Administration

Unfortunately, for directory administrators the workload is undetermined and ongoing. There could be no changes for a week, or there could be a hundred in a single day. The challenge never ends, and with all this effort the directory is viewed as a resource but not an accurate source for directory data. Thus, individuals start creating their own private directories. Excel spreadsheets with subsets of the information are on desktops everywhere. In the ideal case, all the information you need to know could be obtained by a simple query of the larger directory.

The impact to your organization is three-fold. There is duplication of effort. Staff in your organization are creating and inputting the same information in multiple instances. The available information is not used consistently as a resource. The directories are viewed as suspect. Because there are different sources with different update frequencies, information appears out-of-date on a regular basis. The directory is not being used as an enterprise service, and thus, not leveraged across the applications, users, customers, and partners. Other factors that are indirectly compromised are security and the underlying network. Multiple directories contribute to multiple data sources. With multiple copies of similar information and without centralized control, these sources can be compromised, which lead to other compromises. Searching and retrieving the directory information from multiple sources can lead to network impacts.

Before horizontal enterprise application use, most applications existed for a specific departmental need. The finance department had accounting applications, and people who needed accounting information requested reports that were churned out by the applications and typically delivered in paper reports. The administration and users of these systems resided largely in the department that they existed. Specific systems including hardware, software and eventually small local area networks (LANs) were created for departmental use.

The first horizontal uses of technology included the telephone, followed by mainframe application services (including email), some time later by LANs that were interconnected, and most recently by email systems with post offices in multiple locations. These systems started having impacts on networks because of passing messaging and directory information back and forth. Each of these systems developed centralized staff for the design, administration, deployment, and support of these systems. One can make the argument that this was not true with early email integration as distributed Network Administrators worked with each other to implement email enterprise wide. This system had limited effectiveness because the directory was always out of synchronization. This drove the requirement for a single email system. This is similar to what we have seen with network directories. There are many disparate systems today. Active Directory is the opportunity for migration to a single system.

With the implementation of Active Directory, Microsoft introduces another horizontal enterprise-wide service. The impact on the organization is similar to that of phone systems, network infrastructure, and email systems and may be even larger. As mentioned earlier, to realize the full promise of the enterprise directory there should be application integration. This requires development and integration expertise. To maintain the directory, the organization requires administration expertise, and policies and processes for an effective system surrounding the administration.