What has changed? Beginning with reports that pegged the per-PC or workstation cost of ownership (COO) for a typical company at anywhere from $2,000 per year to $9,000 per year, there has been an increasing focus on shifting configuration, processing, and administration off of the desktop and into the network. This shift cannot occur without significant upgrades to the typical Network Operating System (NOS) or enterprise directory. Therefore, the COO issue has been good for directories.
One of the chief reasons
that desktop COO is too high is the sheer amount of "touch
administration" that must be done to keep workstations running
in environments where the infrastructure is weak and the desktop
has not been standardized and streamlined. Touch administration
is required because users are running many applications, each
with multiple configuration items in the user's autoexec.bat,
config.sys, registry, /etc., or some other location. Over time,
configuration items accrete to a workstation like sea organisms
to a coral reef, in a random, fractual manner until no two desktops
look quite the same.
Best practices for reducing COO are to standardize the desktop, move applications and configuration items into the network, and centralize administration. To cut administration costs, move per-user, per-machine, or per-application profiles, addresses, access controls, etc. into the network often means moving them into a directory. To cut help desks, reduce users' ability to get themselves in trouble and stop replicating configuration and administration tasks across thousands of PCs or workstations.
Another factor increasing the directory's profile has been the quickening software metabolism of the enterprise. Development groups across the country are reporting that with the proliferation of Intranets, requests for new applications are going through the roof. For example, in 1995, a typical enterprise may have received requests for 50 new applications, in 1996 100, in 1997 200. Enterprises that haven't put a consolidated, multi-application enterprise directory in place may already be hitting the wall. There is also enormous, pent up demand for business-to-business applications that can run over the Internet rather than over expensive tangles of leased lines or value-added networks (VANs).
A common theme across most Intranet/ Extranet applications is the need for directory information about user, system, and organizational objects. The application's requirements can be described very simply: they need to find out who you are, what you're trying to do, whether you're allowed to do it, and how the company wants it done. In technical terms, these requirements are called authentication, certification, access control, profiling, policy representation, and policy or business rule enforcement. Most of the information to support such requirements should be stored in an enterprise directory.
Confronted with directory synchronization issues, messaging users and vendors have understood the importance of directories all along. NOS vendors have also gotten the message. Banyan provided the StreetTalk directory with VINES (and later NetWare and NT) as an early proof of what could be done at the enterprise NOS level. Novell came next, with NetWare Directory Systems (NDS). Netscape galvanized the industry in 1996 with its concept of a secure, standards-based, and modular Intranet applications infrastructure supported by LDAP, DNS, and X.509 security at the directory level. Soon, Microsoft stepped into the fray, pushing the Active Directory as an integral component of the planned NT 5.0 release. To see vendors of Banyan, Microsoft, Netscape, and Novell's stature focus on the directory issue to this extent has raised IS awareness.
In conclusion, Rapport's prediction for the future is that a typical Fortune 500 corporation that gets aggressive on directories now can realize tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in cost savings, productivity increases, and strategic enabled application benefits over a 5 year period. Those that sit and wait for 1999 budgets, Active Directory, a perfect LDAP or X.500 standard, or anything else that causes delays will miss out on some of these benefits.
Dan Blum will be speaking on the
"Future of Directories"
session on Tuesday, April 28 from 2:30-4:00 at EMA'98
in Anaheim, California.