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As organisations change and people come and go, managing the many databases that hold identity-based information – such as employees’ details – has become something of a headache for IT managers. BT has the answer, as Jo Davies reports.
Finding people’s names and numbers, their grade, salary or job function, details of company assets they’re using, such as mobile phones and laptops, and other information that’s stored within corporate directory systems shouldn’t be rocket science. But given that most large organisations store different aspects of this information in different databases, the data you need is not always where you most expect it to be.
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Differences in data
Chances are, the HR department will have details of your pay and home address, but an altogether different system will hold the data about your training record, or what PC you use. And, as organisations add new functions and features to databases and look to collaborate and share their information with both across their business and with trusted third parties, there’s a growing likelihood of conflicts between duplicate records, and that systems will be incompatible. Not to mention the attendant management costs and expenditure on software and hardware.
Faced with this problem, in 2001 BT embarked on a massive infrastructure implementation programme to put BT’s identity-related information online and make it as available as possible to anyone with the suitable access permission.
Access your assets
Heading up the Directory Enablement programme is manager Charles Hepworth from BT’s network and information technologies business, BT Exact. He explained: “The key challenge in managing huge amounts of data is in ensuring that the information gets to the right place, gets there quickly and is accurate. The Directory Enablement programme is aiming to give everyone in the company a ‘one truth’ view across all systems, and to make the data immediately available to the person that needs it, when they need it.”
The programme will also improve BT’s ability to manage assets, such as mobile phones and PCs, and access rights for application servers and buildings. It will also reduce the time it takes to make an individual fully effective within their function by enhancing- the process of assigning resources such as phones and laptops and granting them the security access they need to carry out their work.
In today’s business environment, it’s also frequently necessary for a company’s employees to be able to work closely with third party organisations, and that’s something that BT’s Directory Enablement programme will also make easier. Employees of such organisations will be identified and managed with the same degree of accuracy and sensitivity as BT’s own employees.
Us helping you
And the cost benefit of introducing the programme throughout BT is already looking healthy, as Charles commented: “From the more efficient management of all of our resources, through to saving time on getting a new employee ready to go in a new role, we’re finding that by making vital data more readily available we’re improving our ability to control the amount we spend on resources and ensure optimum efficiency.”
And it won’t stop there. BT also plans to re-sell the technology that’s being used in the programme – along with providing the expertise of the programme team – to corporate customers facing similar issues. Charles said: “This is a high profile business issue that companies are now addressing. Once we’ve transformed our own systems, BT will be looking to see how its expertise in the area could help customers reap similar benefits, possibly by providing bespoke solutions that match their exact needs and organisational structures.”
Single sign-on
In the short term, however, the team is focused on a number of practical and technical challenges. They need to build new infrastructure to replace existing legacy systems with a single meta-directory, synchronising all BT’s underlying directories and providing the infrastructure the company needs to allow its employees to sign-on just once to BT’s network, rather than separately to each individual system or service. In a company that uses thousands of separate IT systems, it’s a tall order, but the efficiency benefits that will come from only having one set of user accounts to manage are enormous.
Charles added: “It’s only recently that something like this has become possible and it’s something that few companies have attempted. We’ll be creating ‘first of a kind’ examples that show how new technology can help information work for business, 100 per cent.”
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