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2. Eliminate and focus technical support calls. Due to the desktops being better locked down, many support calls from accidental user error will be greatly reduced. In addition, there is security available for delegating common administrative tasks. This means that tasks such as resetting passwords or printer management can be assigned to designated 'PC wardens' in each department.
For example, a PC warden in the marketing department would be a user in that department with slightly more IT literacy and responsibility. Delegation of management helps to focus support calls and provide faster response times for very basic user problems as the designated PC warden is a member of the department and will, in many cases, be working near to the affected users.
3. Integrate diverse applications and databases. Due to the extensible nature of AD, it allows the integration of different applications and databases. An example of this is an email application such as Microsoft Exchange 2003, which can take advantage of the user objects in the AD database.
The benefit is that you no longer need to create separate users and groups for use with the email application. Instead an application such as Exchange 2003 will detect the names of all existing users in the AD database and can create mailboxes for each user at installation time. In addition, management of the email system can also be conducted from the same tools used to manage your basic network objects.
Summary
In summary, a service such as Microsoft's Active Directory can make managing your network simpler and help to dramatically reduce the total cost of ownership. Without a similar service in place, it is well worth you making an analysis of the savings that could be made by moving towards AD.
In a report of this size, we can only give you a snapshot of some of these areas. Others can be found on the TCO saved from better security and many other areas such as AD's fault tolerance.
Ben Chai is author of Migrating from Windows NT to Windows 2000 and has worked on several AD projects in the financial sector. He can be emailed via Ben@chai.co.uk
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