Active Directory sites look to ITIL for change management

One of the highlights for me of NetPro's annual Directory Experts Conference is the report on the survey of attendees that the company releases after the event. It was slow coming out this year - the show was in March, but the survey results were just released last week. I'm not sure why, but I do have a theory. But before I get to that, let's look at the highlights of this year's survey. You can read the entire thing yourself, of course (PDF) - and you should.

The survey drew 235 responses from the 540 attendees at the conference, who are "...primarily technicians, work within large corporate and governmental IT organizations, are responsible for Active Directory management and support large numbers of directory users." That probably describes most of you, also.

Here are some of the findings that caught my attention:

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One of the highlights for me of NetPro's annual Directory Experts Conference is the report on the survey of attendees that the company releases after the event. It was slow coming out this year - the show was in March, but the survey results were just released last week. I'm not sure why, but I do have a theory. But before I get to that, let's look at the highlights of this year's survey. You can read the entire thing yourself, of course (PDF) - and you should.

The survey drew 235 responses from the 540 attendees at the conference, who are "...primarily technicians, work within large corporate and governmental IT organizations, are responsible for Active Directory management and support large numbers of directory users." That probably describes most of you, also.

Here are some of the findings that caught my attention:

* Regulatory compliance and security remain the fastest rising directory management priorities for the second year in a row.

* Auditing Active Directory changes is the most important day-to-day requirement.

* 35% of responding organizations have a user provisioning solution in place; another 37% are in the process of implementing or plan to implement a solution within 24 months.

* 44% of responding organizations rely on paper-based processes to handle directory change management and 15% make changes without any specific approval process.

* Most organizations (55%) consider themselves "world class" or "better than average" in their directory management performance.

* 87% of responding organizations are using or are planning to use service-level agreements (SLA).

* Active Directory support and network availability are the two most common SLA attributes.

* Responding organizations have strong interest in ITIL [Information Technology Infrastructure Library]; 55% of respondents are currently using ITIL and another 24% are considering its use.

* Change management is the most commonly implemented ITIL practice.

* MIIS deployment among DEC attendees has grown from 31% in 2005 to 43% in 2006.

In particular, the numbers reporting either use of or interest in ITIL means that network management is finally getting to the point of being a learnable, repeatable, professional occupation (for more on ITIL as a profession, see this IT Careers newsletter about ITIL training and certification). While intuition and "seat-of-the-pants flying" may still have a place, there's an opportunity for anyone willing to apply themselves to learning what network management is all about. Read the survey results and compare your answers to those given by these "directory experts" - how do you and your organization stack up?

I said I was surprised by the time lag from the conference in March until the survey results came out in August. But it seems that DEC organizers Gil Kirkpatrick and Christine McDermott may have been spending time on something else (or, even, something elses). If you're interested, see this week's Identity Management newsletter for all the details.

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