Oracle Directory Services (ODS) provide identity virtualization, storage and synchronization services. As part of ODS, Oracle Internet Directory (OID) is a general-purpose LDAPv3 compliant directory storage that is extremely scalable, highly available and secure. Oracle Internet Directory serves as the central user repository for Oracle Identity Management, a component of Fusion Middleware, simplifying user administration in the Oracle environment and providing a standards-based application directory for the heterogeneous enterprise. Its unique and agile design includes built-in synchronization that allows seamless integration with other enterprise user repositories and facilitates enterprise directory standardization.

Key Features

• Deployment Accelerators, based on wizard technologies
• Integrated System Maintenance and Monitoring with Enterprise Manager
• Unified directory services administration with Oracle Directory Services Manager
• Superior Scalability and Performance
• High Availability built on flexible directory multi master replication and cluster technology
• Integrated, multilevel system security with integrated Directory and Database Security
• Directory Integration with Microsoft Active Directory, Sun, Novell, eDirectory and OpenLDAP
• Integration with Oracle e-Business Suite, Siebel, Peoplesoft
• Standards based, LDAP v2 and v3 compliant
• Common Criteria EAL4
• OpenGroup LDAP Certified

Key Benefits:

• Increased ROI and reduced cost
• Centralized Management and Monitoring
• Enhanced Security
• Out of the box application integration

Directory Services Requirements and Challenges

Directory services are key building blocks for identity-enabled business applications and the underlying enterprise identity management (IdM) architecture. Wellstructured and organized directory services are the foundation of efficient and effective security services.

One of the identity management challenges enterprises face is the lack of a single source for identity data and the proliferation of identity stores, including directories and databases. Enterprises have employee information in HR databases and/or Active Directory (AD), customer and partner data in CRM databases and/or LDAP directories. This proliferation of data results in high administration and maintenance cost, inconsistent identity data, and compliance issues.

Oracle Directory Services Solution

Oracle has the most comprehensive directory services offering on the market, including virtualization, storage and synchronization. Oracle Virtual Directory (OVD) provides identity aggregation and transformation without synchronization while the Oracle Internet Directory (OID) provides data storage and synchronization services.

Specifically, Oracle Internet Directory:

• Provides the ability to store multiple contexts, thus disparate data can be managed in a single service.
• Scales to extremely large deployments on less hardware with high performance. This reduces the footprint required to deploy enterprise directory services in the data-center resulting in cost savings and a greener enterprise.
• Is the most secure directory service providing security at every level from data in transit to storage and backups. In addition to LDAP security, it leverages Oracle database security features like Database Vault and Transparent Data Encryption.
• Ensures maximum availability with several layers of high availability (HA). In addition to multi-master LDAP replication, OID also supports Oracle database Real Application Cluster (RAC) and OID Clusters.
• Delivers un-paralleled ease of use for a general purpose directory storage via Oracle Directory Services Manager (ODSM).
• Provides advanced technologies to help enterprise standardize on OID and consolidate existing directories into a single directory storage.
• Integrated enterprise wide manageability through Oracle Enterprise Manager.

ODSM is the common unified management console for all Oracle Directory Services products including OID and OVD.