Healthcare Organization Tackles Complex Directory Scenario with Flexible Solution

Microsoft Windows Server System Partner Solution Case Study

Overview “What ADAM enables with rDirectory is the ability Country or Region: United States to quickly deliver consolidated directory Industry: Healthcare applications to serve … a large organization with Partner Profile various directories.” This large healthcare organization has to keep track of about 8,000 employees and Randy Bradley, President, Namescape 30,000 contacts, vendors, and suppliers spread across hundreds of sites, with no A large healthcare organization with thousands of users as well standardized IT infrastructure. as hundreds of offices, clinics, and other sites needed a way to Business Situation create a unified directory of the organization. The challenge was The organization needed a way to quickly deploy a maintainable an IT architecture consisting of many different platforms, none of organization directory for the people and which allow for easy integration of identity information. The sites across an enterprise of extremely disparate computing systems and identity organization turned to Namescape, a Microsoft® Certified domains. Partner, to deploy rDirectory, which uses Microsoft Active

Solution Directory® Application Mode (ADAM) technology. Using ADAM The company worked with Namescape, a and rDirectory, the healthcare organization was quickly able to Microsoft® Certified Partner, to deploy Namescape rDirectory and Microsoft implement a custom directory solution that shares the security Active Directory® Application Mode to features of Active Directory but can be deployed across a quickly deliver a unified organization directory that can be easily maintained disparate IT infrastructure. and modified.

Benefits  Quick and easy to deploy and set up  Fast customization with no programming skills required  Built-in directory applications for employees and resources  Easy to secure with role-based access Situation The organization needed a unified directory The business need was common: A large application that could be delivered across a healthcare organization that grew rapidly disparate IT environment and that would through acquisitions needed a way for include flexibility to model a unique people to easily access and manage organizational structure. contact information for its people and sites via a unified directory application. The Solution organization’s dispersed mix of employee The organization decided to work with directories could not be easily searched or Namescape, a Microsoft Certified Partner, integrated, making it hard for people to find to deploy its flagship product, rDirectory. one another—and impossible for the IT rDirectory is a composable directory staff to maintain accurate information. application used to create directory Web sites that take advantage of the flexible Because the organization’s growth schema and security core shared by both occurred primarily through acquisitions, it Microsoft Active Directory and Microsoft would take years before the IT department Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM). could implement Active Directory® service ADAM, a component of the Windows universally across the enterprise. And with Server® 2003 Active Directory service, is a the organization’s many locations, there standalone version of Active Directory that was a need to find people according to does not run as an operating system their roles, such as IT administrators or service, and does not require deployment human resources staff. Making this type of on a domain controller. Multiple instances functionality available required schema of ADAM can run on any server and each rDirectory and ADAM deliver unified extensions to model relationships and allow can have a distinct schema. ADAM and organizational directory solution across for new types of links and data. rDirectory provide a safe way to test, disparate IT infrastructure. experiment, view, and deploy custom schema extensions. In this case, the schema was extended to add a new object type called Site, and to build new relationships between users and sites.

With the ADAM schema customized, the healthcare organization was able to quickly populate the directory and use rDirectory to create a custom Web-based solution specifically tailored to its users and sites that includes role-based delegation and full life-cycle management of new user and sites entities.

