Summary and Lessons Learned

Netscape's directory deployment has been a great success on two fronts. First, the company has benefited from a directory service in the ways you, having read the earlier chapters of this book, have probably come to expect. For example, more information is available to all employees , and business processes have been streamlined, particularly the process of getting the computing environment for a new employee up and running. Second, the deployment has met its goal of being a useful test bed for Netscape Directory Server and the directory-enabled applications that Netscape develops.

In any complex process such as deploying a directory, there is always room for improvement. Here are a few words of advice based on lessons learned during the directory deployment at Netscape:

• Obtain buy-in from senior management early in the planning process to help ensure that you obtain the necessary cooperation from other departments that are crucial to the success of the directory deployment.

• Plan the directory namespace well in advance. It will become increasingly difficult to change the namespace as the directory gains momentum and becomes more and more essential to business processes.

• Pay particular attention to the privacy needs of your directory users. It's best to obtain the opinion of your Legal department when deciding which attributes will be available in the directory. Allow sufficient time for review.

• Even if your directory software allows you to disable schema checking, it's almost always a mistake to deploy the directory in this way. Leaving schema checking enabled improves the quality of your directory data and avoids painful data cleanup work.

• Start early when planning for coexistence with external data sources, especially when those sources are owned by another group . Try to get the other groups to fully communicate the structure of those data sources so that you don't miss important data repositories when migrating data into the directory.

• Do not work in a vacuum . Include as many participants as possible in the initial design phase for directory coexistence, work process changes, resulting information changes, and user interface development. Having a broad base of participation ensures that everything is covered and helps provide buy-in to the project.