Sun Microsystems White Paper Sample

Growing stores of disparate identity data are inevitable in today’s enterprise, where increasing numbers of users and applications are the rule rather than the exception. Consolidating these stores of data can be essential to controlling IT administration costs and achieving business goals. One way to do this is to employ a virtual directory that aggregates user identity information from multiple data repositories and presents a consolidated view of all the information. While enabling a single view of data from multiple sources is much faster and more efficient than creating a physical directory infrastructure for that purpose, it also preserves underlying secure IT infrastructures when multiple organizations are involved, since the data is not actually replicated or moved out of its original environment.

Today, there are three particularly notable reasons to consider a virtual directory. Deploying a virtual directory to address these issues can help the enterprise accelerate progress toward business goals and, at the same time, keep costs under control.

• Costly identity sprawl that results from running legacy applications that have different identity attributes
• Aggressive merger-and-acquisition timelines for integration of new identity data into existing directory structures
• The need to federate faster and deliver services sooner by speeding information sharing and access to services among collaborating partners