Software Solutions

Novell & Open LDAP User Account Management

Network operating systems allow companies to unify their technology resources into a common area allowing everyone to interact with each other. However, getting one network operating system to talk to another can be quite of a challenge. Comparing Active Directory to Novell shows many similarities in the way they operate and handle user information, but show differences in the ways that it is managed. Creating a common link between two directory systems is a task undertaken by IT departments all over the world, every day.

The User Management Resource Administrator can create a two-way link that can push and pull information from Active Directory to any other LDAP-compatible network operating system, such as UNIX w/ OpenLDAP or Novell NDS. Platforms such as Voice-over-IP systems or standalone databases can be updated as well, combining information from many different systems into a larger, unified directory. As information is changed in Active Directory, those changes can be populated to Novell’s NDS tree and updated in the phone directory software, showing a complete cycle of propagation driven entirely by User Management Resource Administrator. Combining this with powerful database audit logs can provide administrators and directors with the information that proves the system is working as intended.

The User Management Resource Administrator synchronizes employee and user information to different platforms in an organization can have several benefits:

• Accuracy and consistency of information reduces confusion and headache associated with out-of-date information
• Reduced down-time due to automatic replication of information from one-to-many directories
• Enforcing standards among many different directories can be made easy with the use of template-based scripts