Vendors unite to develop cross-platform directory standards

A collection of software vendors lead by IBM and Novell have announced an initiative designed to accelerate the directory market by expediting development and deployment of directory-enabled applications that run across different computing environments.

Called the Directory Interoperability Forum (DIF), the group said it will work with existing standards bodies including the Internet Engineering Task Force, the Desktop Management Task Force, the World Wide Web Consortium and the Open Group to accelerate standardisation of technologies that are based on open standards such as the Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP).

Founding members include IBM, Novell, Oracle, Data Connection Limited, Lotus Development and Isocor. In addition, the DIF is supported by a variety of industry leaders, including Alteon Websystems, AT&T, Aventail, Cisco Systems, Citrix, Entrust Technologies, Lucent Technologies, Process Software, Red Hat, and VeriSign.

Notably absent from DIF is Microsoft, which announced the acquisition of Zoomit on the same day. With Zoomit's technology, users will be able to synchronise and move information from myriad legacy directories into a main Microsoft Active Directory repository. Microsoft officials said the company will integrate Zoomit's metadirectory technology into Windows 2000 and Active Directory sometime next year.

As an initial step, members of the forum have verified that current LDAP-enabled applications interoperate with IBM SecureWay Directory, Novell Directory Services (NDS), Lotus Domino Directory and Netscape Directory. Applications that have been tested include IBM WebSphere, IBM Blue Pages, Lotus Domino, Lotus Notes, Tivoli Management products, Novell GroupWise and Novell NetPublisher.

Members of the forum intend to promote open directory standards, collaborate to define, create and implement software development kits and provide consistent behaviour across directories that implement open directory standards. The members will also encourage independent software vendors (ISV) to write new directory-enabled applications to open directory standards.

Jamie Lewis, president of analyst house, The Burton Group, said: "A cross-platform development kit would be a huge win. To be able to develop knowing you're not committing to one vendor's directory implementation would get users over one of the last obstacles they face with directories."