Understanding the Administrative Structure: BusinessModels | MCSE: Windows Server 2003 Active Directory and Network Infrastructure Design Study Guide (70-297)

Within the administrative structure, the business model is in charge of how the business is designed to function. Business models can be thought of as the DNA of a company. By identifying the business model, designers can understand how the company works, and how work is accomplished within the organization. The methodologies that Microsoft has identified follow the most common structures found in businesses today. Because Microsoft has been involved in many of the Active Directory implementations during the past four years , they have seen first hand how businesses ”small, medium, and large ”build their administrative structures.

The four different models that you will need to become familiar with are:

Departmental model
Project-based model
Product/service-based model
Cost center model

Each of these models will have an impact on the decision making process as the design is being reviewed.

Identifying the Departmental Model

For decades, the departmental model has been the most popular business model for companies. Based on the structure of the business units, this model reflects the internal organization of the company and the clearly delineated lines between job responsibilities. The organizational chart for this type of company will define the departments that are static and have a sole purpose within the organization. Figure 1.1 shows an example of an organization chart that you might find for the departmental model. You will more than likely find departments along the classic lines of:

Accounting This may be broken into subdivisions such as Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable. Accounting is responsible for handling the finances of the company.

Human Resources The Human Resources department is usually responsible for finding and retaining employees. Responsibilities include working with the employees insurance and retirement plans, recruiting new employees, working out differences between management and the employees , and many other personnel related issues.

Information Technology (IT You may find the IT department broken into different subdivisions based on the type of work that they are performing or the systems that they are responsible for, such as database management, messaging, help desk, and user account control, but you will probably find that they all fall under the same umbrella.

Marketing Members of the Marketing department try to make the company s products appear to be the best ever. This department is sometimes also part of the Sales department.

Sales Most companies employing the departmental model will have a product they are trying to market, whether it is a product that is being sold to an end user (consumer), or an intermediary product that is used by another firm within their manufacturing process. These individuals are responsible for finding and maintaining the customers and keeping the product on the market.

Production Probably the easiest way to describe the Production department is that it is the portion of the company that actually produces the product. This department is usually found in manufacturing firms, whether they build the final product or the components that go into the final product.

Figure 1.1: A departmental model organization chart

You will probably find other departments within a company, depending upon what type of organization it is. For instance, a hospital may have a Laboratory department and a Surgical department, whereas a manufacturing facility may have a Shipping and Receiving department and a Research and Development department. Because the departmental divisions are well defined in this business model, it is usually a simple matter of perusing the organization s organization chart to discover the departments that make up the company.

Even though the departmental model may appear to be the most straightforward of the models to design for, you will find that every company implements their administration differently. Rule number one: never use the organization chart as the basis for the Active Directory design. Although it may seem like a good idea to use the already-created structure, you will find it very difficult to build an effective administrative design or group policy deployment based on the company s organization chart. As you will find out in Chapter 4, Designing an Organizational Unit Structure for Administrative Purposes, and Chapter 5, Designing a Group Policy Infrastructure, an efficient Active Directory design is based on the logical and efficient organization of resources within the directory based on who is responsible for administering each resource.

Identifying a Project-Based Model

The project-based model dissolves the business units that we have been so comfortable with, and pulls job responsibilities together based upon the needs of a project. The clearly delineated lines found in the departmental model disappear when this model is employed. You will probably find accountants , electrical engineers , IT administrators, and many others working on a single project. With this model, as seen in Figure 1.2, the project is the main unit of organization. Employees are assigned to the project and work as a cohesive unit.

Figure 1.2: The project-based model

Depending on your viewpoint, the product-based model may not seem very efficient. Many companies have avoided organizing resources using this model because they feel that their human resources ”that is, their employees ”are not being utilized effectively. Having multiple individuals performing the same function on myriad projects seems redundant to many managers who would prefer to have a centralized group performing the function as seen in the departmental model. However, the project-based model allows for streamlined and efficient project management. For instance, you can have dedicated individuals working on the project instead of sharing a resource, such as an engineer from the Research and Development department, which streamlines the project; you no longer have to wait for the resource to be freed up to work on your project.

