Consolidate Directories for Ease of Use & Compatibility
Directories, the repositories of users, permissions, and credentials, are the underlying enabling technology for identity and access management (IAM), provisioning, federation, and many audit and compliance related requirements. For most companies, the issue isn’t whether a directory exists, it’s more that many directories are used by disparate applications, listing the same individuals, but using incompatible naming conventions, permissions, and technologies.
Directory services is a combination of analytics, architecture, and development effort that rationalizes identities across an organization, designs a framework for a single source of record for each identity (either consolidating into a single directory, or more likely building a meta-directory that references multiple subordinate directories), and develops the repository and its integration with access control systems (stand alone or embedded within business applications). The end result of a directory services engagement is a credible, reliable, nimble, and resilient enterprise directory that enables auditable access for both internal and external user communities.