Active Directory Extranet Adoption Fueled by Internet Scalability And Rapid Return on Investment

LAS VEGAS, May 8, 2002 — Today at NetWorld+Interop 2002, Microsoft Corp. announced it has seen strong customer adoption of its Windows 2000 Server Active Directory directory service for use both inside and outside the corporate firewall. Customers are deploying Active Directory for identity management of millions of users in Internet and extranet environments. Customers standardizing on a single directory technology for use inside and outside the corporate firewall achieved lower total cost of ownership, accelerated return on investment and saw payback in fewer than 12 months.

Its expensive and risky for a company to use a different technology for its Internet and extranet directory than it uses for its network operating system directory, said Cliff Reeves, vice president of the Windows .NET Product Management Group at Microsoft. Active Directory customers are able to reduce management and administration costs through the use of a single directory technology for identity management inside and outside the firewall. Its a compelling value proposition, especially when you add in the fact that customers can use the Microsoft Internet Connector license to deploy Active Directory for unlimited use as an Internet/extranet directory.

Deployment as an extranet directory is clearly an emerging and important role for Active Directory, according to John Enck, vice president and research director at Gartner Inc. Deployments in the NOS space have been steadily increasing, with the pace of adoption held back only by overall enterprise economic constraints, and not technical constraints.

Standardizing on Active Directory Garners Rapid Returns

The features and value of Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory in particular continue to positively impact a broad spectrum of businesses and their bottom lines. The features of Active Directory such as its distributed security model, group policy and automated software distribution along with its directory consolidation capabilities are catalyzing these savings. Studies audited by Gartner Inc. and META Group show that these benefits culminate in reduced IT costs overall, together with rapid return on investment and payback typically in fewer than 12 months.1

We had seven separate sets of data stores running on seven separate networks. That meant redundant servers, domains, data management processes, IT support and network administration each with its separate cost, said Craig Squires, global head of infrastructure at Barclays Global Investors. Active Directory allowed us to build one companywide domain, giving us single sign-on capabilities and a single point of management. Based on actual costs and user experience, BGI expects an eight-month payback and a 105 percent internal rate of return due to our deployment of Active Directory.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania also found great value in standardizing its network operating system directory service onto Active Directory from its previous infrastructure that supported a mix of packages from IBM Corp., Lotus, Novell Inc. and Microsoft. By standardizing all agencies on a single software package and implementing Active Directory for centralized management, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has been able to save $9.2 million dollars (U.S.) in software costs as well as $9 million (U.S.) annually in its total cost of ownership (an average of $452 per desktop).

Value and Scalability Drive Adoption in the Extranet

Customers using Active Directory in an extranet environment are building highly scalable systems and reducing their total cost of ownership compared to competitive technologies.

Microsoft customer Clalit Health Services recently deployed Active Directory to authenticate its more than 3.7 million customers online, giving them the ability to access their personal medical records, schedule appointments and review test results any time. The deployment further underscores independent testing by Mindcraft that shows Active Directory is capable of scaling to well over 15 million users.2

BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina is migrating its nearly 1-million-customer extranet from iPlanet to Active Directory due to the lower total cost of ownership, said Bry Curry, director of .NET Systems, BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina. Were very happy with the performance and scalability of Active Directory in this role and expect to have Active Directory totally rolled out by June 2002.

We chose to deploy Active Directory as an extranet authentication and directory service to provide single sign-on support for our 1.5 million borrowers and institutional users, said Jon Jones, director of client/server at Sallie Mae Corp. We are also using the directory to secure our enterprise and Web services, which will allow us to specifically manage access control and improve our ability to manage application components as well as users.

The Microsoft Internet Connector license makes it easy for a customer to extend Active Directory usage to millions of Internet and extranet users at a fixed cost of $1,999.

Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Active Directory is the foundation for enterprise and Internet identity management. More information about Windows 2000 Server and Active Directory can be found at http://www.microsoft.com/windows/ and http://www.microsoft.com /windows2000/technologies/directory/ad/default.asp .

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq MSFT) is the worldwide leader in software, services and Internet technologies for personal and business computing. The company offers a wide range of products and services designed to empower people through great software any time, any place and on any device.

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