Case Study: WorldCom
This case study presents an overview of WorldCom's application of iPlanet directory solutions.  It was researched and written by Osterman Research, Inc.  Thank you to Kevin Crothers, Head of Corporate Web Systems for WorldCom, for his help in producing this case study.

COMPANY BACKGROUND
WorldCom found itself growing along side a myriad of acquisitions. In addition to its traditional communications business, the company needed to address new lines of business which include the switching fabric, data multiplexing, services provisioning and some application and service provider (ASP) business. It found itself with a growing number of IT challenges as its business scaled. WorldCom has many important offices and operations throughout the world, with more than 70,000 employees geographically distributed throughout in many nations around the world. The company continues to experience strong sales growth despite a softening economy.
   
THE NEED AND SOLUTION
In 1994, employees recognized that the same information was stored in many places throughout their organization.  Not only were there multiple sources of information, but also many conflicts about who owned the authoritative copy of that information. In addition, there were many applications that used the information. Without a mechanism to resolve information issues, each application had to refer to multiple data repositories to retrieve the information it needed. Consequently, data issues drove up the cost for new applications, and slowed down the time to deploy them. Even when an application found the information it needed, there was no guarantee that it was using the correct information. Applications that made copies of the information it needed could be potentially out-of-sync, since there was no mechanism in place to reconcile changes and conflicts. WorldCom started to take steps to resolve issues with its data.  The first step the company took was to deploy a relational database that stored all this data.

While the database addressed the issue of how to store data, the company found that a single physical database did not have the flexibility to serve many applications in multiple location.  In 1995, a decision was made to pursue directory services technology, and the company chose to deploy the University of Michigan's implementation of directory services, slapd and slurpd. In 1996/1997, WorldCom imported all of the slapd/slurpd environment to the v1.0 Beta of a new Netscape product - the Netscape LDAP Directory Server. The main creator of University of Michigan's slapd/slurpd had been hired by Netscape, and had built this new product for and with them, using the slapd/slurpd code he wrote at the University of Michigan. WorldCom moved their slapd/slurpd data into production using v1.03 Netscape LDAP Directory Server (now the iPlanet Directory Server).

This original directory has continued to evolve to the present day. Currently, the system runs primarily on Sun Solaris 4500 and 6500-class servers.  This company also needed its directory to talk to other systems in the environment, which include Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, OS/4, Irix, Next, DEC, BSD, Linux UNIX servers, as well as several Novell Netware and Mac OS servers. With all these environments' growing support for standard LDAP communications, the Netscape (iPlanet) Directory Server made it so they could share the stored information, but did not have to make but a few changes to their infrastructure.

Data covered in the directory is not limited to people's names and addresses. It covers a full gamut of information and functions, including: Employees Facilities Policies (ranging over a wide variety of topics including email broadcast policies specific to each organization, and vacation policy) Preferences (including individual customization and a preference for the corporate intranet message center to determine who sees which announcements) The iPlanet Directory Server directly supports WorldCom's email system, as well as the company's well-respected intranet. This intranet is a customized portal, based on iPlanet and Apache web servers, and provides services to all of its employees. The iPlanet Directory Server controls authentication to the company's intranet portal. The email system is also iPlanet-based, offering both POP3 and IMAP access. WorldCom's directory also includes information about the organization structure. This information facilitates many of the policy and preferences in the directory, and it supports workflow capabilities. The directory is integrated with the PeopleSoft HR system worldwide. Every night, the HR system exports information to a database where several steps are taken to assure quality, and business rules are applied to assure consistency with the directory schema. This database then becomes a source for updating the directory. The integration is bi-directional, with self-service information, such as telephone numbers, pager numbers, email addresses and alternate contact information being fed back from the directory into the HR system. In addition, the directory also feeds the company's SAP and Ariba systems.
   
BENEFITS
There have been several important benefits derived from the iPlanet LDAP directory: Costs have been reduced dramatically. Administrative costs are less than one-tenth of what they were before the directory. The current directory runs on fewer, cheaper servers than earlier solutions. Further, less systems administrator training is required than with earlier systems. Security has been increased. Security is more thorough and more widely deployed than it was before the directory. The current directory is more reliable. Even when there is an interruption in operations, the mean time to repair is much faster than with earlier systems.

LESSONS LEARNED
WorldCom has learned to use the technology as the technology has evolved. The company has developed a pair of important design rules: First, the company keeps the number of object classes as few as possible. This keeps the operation, backup and recovery, and gradual evolution of the system more straightforward and tractable. Second, the company indexes only a few items. However, when an item is indexed, it tends to be indexed in all of the ways possible. Keeping the number of indexes down speeds operation. However, the company has found that indexes tend to be used in many ways when they are there, so that the multiple types of indexing are worthwhile.

FUTURE PLANS
Having a solid directory infrastructure in place gives the company a basis on which to build further capability. Currently, there is a project underway to extend the physical security of buildings (building passes and access), based on the directory. It is in place in some of the largest locations and is being rolled out to an increasing number of the sites where the company does business. The next major initiative based on the directory capability will be to control extranet customization in the company's pre-sales environment. The company is also looking at application integration tools that will work with the policies in the directory.