Benefits The easily extensible ADAM schema, combined with schema-driven rDirectory templates, provides a means of deploying maintainable custom directories across large and heterogeneous computing environments quickly and cost-effectively. Randy Bradley, President and Chief contacts across the entire organization into Architect of Namescape, says, “ADAM the new ADAM schema,” says Bradley. provides an excellent platform to explore the benefits of modeling organizational “A full Active Directory service will take data—such as sites, in this case—into the them several years to implement,” he says. organization’s directory application. The “What ADAM and rDirectory provide is the relational model created with each user-site ability to quickly deliver custom link opens a powerful capability that, once consolidated directory applications to serve seen, often creates demand for more types the immediate needs of a large of links.” organization with various directories.” “Trying to centrally Bradley adds that because ADAM shares rDirectory provides enormous flexibility to the same core with Active Directory, manage and modify all design custom directory applications, yet migrating the solution to Active Directory in of these contacts in the comes with built-in common applications to the future will be a straightforward, smooth use out of the box, or to use as a starting process. organization’s point for a more customized solution. For disparate computing example, the Namescape customer was Organizations can modify rDirectory to their able to create information for each site that particular business identity-information environment would contains a list of its members, their management needs. rDirectory also allows normally be very addresses, and their phone numbers, along organizations to create sophisticated, with links to key contacts such as IT or HR relational directories with little or no difficult, but ADAM and people. This makes it easy to find just the programming required. rDirectory make it right person at each site. “Using the rapid prototyping capabilities of Role-Based Identity Enhances easy.” rDirectory combined with ADAM, we were Management able to model the organizations data in the Because ADAM uses common Active Randy Bradley, President, Namescape schema and evolve a custom rDirectory Directory permissions and security but also solution with the customer in a matter of operates separately from Active Directory, weeks,” Bradley says. rDirectory can provide role-based access control in the organizations’ directory Quick to Deploy, Easy to solution. That makes it easy to create a Customize dynamic application that adapts to the rDirectory is a “thin” Web application that operator with a very detailed level of control only requires an Identity Integration Server of what each person can see or do. For and either Active Directory or ADAM to be example, administrators can grant up and running in minutes. This enables employees access to modify certain businesses such as the healthcare elements of their own identity profiles, such organization to deploy and manage as basic contact information or a password rDirectory across a large and disparate reset profile. This, in turn, empowers users computing network. to manage their own identities while freeing up the organization’s IT staff from tasks “The healthcare organization still had many such as resetting passwords. Microsoft Windows NT® Server–based domains that had not been migrated to “This is one of the great benefits that Windows Server with Active Directory. ADAM brings to rDirectory—the ability to They were able to aggregate their sites and quickly deploy a maintainable custom organization directory,” says Bradley. “The For More Information Schema and Roles features can evolve Microsoft Windows Server System For more information about Microsoft independently on ADAM, or be easily Microsoft Windows Server System products and services, call the Microsoft migrated to Active Directory.” integrated server infrastructure software is Sales Information Center at (800) 426- designed to support end-to-end solutions 9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft The healthcare organization has about built on Windows Server 2003. It creates Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- 8,000 users and another 30,000 contacts, an infrastructure based on integrated 2495. Customers who are deaf or hard- who are typically vendors or others outside innovation, Microsoft’s holistic approach to of-hearing can reach Microsoft text the organization. “Trying to centrally building products and solutions that are telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) manage and modify all of these contacts in intrinsically designed to work together and 892-5234 in the United States or (905) the organization’s disparate computing interact seamlessly with other data and 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 environment would normally be very applications across your IT environment. United States and Canada, please difficult, but ADAM and rDirectory make it This allows you to reduce the costs of contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. easy,” says Bradley. ongoing operations; deliver a more secure To access information using the World and reliable IT infrastructure; and drive Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com Flexibility and Security valuable new capabilities for the future rDirectory provides a secure and flexible growth of your business. For more information about Namescape Web interface to access directory data from products and services, visit the Web site either Active Directory or ADAM. For more information about Windows at: www.namescape.com Organizations, large or small, need the Server System, go to: ability to view, search, and edit directory www.microsoft.com/ ‌windowsserversyste m information.

In smaller organizations, rDirectory can be used out of the box as a secure employee and resource Web site. For larger enterprises, rDirectory is able to provide flexibility through a point-and-click interface with control down to each attribute.

“Tightly coupled with Microsoft security, we were able to build into rDirectory a secure Web interface to ever-changing directory data,” Bradley says. “Additionally, by using ADAM, the healthcare organization’s directory data and access control can be easily modeled to best reflect the organization’s needs.”

Software and Services  Technologies  Microsoft Servers − Active Directory − Microsoft Windows Server 2003 − Active Directory Application Mode © 2006 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case Enterprise Edition study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Microsoft, Active Directory, the Windows logo, Windows NT, and Windows Server are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. The names of products are the properties of their respective owners.

Document published July 2006