Proposal: June 17, 1996. That SEMCOR IS&S differentiate itself further in the IS marketplace by focusing some of its capabilities on creating and providing corporate directory servers and services, and by providing directory-centric database, document, and file management applications. These directory-centric applications would include newly developed applications, as well as directory-extended existant applications.

Rationale:

Notes is a directory-centric application environment, with the Name and Address Book (NAB) serving as the directory, individual applications having their own Access Control Lists based on the directory, and User ID's being checked against the directory. Why not extend the "directory-centric" metaphor to encompass SEMCOR's other IS capabilities?

SEMCOR currently works with the following technical environments which use directories.

Operating System Directories

Windows NT (Registry is a directory), will support LDAP and thus X500

Network Operating System Directories

Windows NT (Registry is a directory), will support LDAP and thus X500

Novell (NDS is a directory), will support LDAP and thus X500

Banyan Vines (Streettalk is a directory), will support LDAP and thus X500

Messaging and Database Management System Directories

Lotus Notes (NAB, ACL, UserID), will support LDAP and thus X500

Exchange Directory will integrate with NT Registry, will support LDAP and thus X500

SQL Server will integrate with Exchange Directory and NT Registry

DMS Directory (DSA) is X500, and thus will support LDAP

Oracle application have ACL and will support LDAP and thus X500

A company called DCL (Data Connection,Limited) of the UK and Vienna, VA, is building an X500-based Corporate Directory Server product (www.datcon.co.uk/docs/mdx500cp.htm and www.datcon.co.uk/docs/press/x500ldap.htm ). Their X500 directory is highly extensible and scalable, and can also be used to centrally manage the directories of Notes, Exchange, and Groupwise, as well as Oracle, Unix, Netware, and Vines directories, all over TCP/IP via LDAP. It could be a "metadirectory". DCL is also the source for many of the X400 messaging elements of Notes and Exchange. Organizations with mixed architectures could immediately apply this capability.

SSI has the capabilities for manual and electronic meeting support, as well as change management. Their focus is on reengineering of social, cultural, process and technical environments. In social and cultural change they act as facilitators. In process and technical change they perform process and data modeling, requirements collection and management, plan development, architecture development, and standards definition. In that regard, they have excellent capabilities for collecting and organizing the content of corporate directories, which is a very socially, culturally, political, and technically difficult and long process when done manually, and only slightly less difficult, although much briefer, when done electronically.

A diagram representing directory-centric applications is shown here. Such an assemblage of systems, linked together through the directory, would serve to make the majority of the electronically recorded information within the enterprise available for disciplined management.