NEWS: OPEN STANDARDS FOR DIRECTORY APPLICATIONS

Leading vendors team up to form the Directory Interoperability Forum to promote industry standards

Most companies today rely on an enormous amount of enterprise information just to remain competitive. Their success depends on their ability to securely locate that information on demand and manage the interaction between devices, applications, and people. One of the primary ways of meeting this challenge is by using directories. Directories enable controlled access to information and seamless configuration of devices throughout the enterprise.

Unfortunately, the recent explosion of Internet-based computing has fueled the widespread proliferation of many types of directories, with information being dispersed across an array of systems, applications, networks, and operating systems. That's because the lack of consistent, standards-compliant directory implementations has led developers to build their own. The result is excessive redundancy and expense for each proprietary directory.

Because so many companies are faced with maintaining such a wide variety of directories, interoperability among the applications that use those directories is more critical than ever. With a standard protocol, information can be used seamlessly by multiple applications, networks, and systems across a variety of platforms—significantly reducing the time-consuming process of updating individual application-side files and directories. Greater consistency across directory-based applications can not only simplify information management—it can also improve security while accelerating the move toward e-business. Open Standards for Directory Applications Leading vendors team up to form the Directory Interoperability Forum to promote industry standards

A Better Way to Develop Directories and Applications
To help promote greater consistency and to simplify the development of directory-enabled applications, leading industry vendors have teamed up to establish the Directory Interoperability Forum. The Forum was founded by IBM, Novell® , Oracle® , Data Connection Limited, Lotus® Development Corp., and ISOCOR® as a vehicle for helping application developers create directory-enabled applications based on open standards. The Forum's member-sponsored proposals are also designed to extend the reach of directories and applications, thereby increasing their value.

Recently, the founding companies have been joined by more than 30 directory providers and supporters who have agreed to the Forum's primary objectives, which include:

• Promoting open directory standards such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• Collaborating to define, create, and implement software development kits that provide consistent behavior across directories
• Working with standards groups such as the IETF, DMTF, and The Open Group™ to advance the definition of open directory standards
• Encouraging ISVs to write to open directory standards
• Writing new directory-enabled applications to open directory standards

Members of the Forum have already verified that current LDAP-enabled applications interoperate with IBM SecureWay Directory, Novell Directory Services® , Lotus Domino® Directory, and Netscape Directory® . Applications that have been successfully tested include IBM WebSphere™, IBM Blue Pages, Lotus Domino, Lotus Notes, Tivoli Management products, Novell GroupWise® , and Novell Net Publisher.

The Advantages of Open Standards Such as LDAP
As information is more widely distributed, ensuring that the right people can locate the right data at the right time has become a major problem for IT organizations and their budgets. Managing and synchronizing multiple directories constitutes a significant expense for many companies. Having universal support of open directory standards—such as LDAP—can help reduce both costs and complexity by providing a seamless interface that helps make dissimilar systems from multiple vendors act as a single entity.

LDAP is a client/server distributed protocol and set of APIs that provides standards for accessing data in network directories. Applications that use industry-standard APIs enable the LDAP protocol to perform operations in network directories. Clients and servers can then run on different platforms and communicate while the distributed nature of the service remains transparent.

Extending open directory standards, such as LDAP, should better enable directories to perform functions required by burgeoning global networks. Extending standards can also enable a wide range of products to operate more efficiently, such as:

• Networking products that store configuration information in the directory so each device can load its configuration from a standard directory
• Firewall products that can store policy information in the directory so the policy can be quickly updated throughout the enterprise
• Middleware products that exploit the directory to maintain a common base of users and security information that can be shared across applications
• Messaging and collaboration applications that use the directory to access policy and application data that is synchronized across the enterprise

An Easier Path to e-business
As the scope of applications, operating systems, and networks being deployed continues to grow—and the movement to e-business increases—the need for system interoperability is greater than ever. The heterogeneous variety of directories found in most companies today has already strained management resources and driven up IT costs.

To address these challenges, the Directory Interoperability Forum intends to facilitate the development, implementation, and promotion of open directory standards. Wide-spread, cross-industry support of open directory standards should help make tomorrow's applications a much safer investment. As a result, companies can better utilize their distributed enterprise information and define a faster, easier path to e-business.

For more information
Visit www.directoryforum.org.