Microsoft Spec. Synchronizes Directory Services - Company Business and Marketing

ENT, April 21, 1999 by Thomas Sullivan

Microsoft Corp. submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF, www.ietf.org) a specification that enables developers to build connectors that synchronize otherwise incompatible directory services.

The specification is for a flexible LDAP-based control called DirSync, which Microsoft is making freely available for use by anyone, without licensing requirements.

The problem with managing more than one directory occurs when an object is added, deleted or modified in one directory and, because directory services are not inherently interoperable, the change is not automatically made in the other directories.

To coordinate directory services, companies have been using a variety of solutions, including manual processes, scripting and meta-directory products.

The DirSync control, however, makes it easier for developers to build synchronization products that ease the complexity of multidirectory administration by capturing changes occurring within one directory service and propagating them to other directories automatically. These changes can be captured as low as the attribute level.

DirSync is compatible with the design of most replicated directory services, and allows efficient resynchronization after server failures.

"The LDAP-based interoperability approach should simplify the task of tracking changes within directory services and make synchronization more effective," says Bruce Robertson, vice president of adaptive infrastructure strategies at Meta Group (www.metagroup.com).

Although DirSync was recently opened to the public and offered to the IETF, it is not an entirely new concept. "This is a submission of a technology that is already being used successfully," says Peter Houston, Active Directory product manager at Microsoft.

A number of providers of metadirectory and synchronization products already support DirSync or have voiced their intention to use the DirSync control to integrate their products with Active Directory.

Some of these providers include Iso-cor (www.isocor.com), nCommand Inc. (www.ncommand.com), NetVision Inc. (www.netvision.com) and Zoomit Corp. (www.zoomit.com).

"DirSync enables Isocor's MetaConnnect product to collect important change information quickly and reliably, and will make it possible to use Active Directory as the central repository for the enterprise," says Paul Gigg, president and CEO of Isocor.

Other companies are considering ways to use DirSync, as well.

"We're looking at it to see how we can use the technology for comanagement of directory services," says Olivier Thierry, vice president of marketing at directory management software vendor Mission Critical Inc. (www. missioncritical.com).

Microsoft's Houston says DirSync has been available to certain vendors all along, but the company wanted it open to all developers.

"Opening it to vendors certainly helps those vendors, but that doesn't solve the greater problem, which is we, as an industry, need to get our hands around a way to standardize the connectors between directory services," Houston says. "We are hoping that the industry will take this spec and absorb it, and integrate it with the ongoing LDAP and LDUP work as well."

Features of DirSync:

* Support for capturing changes at the attribute level, enabling developers to build connections between directories.

* Compatibility with the design of most replicated directory services.

* Allows resynchronization after server failures.

* Uses existing investments in LDAP.

* Freely available.