The metafix, 09/27/99

absurd buzzword contest

By JOHN FONTANA
Network World, 09/27/99

Over the years, the enterprise directory has created a louder buzz than a low-flying biplane. The promise of such a directory has repeatedly swooped down to near realization only to shoot back up over the enterprise landscape and disappear.

The metadirectory promise has been to reduce user administration and create a single point of access to security services, applications and resources. With the advent of the Web, electronic commerce and other browser-based applications, everyone is even more anxious for the ultimate directory to land.

While the approach has changed, it remains clear that with the directory as a focal point, administrative costs decline while the ability for sophisticated internetworking increases. So why isn't directory deployment happening on a large scale? Because conceiving a flight plan isn't easy.

Establishing a directory infrastructure involves not only choosing a standard technology but also a whole lot of political machinations. Management must be persuaded that such a project has enough merit to be worth absorbing millions in costs. Individual departments must join in an effort that appears to lessen their power over their own data.

The proliferation of legacy directories also hinders the creation of the enterprise directory. Companies must retrofit legacy data into a directory infrastructure. Moreover, standards are still under work, although vendor consortiums are springing up to accelerate the adoption of the standards.

The reality is, for the majority of companies, the enterprise directory is a long way off - despite its long standing as a buzzword.

Too much of a good thing

The big issue for most is directory bloat. Applications, network operating systems and departments have their own directories. Unification isn't easy.

"I worked with one company that was running 600 Novell Directory Service directories that were not interconnected," says Alexis Bor, president of Directory Works, a directory consultancy in Celebration, Fla.

Six hundred may be more than the norm, but that figure speaks to the enormity of the problem. Forrester Research, a market research firm in Cambridge, Mass., says the average corporation has some 180 separate directories. The Burton Group in Midvale, Utah, puts the number somewhere above 100.

Integration, however, is not undertaken just to decrease the number of directories. It also means a reduction in time-consuming changes.

With a unified directory, for example, a net administrator would no longer have to change a user's name in the human resources system, and then in the e-mail system, and then across a host of applications.

"My big costs are people costs. If they have to touch the data more than once, it gets expensive," says Don Bowen, a directory architect for a large Midwestern heavy equipment manufacturer.

Bowen has already tied together his directories for human resources, phone, e-mail and security with a metadirectory hub. This hub lets each directory remain an authoritative source while contributing data to overall user identification. "We have a hub, but not enough spokes yet to make our wheel stable," he says.

Bowen says net executives must ignore tales of directory bliss and just try each day to move toward consolidation and ease of administration. "If users don't do that, the directory buzzwords and promises for the future are just that," he warns.

Progress toward the enterprise directory also is being aided by standards-based technologies, such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), XML and the Directory-Enabled Networks (DEN) effort.

Lightweight problems

LDAP has brought the most awareness to directory interoperability. Nearly three years ago, Netscape and 40 other companies backed the specification with the goal of creating a standard protocol for directory access. That effort created momentum, but it wasn't the end-all.

LDAP doesn't address issues such as replication, synchronization and access control lists - features that are key for keeping directory data current and out of the wrong hands, says Todd Chipman, an analyst with Giga Information Group, a market research firm in Norwell, Mass. The Internet Engineering Task Force is working on standardizing those mechanisms.

Chipman says another problem is that vendors have extended LDAP's schema and created interoperability issues.

Fortunately, in July the Directory Interoperability Forum set out to rectify the interoperablility woes. The forum, made up of IBM, Novell, Oracle and 31 other companies, seeks to accelerate the work on LDAP and other standards. It will create a set of APIs to help developers integrate the directory with applications. Unfortunately, Microsoft and Netscape are absent, and that absence may limit the forum's effectiveness.

But IBM, Microsoft, Netscape, Novell, Oracle and others have agreed on the emerging Directory Services Markup Language, an XML extension expected to create a standard way for directories to tell each other what data they hold. Work has just begun, however.

Another piece of the directory puzzle is the DEN initiative, but parts of that specification are still being ratified, and interoperability could be more than a year off.

