Integrating Applications with Windows 2000 and Active Directory

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Summary

This paper describes a variety of architectural models for integrating the Active Directory^TM service with applications to deliver enhanced functionality and lower total cost of ownership.

Most companies recognize that installing, using, and maintaining distributed applications represents a cost to their bottom line. Most ongoing costs, such as those associated with daily data backups and installing new users, are fairly easy to understand and predict. But other costs are less obvious:

• Client Configuration. As the rate of business change increases, making sure that client machines continue to have the right software installed and are configured properly represents a significant and growing expense. For example, when a person moves from one department to another, an administrator needs to delete some applications and add others - and make sure that each is configured correctly. Improper configurations cause problems ranging from service interruptions to applications that damage corporate data unintentionally by applying out-of-date business rules.
• Server Configuration. Most applications require administrators to assign clients to specific server-side elements, such as databases and application components, at the time of client deployment. Because clients are bound to specific machines, this kind of static configuration can hurt service levels. Users must wait for failed machines to be restarted before they can continue working. And when server load increases, users can experience slower response times even if other servers have excess capacity.
• Information Proliferation. The growing popularity of distributed applications has led to a proliferation of directories that contain similar information about users, machines and other network resources. E-mail systems have address books, for example, that contain much of the same information about users as kept by enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. As users are added or updated, all directories must be kept up-to-date and synchronized with each other. In addition to problems that occur when information gets out of synchronization, identifying sources of synchronization problems - and restoring consistency to directories - can be very costly.
• Lack of Inter-Application Awareness. Perhaps most harmful, most corporate infrastructures deliver very little synergy between applications, information kept about users, and infrastructure elements such as networks. For example, an employee's applications cannot detect his or her movement between departments. And doctors in the emergency room may receive the same quality of network service as clerks in the billing department; participants in an Internet video conference see jerky motions and hear distorted audio because someone else is downloading games. Unfortunately, the costs represented by lack of synergy can be the hardest to identify and address.

Whether the cost is tangible or simply an opportunity cost, each of the areas above contributes in some way to total cost of ownership (TCO). This paper describes a variety of architectural models for integrating the Active Directory^TM service with applications to deliver enhanced functionality and lower total cost of ownership.