Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services (2nd Edition)

Understanding and Deploying LDAP Directory Services > 25. Case Study: A Large Multinational Enterprise > An Overview of the Organization

An Overview of the Organization

HugeCo is a very widely dispersed organization with 225,000 employees and contractors located in 34 countries around the world. Most employees live and work in countries where HugeCo's manufacturing facilities are located: the United States, Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Australia. HugeCo has relationships with hundreds of other companies that serve as suppliers, dealers, and customers for the products it produces.

HugeCo has a strong, well- funded central information services (IS) organization that operates out of the corporate headquarters site in Chicago, Illinois. There are four regional IS departments to serve the needs of HugeCo sites in North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The primary role of the central IS organization is to design the network and applications architecture, run several central services (such as a corporate electronic mail hub), and coordinate the activities of HugeCo's regional IS departments. The regional IS departments are responsible for the installation and maintenance of all hardware and software within their regions .

The information technology infrastructure at HugeCo includes a modern, high-speed TCP/IP network. Within each site, a combination of 10Base-T and 100Base-T twisted-pair Ethernets is used to connect desktop machines and servers. Larger sites also have an internal fiber optic backbone network that operates at 100Mbps. Most sites are connected with leased T1 (1.54Mbps) or T3 (45Mbps) lines to regional data centers that are connected to each other with leased T3 lines. Some of HugeCo's smallest sites are connected via the public Internet using virtual private network (VPN) technology and local Internet service providers (ISPs). An overview of the HugeCo network is shown in Figure 25.1.

The central IS organization, along with the regional IS departments, provides a rich, robust set of electronic mail, discussion forum, group scheduling, and document publishing services to HugeCo's professional employees. Following is a list of the most important applications in use at HugeCo:

• Netscape Messaging Server is used to provide electronic mail routing, delivery, and reading services for most of HugeCo's sites. Sendmail.org's sendmail mail transfer agent (MTA) and the University of Washington's imapd mail store software are used in some sites, but both packages are being phased out. A variety of desktop email clients are used, including QUALCOMM's Eudora, Netscape Messenger, and Microsoft's Outlook and Outlook Express clients .

• Lotus Notes servers and clients are used to support group discussion forums and certain collaborative applications developed in house. Notes is used only by HugeCo's executive staff and their assistants.

• Netscape Enterprise Server is used to provide document publishing services and to support a variety of custom Web-based applications. Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser and Netscape's Navigator browser are both widely used within HugeCo.

Most of the applications are hosted on Sun Enterprise servers that run the Solaris UNIX operating system. The notable exceptions are the servers for Lotus Notes, which are deployed on Dell PowerEdge servers that run Microsoft Windows NT Server.

The central IS organization also employs several dozen software engineers who develop and maintain a variety of custom Web-based applications. These software engineers also assist employees in the regional IS departments and within HugeCo departments that are developing their own applications.

HugeCo benefits from strong centralized leadership that makes it possible for the central IS organization to dictate which software and hardware are used throughout much of the company. Still, there is a high degree of independence within regions, especially with respect to how services and data are administered.

Index terms contained in this section

applications

          HugeCo case study 2nd 3rd

case studies

          HugeCo 2nd

                    applications in use 2nd 3rd

                    network specifications

directories

         case studies

                    HugeCo 2nd 3rd 4th 5th 6th

Eudora

          HugeCo case study

HugeCo case study 2nd

          applications in use 2nd 3rd

          network specifications

imapd mail store software

          HugeCo case study

Lotus Notes

          HugeCo case study

Microsoft Outlook

          HugeCo case study

Netscape Enterprise Server

          HugeCo case study

Netscape Messaging Server

          HugeCo case study

Netscape Messenger

          HugeCo case study

Sun Enterprise servers

          HugeCo case study

2002, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc.