The Customer—How Active Directory Affects the Users

Active Directory is a new paradigm for most organizations. Today, organizations have lists for everything from phone numbers to books to the physical inventory. Developers and systems analysts, with the advent of object-oriented design and its supporting technology, are trying to develop applications that more closely mimic the real world. The hope is that it is easier to translate real-world requirements into productive applications. The other hope is that application maintenance and changes are made easier by making adjustments that reflect the way the real world changed. Active Directory is based on object-oriented technology, which enables Active Directory to reflect the way information is intuitively interpreted—the way you perceive it in the real world.

Rather than fumbling through lists and multiple resources, an end user might want to move through the tree looking for someone who exists in Miami and who is part of the finance group. This is easy with Active Directory. As an end user, you are able to move through the tree from the US to Florida to Miami and then to the finance group and search through a relatively short list for the person you are seeking. Alternatively, you look through the corporate administration group to the finance group and then select those that are located in Miami. Each of these navigations represents a different view of the "world." The design of your Active Directory tree and the end user's view of the real world have an impact on how easy your users traverse and use the Active Directory tree. In the best case, your design and a good understanding of your end user community lead to an Active Directory design that is intuitive to the end user.

One Stop Shopping

Active Directory provides the ability to find information by going to a single location. So, how does this help a user in modern day computing? Rather than searching with multiple tools, the user can use a single tool. If we look at today's implementation, we find

• We use Explorer to traverse file system repositories.

• We use Microsoft Exchange for recipient data.

• We use Explorer for enterprise resources, such as printers.

• We use Windows Internet Naming Service (WINS) for NetBios name resolution.

• We use Domain Name Service (DNS) to find information about local and remote resources.

Information Technology Impacts

Currently, several directory service tasks are managed across the organization and kept in a variety of forms. The reality is that each of these directories is based on a different technology. To staff the administration of all the directories requires the skills from a variety of technologies. This predicament almost ensures a variety of directory systems. There is no single repository to support all the needs—that is, until Active Directory.

If you look at a typical scenario, there are the network operating system (NOS) administrators. These people perform additions, deletions, and modifications to the administration of the NOS resources. The NOS administrators use a tool specifically designed for the NOS or a customized script. For email administration, a person performs additions, deletions, and modifications to users in the email directory. The administrators use the tool specifically designed for each directory system, as shown in Table 1.1

Table 1.1. Directory Tools and Skills

Directory	Skill SET
NOS User administration	NOS trained and NOS administration tool.
	Familiar with the networking infrastructure and the attributes of the network user.
	Some scripting skills for network login scripts.
Email directory	Email administration tool familiarity. Ability to understand message flow.
On-line Web directory	Skills with HTML, FrontPage 98, or Word 2000.
	The ability to create Web pages with links.

With a quick view of the preceding table, you can see that there is no common skill across these relatively simple directory systems. Unfortunately, to consolidate these environments today would require expertise in a variety of tools. If you had a single tool that could support the needs of all these directories, you would have greater consensus on moving to a single directory. Active Directory provides an environment for integrating the directory requirements. With a single directory system, you are able to use a single tool for administering your environment.