Netinfo came from NeXT and survived into Macos for a little while.
We had are Netinfo server lookup passwords from our Solaris system and we used that through Mac OS X Server which I think stopped at version 1.2 or 1.6. They then switched the directory system when Mac OS X client was released to Open Directory which was an OpenLDAP. The Open Directory was kerberized and all services that were shipped used kerberos. This could act as Directory Domain server for windows clients.
It was kind of neat but again the all-singing, all-dancing solution to the world. No one else really used it.