This becomes a very dynamic environment where the project teams are in a state of flux. As one project ends and another begins, the teams form, dissolve, and reform, most times with new members based on the needs of the project. If a company wants to implement a solution quickly or has specific needs on a project, this could be the best type of business model to implement.

For the network architect who is trying to develop an Active Directory and Network Infrastructure design, this is a very problematic business model to design for. Because the resources are in a state of flux, resource access and administrative control can be difficult to nail down. Your final design will have to take into account the possibility of changing resource requirements and how the administrative staff will have to approach the resource control.

Identifying the Product/Service-Based Model

The product/service-based model is basically a hybrid of the project-based and departmental models. It is prevalent in large corporations that have multiple products or services that they are bringing to market, or companies that have merged and are now supporting several products, each as its own business unit. The resources within this model do not morph as quickly as in the project-based model, but you will find that they have redundancy within the vertical lines of business as seen in Figure 1.3.

Figure 1.3: The product/service-based model

If you examine a large corporation that follows this model, you will probably find separate business units, each responsible for its own product or service. You may find a company that has a soft drink division, a restaurant division, and a junk food division. Each has its own marketing, research and development, and sales group, which specializes in its individual product. All the while, each division reports to the parent company, which has the final say in any decisions that impact the company.

When designing the Active Directory and network infrastructure for this type of business model, you may not have to design for the constantly changing environment as you did for the project-based model, but you will probably need to maintain specific lines of administrative control. Security will also be required, because the individual lines of the business need to be autonomous.

Identifying the Cost Center Model

The cost center model can be used with any of the aforementioned business models, but instead of the divisions working together, they charge each of the divisions for their services. You will usually find this in a company that uses the product/service-based model, because the hybrid nature of the business allows for more than one division to use the services of other divisions. This model appears to take on the same design as the departmental model; if you look at the organization chart, they look nearly identical. The primary difference is the interrelation between the divisions. Each division needs to be an autonomous unit with a clearly delineated set of resources. In the standard departmental model, a centralized group of administrators could potentially control all of the resources for the entire organization. With the cost center model, control of the resources has to be handled by the department or division administrators.

The most common of the chargeable departments is the Information Technology department, which charges each of the divisions for the service that it is providing for them. This charge is often called funny money because the money that is charged moves from one department s budget to the other division. Each department needs to make sure it has allocated enough money within its budget for the services it will take advantage of over the course of the budget s life.

When determining how to design Active Directory and network infrastructure for a company that employs the cost center model, you need to consider not only the resource requirements, but also the security requirements. Each of the cost centers needs to access only its own resources and should not be able to take advantage of other resources. At the same time, the departments need to trust the Information Services department, which will be responsible for all of the resources that reside on the systems. The other divisions will have to allow control of those resources to be administered by the Information Services staff. Designing with security in mind could make the Active Directory design a little more extensive .

In the Identifying Business Models Design Scenario we are going to take a look at a company and determine which of the business models are used.

Design Scenario ”Identifying Business Models

MetalFab Manufacturing has built prefabricated buildings for nearly 75 years. Their metal building designs have been widely accepted as the best manufactured in the industry. After an extremely large contract with the government to build aircraft hangars in the 1960s, they expanded their operations to include 30 manufacturing plants across the United States. Originally, all of their information processing was performed on mainframe computers. The company wished to confirm that every department was using the mainframe systems, so they started tracking usage by department and charging the departments for the total amount of processing time used. Since that time, the company has switched to personal computers at the users desktops with servers hosting the services and data controlled by a central IT staff. To justify its existence, the IT department still charges the other departments for the use of the server systems. All access is monitored and tracked so that the usage can be calculated and reported .

Question: Which of the business models was originally used by MetalFab? Answer: Because each of the divisions was being charged to use the resources from the IT department, the cost center model was used.
Question: Which of the business models is MetalFab currently using? Answer: MetalFab has not changed the way it handles the resource requirements from the other divisions when they access the IT resources, so a cost center model is still being used.