WALTHAM, Mass. -- Novell (Nasdaq: NOVL - News) today announced that SAP AG (NYSE: SAP - News) is using Novell® eDirectory(TM), the foundation of the world's largest identity management deployments, to support the more than 500,000 users registered to SAP Developer Network (SDN). SDN is the central resource for SAP's community of software developers, consultants and systems integrators to collaborate and co-innovate solutions developed on the SAP NetWeaver® platform. SDN has seen unprecedented growth since its inception less than three years ago, reflecting the SAP ecosystem's commitment to collaboration around the platform.

Novell eDirectory provides SAP with secure, Web-based access to administrative tools and functions to manage identities, resources, devices and policies to support SAP's rapidly growing community of developers. With excellent scalability and reliability, the flexible yet strong security architecture authenticates users to the SDN site and provides personalized access based on the user's identity and role, thereby simplifying many routine processes, eliminating unnecessary administration and reducing costs.

SAP Developer Network is a resource for members of the SAP ecosystem who are interested in learning about and optimizing their use of SAP technologies. SDN offers access to SAP documentation and whitepapers, technical "how to" and implementation guides, real-world best practices, self-paced online training, video and audio demos, a regular newsletter for members, and free software downloads. SDN features active discussion forums where community members share their expertise to help each other, weblogs and a wealth of community- generated content ( http://sdn.sap.com ).

"The truly collaborative nature of SAP's developer community has led to very rapid growth of SDN -- surpassing 500,000 members in less than three years," said Ran Cliff, senior director, SAP Developer Network. "The scalability of eDirectory has enabled SAP to easily manage user identities and give users role-based access to the SAP Developer Network. Novell eDirectory provides SDN users with access to personalized information relevant to their relationship with SAP and enhances SAP's ability to target specific content and tools based on member roles."

Built on standards-based protocols, Novell eDirectory helps enable SAP to integrate the directory with other third-party applications and sources external to the business, ensuring as much content as possible is pulled to the site. Plus, with over 2,000 discussion forum and blog messages a day received on the site, and with many answers now available on the Web site and in discussion groups, SDN has reduced help desk calls and increased the response time to user questions across multiple time zones.

"SAP wanted to develop a culture of knowledge transfer and collaboration amongst its employees, partners, customers and public users," said John Judge, vice president of worldwide alliances for Novell. "Many of its customers are working on strategic and comprehensive projects. Having secure and easy access to the SAP Developer Network portal greatly reduces their implementation time and increases their rate of success. In turn, their ability to collaborate and share solutions helps thousands of other users."

Novell Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL)