Active Directory® for Microsoft® Windows® Server 2003 Technical Reference

Active Directory Open Standards

To meet the growing demands of a directory service in the ever-pluralistic environment of modern enterprise computing, Microsoft had to incorporate open computing standards in its NOS and its directory services implementation. It is increasingly likely that, eventually, server rooms of medium to large organizations will house a variety of NOSs running on a variety of types of server hardware. This could include Windows and Novell NetWare servers running on Intel-based platforms, UNIX platforms running on RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computing)-based hardware, and Linux-based workgroup servers running on any platform administrators can get their hands on. In order for these systems to coexist, the NOSs must communicate ...