Compaq cleans up its directory mess

Austin, Texas - When Zoomit Corp. CEO Kim Cameron last year started preaching his message about how metadirectory technology could help unite disparate directories across corporate LAN and e-mail systems, Compaq Computer Corp. was ripe for conversion.

Running too many directories was costing the Houston-based computer manufacturer too much money, said Larry Ketchersid, director of enterprise computing in Compaq's information management department. Any new directory strategy had to include centralized management of user accounts as well as the option to parcel out administration of individual directory systems to different net managers.

Since 1986, the hardware manufacturer has racked up more than 30,000 entries stored in Banyan Systems, Inc., Microsoft Corp., Lotus Development Corp. and other Simple Mail Transfer Protocol-based mail directories. Duplicate directory administration efforts existed because each directory required different personnel and specific tools. End users had as many as six different messaging accounts because of the lack of directory synchronization.

Compaq last year allocated upwards of $2 million to tackle directory integration at the same time the company began moving from Banyan's Intelligent Messaging to Microsoft's Exchange mail package.

Despite the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol's growing popularity, Compaq decided not to build its own LDAP-based tool to extract data from individual directories and compile it into a common repository. One reason for this was that Compaq's legacy directory services do not support LDAP.

Instead, Compaq turned to Zoomit's Via metadirectory pro-duct. Via, which started shipping last fall, comprises agent software that taps into different directory name spaces and joins that information in a single database. In theory, the joins give end users a single logon to all of a company's directories.

Compaq planned to first unite its NT, Exchange and Banyan directories. Ketchersid hoped this effort would help accelerate Compaq's migration to Exchange by allowing administrators to add, delete and move end users to all the messaging and operating systems from a single screen.

Compaq planned to add Notes and SMTP mail directory entries at a later date, as well synchronize more than 15,000 end-user lists that existed company-wide.

While the Via software fit Compaq's needs, the company had to get its core directory database in order before it could deploy any metadirectory.

But Zoomit's offering requires a common end-user ID across all directories. The closest thing Ketchersid had resided in the human resources SAP AG database in the form of a unique Compaq employee ID. But since there was no common directory attribute that corresponded to this Compaq ID, one had to be inserted in each directory and the IDs needed to be consistent with the directories' employee naming scheme.

This problem evolved into a huge organizational hassle rather than a technical issue, Ketchersid said. "We had to first clean up all of these legacy systems before we could go and join them together," he said.

Ketchersid's crew has spent the past eight months doing the directory database cleanup and forging ahead with the Exchange migration. Unfortunately, he said, the effort depleted the IT group of funds needed to put Via into production.

Despite the hassle, Ketchersid has not soured on the metadirectory concept and still plans to go into production with Via later this fall. "This is something that people are going to need to make all these services work together in their networks," he said. "They just have to be aware of the huge amount of work that needs to take place on the front end."