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Andersen's L-Service |
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Directory consultancy
It is not a straightforward exercise to establish a well-functioning directory. The success and usefulness of a directory are dependent on the organisation making all the right choices.
Assistance is provided in the following areas:
- X.500 education/seminars - One or two days seminar available customised for the particular situation. It may include an introduction to ASN.1.
- Identification of requirements - Before procuring a directory system, the requirements on the system must be determined. The requirement study should include:
- what the initial load should be;
- identification of the different user groups;
- an estimate of the number of users in each user group;
- an analysis of the requirements of different users groups for information access;
- response time requirements;
- sizing;
- integration with other services;
- Requirement on user interface.
- Naming and information structure:
- what information items the directory shall be hold (names of persons, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, employee numbers, etc.);
- how such information items (attributes) should be organised in directory entries;
- what the relationship among different entry types shall be;
- the naming structure based on the entry relationship and general naming principles.
- Procurement specification - what should be considered in a procurement specification and what should be vendor selection criteria:
- flexible schema and name structure support;
- access control support;
- administrative tools, including access control customisation;
- tools for import/export of information;
- back-up and recovery features;
- Service and maintenance.
- Operational architecture:
- distribution across directory servers;
- the requirement for replication shadowing.
- Data management strategy:
- scope of initial load;
- update strategies;
- quality of data (accuracy, completeness and timeliness;
- distribution of administrative roles;
- Use feed back (reporting mechanism).