Within the Active Directory, companies can store information about network elements such as users, machines and applications. Active Directory integration helps Windows 2000 overcome an especially vexing set of issues for both managers and users of distributed network systems. Up until now, complicated network infrastructures with multiple security models have forced users to log on repeatedly as they move among applications and systems, often with a different profile at each new entry point. For administrators, that means redundant, complex management, increasing the chances that users will be given too little access to the resources they need, hampering business processes, or too much access to the system, creating serious security problems. Active Directory uses containers and objects to organize network resources in a logical hierarchy, storing all the information about users, groups, machines, and applications in one location and then giving network administrators an easy way to update that information.
Users seeking access to network resources now only have to pass through a single checkpoint.
Centralizing control of such things as user profiles, roles, and rights is critical to creating a secure system. Previously, companies just couldn't manage all those things in a centralized way. For companies like Oblix, this opens up a whole new kind of network management. Starting from the Active Directory features of Windows 2000, Oblix adds solutions that allow businesses to manage information about employees, trading partners, suppliers, and channel organizations in real time over the Web. The result, says Mulchandani, is something he calls centralized control with decentralized management.