Chapter 26. Case Study: An Enterprise with an Extranet

• Overview of the Organization

• Directory Drivers

• Directory Service Design

• Directory Service Deployment

• Directory Service Maintenance

• Leveraging the Directory Service

• Summary and Lessons Learned

• Looking Ahead

In this chapter we examine how a hypothetical company might extend its intranet-based services to its external trading partners . Such an arrangement, called an extranet , is an effective way to leverage existing systems and expertise.

In such a deployment, a directory service is usually already designed and deployed. To expand its service, however, the directory must be extended beyond the organization's internal network (and outside any firewalls). This constraint creates additional requirements, especially in the area of security and access control, that might necessitate a reassessment of the basic directory design.

The same fictional company that was introduced in Chapter 25, HugeCo, is our model in this chapter. In this case study HugeCo extends its existing directory service to include services for its trading partners.