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David, It really depends upon what you consider drastic price cuts and what you want to license. With Novell....straight up there is normally a 40% discount off list prices for Education. So if you are just interested in licensing Identity Manager then that might be one way to go. There is the ALA licensing that currently several departments are taking advantage of as well. As an example: We have 5 departments under our ALA and we have the Value Bundle I licensed. Value Bundle I contains: NetWare (Now referred to as OES - Open Enterprise Server) ZENworks Desktop Management ZENworks Server Management NetMail Account Management for Windows (Now under Identity Manager umbrella) GroupWise SUSE LINUX Enterprise Server for X86 Edirectory for the various platforms Since many of the products can be run on Netware, Windows Server, or SuSe linux server OS (i.e. GroupWise, Zenworks, Netmail) you can choose which OS platform you want to host the application services as the versions to run on each of the platforms are included. Our licensing is workstation based not user based and it runs $32.80 per workstation per year. That price includes all the maintenance/patches/updates(major or minor). For example Account Management for Windows is now being superceeded by Identity Manager so we are entitled to that. Furthermore, you can set up as many servers (Netware OES) or SUSE Linux) as necessary to support the workstations connecting to the different services (GroupWise, Zenworks, Netmail, file and print, etc.). No server licensing involved. This program has saved us a great deal of money over the last 5 years and because of the fixed costs which are guaranteed for 3 years at a time, we can budget more easily. Actually we have been at the same fixed workstation cost for the last five years as Novell did not change the pricing the last time we renewed. Total cost to us only changed if we dropped or added workstation counts. In that time major upgrades such as Netware 6.5, Groupwise 7.0, and ZenWorks 7.0, and SuSe Enterprise server were all released and we didn't have to pay a dime extra for them. In University Services, we have approximately 130 workstations that are shared amongst some 250 user accounts (many temp and student employees share workstations and roam from machine to machine). Take 125 workstations x 32.80 and you get 4100.00 per year for our Netware Network OS , our GroupWise Email software and our Zenworks workstation/Server management software (including imaging, application distribution, remote control, inventory) . All upgrades and maintenance included. When newer versions are available, I just go out to Novell's customer care portal and pull down the software and license certificates soon as it is released. No waiting for shipping and distribution of the stuff through snail mail or the like. It's a great program....especially if you license more than one Novell product or are looking to upgrade to the newer versions of any of the Novell products. I realize this is probably more information than you were asking for, but it has been some time since I sent this information out to the list and I wanted to share the details of the ALA program again in case others might be wondering about alternatives. Hope this helps. - Al -- =============================== Al Bray Systems Analyst University Services Michigan State University Phone: 517-355-0357 Ext. 161 Fax: 517-353-2024 email: [log in to unmask] >>> On 2/2/2006 at 2:39:53 pm, in message <[log in to unmask]>, David Benjamin <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > Does anyone use MS 2003 server with Active Directory along with Novell 6+ and > eDirectory? If so, do you use any account management software to synchronize > both directories or just manage two separate servers, user accounts, > containers, etc.? > I am trying to find an inexpensive method for managing users in this > environment so all account management steps do not have to be done twice for > user setup, account changes, container change, account removal, and > authentication against a Windows AND a Novell directory service at user log > on. > I realize that Novell has the Identity Manager and Microsoft has the > Identity Integration Server. Any drastic price cuts on these offered to MSU? > > David