Overview of the Organization

   

Netscape Communications Corporation is a leading supplier of open client and server software that links people and information over the Internet and intranets . In addition, Netscape's Web portal, located at http://home.netscape.com, is a leading rendezvous point for people wanting to navigate the Net, access products and services, and communicate with others online.

Netscape was founded in 1994 by Jim Clark and Marc Andreessen. Starting in 1996, the authors were employed by Netscape as software engineers and architects . That same year, a project was started inside Netscape to deploy an enterprise directory service to meet the needs of the growing company and to provide a test bed for Netscape's directory services software products. In March of 1999, Netscape completed a merger with America Online, Inc. In January 2001, the combined company merged with Time Warner to form AOL Time Warner, the world's largest Internet and media company. In this chapter we focus mainly on the initial directory deployment that was created by Netscape prior to its merger with America Online.

Most of Netscape's employees and contractors are based in Mountain View, California. The Mountain View main campus, which is also home to other AOL employees , consists of numerous individual buildings connected via high-speed fiber- optic network connections. The Mountain View campus is connected to the Internet via a set of OC3 connections, which are also used to support its World Wide Web presence. The campus is also connected to the main AOL campus, which is located in Dulles, Virginia, via AOL's backbone network.

In addition to the main campus, smaller engineering, sales, and support offices are located throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Connections to each of the satellite offices vary depending on the number of employees and the location of the office, and they range from dial-up lines to higher-speed leased lines.

At the time the directory service described in this chapter was deployed, Netscape was a standalone company with a central Information Services (IS) department and a central Human Resources (HR) department. The Netscape IS group created a team that was responsible for developing and deploying the directory and directory-enabled applications, and the HR group provided the data about employees to IS for inclusion in the directory. HR uses software from PeopleSoft to manage information about its employees, contractors, and contingent workers. This information is used for business processes such as payroll and benefits enrollment.

Unlike some organizations (see Chapter 26 for a counterexample), most of Netscape's IS services are provided centrally rather than distributed throughout the various units within the company. Although desktop and network support personnel are deployed throughout Netscape, functions such as the employee Help Desk and development of infrastructure services such as the directory service are handled by a central team. This means that a high degree of control and centralization exists, so decision-making and deployment of new computing services are fast. Your organization may be much more "balkanized," especially if it is very large or has grown through mergers and acquisitions. (In fact, Netscape's original Information Services group was more centralized than the AOL Internal Computing division it eventually merged with, and across the entire set of AOL Time Warner companies there are several IS organizations.)

In addition to being used inside Netscape, directory technology ( specifically Netscape Directory Server) is a core component of Netscape's Web portal site, Netscape.com. Although Netscape.com would certainly make an interesting case study itself, we don't discuss it here. Netscape Directory Server is also used by many other internal and externally visible services within AOL Time Warner; for example, it is used within the Road Runner division to help provide their cable Internet service. But this case study focuses on how directory technology is used within Netscape to support and enhance basic business processes and to help employees be more productive.

   


Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services
Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)
ISBN: 0672323168
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 242

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