Super directory

The newest buzz, however, is over the metadirectory. The metadirectory - middleware for centralizing control over a host of distributed directories - is good buzz for IT professionals. It shows that vendors are finally starting to realize that help is needed to overcome directory bloat, and that such help must come through linking existing directories, not consolidating them into one magical directory. True, vendors haven't exactly stopped pitching their own directories as the master to which users should port all existing data. But support of the metadirectory from heavy hitters is movement in the right direction.

For example, Microsoft recently bought leading metadirectory vendor Zoomit. Meanwhile, Novell plans to begin fall beta tests of DirXML, its metadirectory technology; Netscape has incorporated metadirectory technology from Isocor into its Directory Server; and IBM has developed metadirectory technology for its SecureWay product.

"The metadirectory is the key to tying existing directories under one umbrella" for such things as single administrative interface or consistent user access to multiple directories, says Harold Albrecht, chairman of the Network Applications Consortium (NAC), a group of end-user companies. "The directory market started to really move with LDAP, and now we're getting the masses to line up behind the metadirectory concept."

A metadirectory, however, is not a nonstop flight to nirvana. It is just a tool, and a new tool at that. The metadirectory is not plug and play; IT organizations must do a lot of customization work. Equally important, IT must analyze internal issues, develop a goal and tailor its directory work toward that goal.

Get going

The possibilities of the enterprise directory are well-known to the net executive, but finding a starting place is a major hurdle. IT executives must work backward, pick through what they have and meld it into an architecture they create on the fly. That can be a Herculean task. Determination is mandatory.

"You have to live, eat and breathe this stuff. You have to be a champion for it to get it started," says Don Johnson, director of advanced technology research for the state of New Jersey.

One good place to start is your next extranet, users are finding. Johnson did just that, starting from scratch to set up an extranet based on a standardized directory to link New Jersey's 21 counties.

"If I hadn't started this, we may have ended up with 21 architectures in 21 counties, and that was a risk I couldn't take," he says.

Because the state can't afford a private network, the goal is to link New Jersey with its suppliers, contractors and the public over the Internet. The state's E-Link program began with a pilot in 1997, and it now has limited functionality throughout four counties.

Johnson, who describes himself as a newbie with directory technology, is surprised when he talks to his peers.

"I don't think most people have really started building an enterprise directory," he says. "Given the promises of the directory, I thought most users would be farther along." But he says even vendors eagerly ask him about directories.

The new platform

The current enterprise directory revival is being led by Microsoft, which is expected to release its Active Directory before year-end. Because Active Directory is key to Windows 2000, those who use the operating system will use the directory and then, presumably, rely on Zoomit as their metadirectory engine.

But other vendors are feeding the buzz by repositioning or revamping their directories for more uses.

Novell has refocused around its Novell Directory Service (NDS) and this fall will release stand-alone versions that run on operating systems other than NetWare. The company is trying desperately to weave its highly acclaimed NDS into the e-commerce market. Netscape, now a division of America Online, and Sun are integrating Netscape's LDAP-based Directory Server into Sun Solaris. And IBM is positioning its SecureWay directory with its e-business strategy. All of which helps IT executives focus on the technology and begin to understand the capabilities of the enterprise directory.

Now add in a host of application vendors, such as Oracle, PeopleSoft and SAP, that are directory-enabling their applications. E-mail vendors added LDAP more than a year ago. Others, such as Aventail, Bowstreet Software, Netegrity and Oblix, are building applications on top of the directory, which some are calling the development platform of the future.

"The directory not only can manage fixed assets like users and applications, it can start to manage your business," says Andrew Roberts, chief technology officer for Bowstreet in Portsmouth, N.H. This month, the company will release its directory-enabled architecture for Internet channel sales management. "The directory has traditionally been tied to cost reductions, but now it can generate revenue."

True to form, directories continue to make a lot of racket.

"There is a lot of buzz around the metadirectory, integration technologies and tools, and the enterprise should focus on it all for creating the enterprise directory," says Gary Rowe, a Burton Group analyst. "It will happen in stages for most because what they have now internally is typically a mess."

The prevailing wisdom is that the mess will get straightened up and that the enterprise directory is inevitable. If only we knew when.

Related links

Contact Senior Editor John Fontana

Other recent articles by Fontana

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