Reducing Costs

In today's competitive business environment, efficient processes are vital to an organization's bottom line. Making your directory more efficient makes the business processes that depend on it more efficient. Understanding your directory service's costs is the first step toward making it as cost-effective as possible. In this section we'll outline some general cost reduction principles as they apply to directory services. In the next section ”Design, Piloting, and Deployment Costs ”we'll provide specific suggestions for reducing the costs at each point in the directory service life cycle.

General Principles of Cost Reduction

Keep in mind four general principles when you're striving to reduce the costs of your directory service:

1. You need to understand the level of related expertise that your staff possesses. For example, if several of your staff members have direct experience with directory technology and can train the remaining staff members , your support and training costs will be low. If you do not have the necessary expertise in-house, you will need to either develop it or use an external consulting organization.

2. Hardware and software costs are generally lower than personnel costs. A prudent hardware or software investment can allow your staff to work more efficiently .

3. Automation of manual processes can save time and allows your deployment and maintenance staffs to concentrate on increasing the reliability and availability of the directory. It also allows new applications to be developed more rapidly . For example, moving from a manual, attended backup process to one that occurs automatically frees up a person's time to do something more useful.

4. Your maintenance and deployment staffs are your best resource for identifying opportunities to improve efficiency. They work with the directory each day and routinely see where the system is less efficient than it should be. Involve them in the planning process and solicit their input for ways to reduce the costs of running the directory service.