Microsoft buys directory vendor Zoomit, competitors lining up behind directory interoperability effort led by IBM, Novell

A group of vendors led by IBM and Novell today announced a forum intended to foster the interoperability of corporate directories.

The goal of the Directory Interoperability Forum (DIF), which also includes Oracle, Isocor, Data Connection Limited and Lotus, is to speed the creation of industry standards, as well as the development and deployment of directory-enabled applications.

The forum has the support of some 31 vendors, including AT&T, Lucent, Cisco and VeriSign. The group plans to release a software developers kit by year-end to aid independent software developers in the creation of directory-enabled applications.

The software developers kit will include a set of APIs common across the products of all forum members.

Notably absent from the list of members and supporters was Microsoft, which is expected to release Active Directory by year-end, and Netscape, which began advocating open standards directories nearly three years ago. The group said both have been invited to participate.

Microsoft this morning announced it acquired metadirectory vendor Zoomit and will integrate the technology into Active Directory. Zoomit's technology allows enterprise-wide management of identity data, such as account information, passwords, configurations and access rights, to be stored in heterogeneous directory services.

"Microsoft's purchase of Zoomit is its acknowledgment that interoperability is more complicated than just a single directory store," says Karl Klessig, vice president of marketing and strategic alliances for Isocor.

The problems inherent in multiple disparate corporate directories are being pushed to the forefront by the emergence of Internet-based applications. The ability to consolidate directories around standards allows administrators to cost effectively manage end users and access to corporate resources.

According to The Burton Group, the average enterprise has 100 disparate directories that cannot communicate with each other.

The DIF members are rallying around the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP), which it called a flash point for standardized directories. The Internet Engineering Task Force approved the standard nearly two years ago. But the forum intends to push for the extension of the standard, especially in the areas of replication, security and a common schema.

Standards-based directory replication is achieved using the Lightweight Directory Update Protocol, an LDAP extension. But standards for security and schema, which defines directory objects, are undeveloped. Schema is like the language of a directory, and directories that speak different languages cannot communicate.

"The key issue here is that if you believe that the directory is the next platform for Internet applications, you have to extend protocols and APIs," says Chris Stone, senior vice president of strategy and corporate development for Novell. "LDAP is a success, but you have to extend it."

The forum members intend to help accelerate the standards process by "becoming the glue in and around standards bodies," such as the IETF, The Open Group, and the Distributed Management Task Force. The forum also intends to focus on the World Wide Web Consortium and it's Extensible Markup Language (XML) as a way to standardize directory schema.

The Open Group will serve as a testing and certification board for ISV's that write to the APIs developed by the forum.

While vendor driven forums often rally support around an issue, network executives often meet them with skepticism. But forum members say those skeptics are the very ones pushing them on directory interoperability, according to Stone.

Contact Senior Editor John Fontana

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