 days of its release. Sun Solaris 7 buyers will be offered the same deal until 31 January.