From: Roy Roebuck [roy(AT)one-world-is.org] Sent: Sunday, April 16, 2000 1:19 PM To: 'info@radiantlogic.com' Cc: 'efranklin@radiantlogic.com' Subject: My Interest in Your VDS Product

Hi:

I'm favorably impressed with your Virtual Directory Server (VDS) product (http://radiantlogic.com) and its market positioning. I'd like to offer my services to your Advisory Council, in a vendor-nuetral capacity. I'm working as a contract Task Manager providing Next Generation eBusiness and eCommerce Architecture and Infrastructure System and Security Engineering services, including commercial product evaluation, to the US DoD Joint Electronic Commerce Program Office (JECPO).

My team just recently finished evaluations of Data Warehousing and OLAP products, Single Sign-On products, Standalone Digital Signature products, and conducted an assessment of JECPO "Readiness To Use PKI" My team is now supporting JECPO "ePortal" (application gateway with single sign-on) and Enterprise Workflow requirements analysis, product evaluation, and prototyping. See my overview model at http://jece.hq.dla.mil/cbsi/fy00/Production/PKI/Intro2PKI-rr000303/img063.gif.

Your approach satisfies a major part of what I've been recommending to DoD, Commercial, Academic organizations since 1982. See and some of my background at /rer/roy_is/about_roy.htm. (By the way, I'm transferring my site to a new host over the next few days, so if the links don't work, try substituting 216.10.19.233 for one-world-is.org in the URL I'm giving, as in http://216.10.19.233/rer/roy_is/about_roy.htm.)

Basically, for about 15 years, I've been advocating directory-centric, certificate-controlled access to an enterprise Model/Metadata tree structure (i.e., categorization, taxonomic),

with a corresponding star structure (i.e., multidimensional / datawarehouse / profiling / associative / customization), and

"arrow structure (i.e., arrow of time / change (history, status, and plans)/sequentiality (sequential or parallel events). Until recently, the technology to enable this on a large scale was complicated and expensive. Now, with the ubiquity of Internet, LDAP, XML, JDBC, Java, etc. this is no longer the case, almost reaching the point of being Plug&Play simple.

I've seen the various tree navigation tools moving in this direction since I first saw a DOS based file system manager present a file tree structure in 1984 and created my first equivalent to a modern shortcut or hyperlink. I subsequently build online document navigation systems using early hypermedia authoring tools such as HyperWriter, and linked spreadsheet/database tools in Lotus 123. Before 1984 I'd only envisioned it in terms of hierarchical/networked databases and structured paper filing systems, with cross-referencing capabilities (like a concordance implemented as simple and categorical indices.)

In 1984 I designed the above tree/star/arrow application and in 1989 prototyped it, using relational-table self-joins on a parent/child dot.decimal key-pair (e.g., project WBS or legal numbering). Then over time, I added X.500, LDAP, and now XML into the design. Like your approach, by navigating this tree structure, with my "general enterprise management" top classes (location, organization, organization-unit, function, process, resource, and requirement), one could gain contextually relevant information (associated facts/resources/references) and/or access to the corresponding MIS (structured data) or file system (semi-structured and unstructured data) for the current work context. Optionally, one could record for reuse or distribution their own model/metadata navigation to create defined or ad-hoc recorded "workflow" maps or "expert guides" between the information resources (e.g., your tree's "Favorites" or regular URL) required for a worker's activities, like the newer "process management" servers now implemented. This never progressed beyond the working prototype stage.

I find your company's name interesting, given the "radial" perception one gains from examining your approach. See my diagrams at /rer/owis/dem/slides/img032.gif, /rer/owis/dem/slides/img063.gif, /rer/owis/dem/slides/img064.gif, /rer/owis/dem/slides/img065.gif, /rer/owis/dem/slides/img066.gif, /rer/owis/dem/slides/img079.gif, /rer/owis/dem/slides/img101.gif, and /rer/owis/dem/slides/img090.gif for my view of where "tree" and "radial or star" technology is taking us.

I see that your company is providing the capabilities I call a "Data Snowflake" in img090 above. I've seen no others come close, although some of the Datawarehousing companies have come closer than they seem to realize. I expect we'll see the img090 "Data Jewel" technology, and resultant "situational awareness" omniscience engines in place fairly quickly once a common enterprise management and synchronization object schema is published and applied, like a peer of LDAP. It would be an ideal platform for carrying ERP and now Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) to the next step of a Whole Enterprise System (WES), and then the next obvious step of global value-chain automation (GVCA). When WES is available, our global economy will change for the better, and when GVCA is available, humanity will change for the better. I know all this sounds utopian, but so did eCommerce and eBusiness 10 years ago, when all we had was traditional EDI. I guess I've just seen the WES and GVCA as obvious destinations since my first use of the ARPANet (now Internet) in 1982.

