Defining the Microsoft Active Directory Opportunity

Solution providers across the channel tend to gravitate toward complexity. After all, complexity equals opportunity. Nowhere is that more apparent than surrounding deployments of Microsoft Active Directory (AD). Organizations are dependent more on Microsoft AD than almost any other piece of enterprise infrastructure software. As one of the more complex deployment challenges in the enterprise, Microsoft AD—a special-purpose database designed to handle a large number of read and search operations and a significantly smaller number of changes and updates—is fairly fragile. The end result is a lot of demand for Microsoft AD expertise. A new survey of 212 IT professionals conducted by Dimensional Research on behalf of Dell finds that Microsoft AD represents a major IT services opportunity. Not only are two-thirds of organizations hesitant to make changes to applications because of Microsoft AD complexity, 64 percent admit they lack internal Microsoft AD expertise. All that adds up to a significant opportunity for solution providers in the channel that are willing to invest in acquiring that expertise. Channel Insider examines key data points from the study.