Active Directory Benefits

• the heart of an integrated community of users
• publish directory mount points for group projects
• secure web publishing using limited access web pages
• the more people/groups who join AD the more sharing which can be accomplished
• allows distributed management
• management is based on organizational tree
• departments can operate quite autonomously while still enjoying benefits of shared groups with others
• the basis for W2K's new management features
• including software distribution
• becoming a popular standard
• recommended AD practices by Microsoft
• Sun annouced LDAP support in Solaris 8
• Unix SENDMAIL and Samba are evolving AD support
• Linux can use AD for some purposes
• APACHE and IIS Web Servers support access restrictions