The impetus behind LDAP was simple. Howes and others at the University of Michigan were running the campus e-mail system and needed a campuswide directory, so they chose the X.500 directory model. Although the focus may have changed since the days when Howes was involved with LDAP, he believes the level of technical innovation has actually increased. People today are running their businesses on all this technology, and innovation continues to crawl up the stack.
Today there's as much technological innovation as there is business innovation.
Companies do understand the value of technology, says Howes, and he believes more will make the business decision to outsource technical issues so they may focus on their core business more completely.