I, of course, recommend the enterprise root schema represented in img032, with an IANA OID of 1.3.6.1.4.1.4912.1.1. (One_World_Information_System.General_Enterprise_Model.General_Enterprise_Schema), simply because I don't see how another schema can be as inclusive and flexible without abstracting up to the next level of "basic facets of the universe" (matter, energy, time, information) which don't do much for business managers.

In 1984, while in graduate school (USC), I called my approach the Individuated Associative Matrix (IAM) system, as the "engine" for a whole-enterprise management and individual situational-awareness process I'd begun modeling.

In 89-92 I expanded it for Corporate Resource Management and Improvement, originally as the Total Asset Management System (TAMS) and then repackaging a portion of it into the Total Architecture Planning and Execution System (TAPES) for prototyping, submission, and subsequent approval as standard Army and DoD IT management system (only partially built).

In 92-95 I repackaged it as the General Enterprise Management (GEM) system when I added a generalized enterprise customer-focused strategic management process (like a superset of the Balanced Scorecard) for a suggestion to the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and subsequently in 96 for a Booz-Allen/SAIC proposal and win of a DoD Strategic Business Process Reengineering contract.

In 1997 I repackaged it as a Base Management System for a never-finished proposal to Navy.

Then in 1998 I packaged it as an Integrated Services, Systems, and Applications Management (ISSAM) recommendation for the DoD Common Operating Environment (COE) System Engineering Working Group (SEWG), which they're now beginning to move towards.

Obviously, I've not yet sold my ideas to anyone who fully "gets" what I've been saying about what you can do with the technology and models/designs involved. My own marketing is insufficient, and few understood the many technologies involved, singly or in combination, or the enterprise/global scale attainable, beyond the prevalent functional/competitive view. Also, several thought they could use models and implement them without my assistance. Nevertheless, my enterprise models and many others' variations of them are complete, although this is not quite common knowledge yet, and the technology is just now becoming visible to those outside the labs and IT backrooms. For example, one University Professor is using models from my site in his Ph.D. Management classes.

I note that if you provide easy access to the data stores and processes of the Distributed Management Task Force (dmtf.org) Web Based Enterprise Management (WBEM) Common Information Model (CIM, in XML) (as in Tivoli, HP Openview, BMC Patrol, MS SMS2, etc.), then you'll have the means to tie IT management (Managed Object Facility - MOF), help-desk management (Customer Service Consortium's Serious Incident Standard and Solution Exchange Standard -SIS/SES), and network quality of service (QOS) management (Directory Enabled Networks - DEN), to the operational data of the business functions, approaching ISSAM and WES.

I'm very pleased that you and your peer companies and partners are making the technology available, affordable, and desirable. You're beginning to implement portions of the above models which the technology can enable. Your company provides a major step forward beyond the early steps of Isocor MetaConnect and PS Enlist in apparently allowing the mapping of existing MIS SQL/DDL Entity/Relation and XML structures into LDAP, while not quite covering the Process Automation area approached by products such as the iPlanet Application Server with Process Manager. I can very easily see your product fitting in with the Microsoft ADS/Metadirectory/Identity-Management/WBEM/SIS-SES/DEN/Workflow direction or the corresponding efforts by Microsoft's competing consortiums.

Your flexibility on LDAP entry attributes is one of my most sought after capabilities, along with the ability to dynamically reconfigure the LDAP DIT/DIB (e.g., add, move, rename, modify, delete classes). I'd like to see more how you utilize LDAP Alias and Reference features, because I believe that would play a major role in building what I've called "context" in my models.

My designs for all of this are free, with no patent applied for. They have been available in print and electronically since 1987, and online since 1997 at /rer/owis. I have copyrighted my published material and have submitted it several times in different forms to DoD Suggestion Programs, as well as to companies like Microsoft, Oracle, Netscape, and others.

See /rer/owis/ldap-ca.htm and slide 17 of /rer/owis/ue-gem/. The first presentation is a predecessor to a white paper I wrote for the DOD COE SEWG on implementing ISSAM, which would now nicely leverage your technology. The second presentation was one I provided to a National Science Foundation (NSF) Symposium in May 97. Also examine my earlier material at /rer/owis/build1 and /rer/owis/build2, both originated around 1989 with updates applied, paying particular attention the proposed user interface in slide 19 of the latter.

Roy Roebuck Advisory Staff Computer Based Systems, Inc.