2008 Experts Conference Survey White Paper

netpro 2008 directory
experts conference
Attendee Survey Results - Highlights and Analysis
www.netpro.com
Your IT infrastructure. Simplified.

netpro 2008 directory experts conference
attendee survey results - highlights and analysis
Executive Overview
As the leading provider of solutions for Windows infrastructure management, NetPro is
committed to helping leverage the power of Windows through intelligence and best practices
both within and beyond our products. Understanding the issues and needs of the Identity and
Access Management community helps us build better products and provides the community with
knowledge and best practices to improve the productivity and effectiveness of its members.
This white paper summarizes the findings of a survey taken at the NetPro 2008 Directory Experts
Conference, which was held March 3 through 5 in Chicago, Illinois. The goal of this survey is to
gain a better understanding of the issues facing attendee organizations, the relative priority of those
issues, current tool usage and common practices for directory and other Windows infrastructure
management tasks. We have conducted similar surveys annually at Directory Experts Conferences
since 2005 and found the results were widely appreciated by the Identity and Access Management
community. In addition to the 2008 responses and analysis, this year’s report also examines how
trends have evolved since the previous surveys. We will continue to conduct these surveys at future
DEC conferences and welcome your comments and ideas for new questions and areas for analysis.
High points from the survey:

n Demographics
o 2008 DEC attracted 565 delegates from 290 companies throughout 28 countries
o 280 attendees representing a good cross section of organizations responded to this survey
o Survey respondents are primarily technicians, work within large corporate and
governmental IT organizations, are responsible for Active Directory management and
support large numbers of directory users.
n Findings
o User provisioning/ de-provisioning is the toughest challenge for IT organizations. 34%

of respondents rate this area as “problematic” or “out of control” at their company.
o Delegating administrative rights (29%) and Compliance Reporting (27%) take 2nd and
3rd place as challenges.
o The survey reveals a slight drop in job satisfaction from 2007 - 70% of 2008
respondents are satisfied or very satisfied vs. 74% in 2007
o Workload/work hours top the respondents’ list of worst aspects of their jobs
o Despite complaints about long hours, most respondents (64%) work 40 to 50 hours per
week; only 3% work 60 to 80 hours; and only 1% work over 80 hours
o Respondents are split on the effectiveness of their organization’s identity and access
management performance, 29% rate their organizations as “less effective than we
wish” while an equivalent percentage rates themselves above average
o SCOM/MOM is the most used IT management framework with 59% of IT organizations

reporting its use (55% of overall respondents)
o Only 31% of IT organizations consider their infrastructure management efforts to be

well-automated
o Getting better tools and automation tops respondents’ wish list for the 2nd year in a row
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Introduction
NetPro is committed to leveraging the power of Windows through intelligence and best
practices both within and beyond our products. As the leading provider of solutions for
Windows infrastructure management, we are strong believers in research to understand the
issues, needs and best practices of the Identity and Access Management (IDA) community.
This knowledge enables us to build better products and we share it freely with the
community to contribute to the productivity and effectiveness of its members.
This paper presents data gathered through a survey of attendees at NetPro’s tenth Directory
Experts Conference (DEC) held March 2 through 5 at the Hilton in Chicago, Illinois. The
2008 conference attracted 565 delegates representing 290 companies and arriving from
a record 28 countries. This year, 280 participants, representing a good cross section of
attendee demographics, completed the survey at a post-conference website.
The intent of this survey is to gather information that has value when shared with attendees,
analysts, trade press and members of the IDA community. Collecting actual data and
experiences from conference attendees provides a wealth of information on the issues
facing our community, the relative priority of those issues, current tool usage and common
practices for directory and other network infrastructure management tasks. The 2008
survey builds on the results of similar surveys conducted at DEC conferences since 2005
and gives us the opportunity to examine trends and changes across four years. We plan to
continue conducting these surveys at future DEC events and welcome your comments and
suggestions for future questions and areas for analysis.
This document summarizes the information captured through the survey along with data
analysis, trends and our insights on the implications of the findings. We believe it provides
solid data for comparisons with peer organizations and many ideas for organizations
to consider as they evaluate their IDA efforts and look for high value opportunities for
improvement and investment. We hope you find the results as fascinating as we did!
About DEC
General Information
Since its inception in 2002, DEC has been dedicated to advancing the skills of the most
experienced users of Microsoft Identity and Access (IDA) technologies. DEC emphasizes IDA
technologies that IT professionals use and manage on a daily basis, and included tracks on:
n Directory Services, with specific focus on leveraging and optimizing Active Directory
n Identity Lifecycle Management, including all aspects of ILM, from user provisioning to
cross-platform management
n Federated Identity, highlighting ADFS and CardSpace
n Information Protection, with specific emphasis on Windows RMS
2008 Highlights
DEC 2008, the tenth event of its kind, continues to surge in popularity. The DEC 2008
theme – Active Directory Evolves: The New Identity Platform for Enterprise 2.0 – explored
how Windows directory and identity technologies support a rapidly changing distributed
computing paradigm that’s mobile, free from boundaries, and virtualized.
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From pre-conference workshops to cocktail receptions and birds of a feather sessions, DEC
2008 offered an exciting mix of fun, educational and peer networking opportunities. With
over sixty sessions, participants enjoyed presentations, interactive discussions and thought
provoking commentary by a renowned group of IDA authorities including top-rated strategists
and speakers from Microsoft.
A sampling of the many popular speakers and topics from the 2008 sessions include:
n Joe Long, Microsoft’s General Manager of the Connected Identity and Directory team,
opened the general conference with a keynote presentation that discussed the current state
of identity federation in the marketplace, the problems that identity federation will solve in
the future and how Microsoft’s AD products will evolve to support those solutions.
n Gil Kirkpatrick, NetPro’s Chief Technical Officer, addressed the collision between application
developers and AD. Using AD as just another LDAP store, or worse, just another database,
these developers often deliver sub-optimal results from their efforts. He discussed how to:
uncover these situation, understand what application developers are trying to accomplish,
and help educate them about the best ways to leverage AD.
n Wook Lee, Directory Service Architect at HP, presented how to “Raise Longhorn on the
Outskirts of the Corporate Network.” This session shared lessons from the many months
HP has spent figuring out what it takes to make “Longhorn” AD thrive as an essential
component of its aggressive datacenter consolidation program.
n AD Federation Services (ADFS) Deep Dive – Presented by Microsoft product management,

this session discussed the basics of claims-based authorization, how the federation
process as defined by WS-Federation actually works, the different kinds of authentication
that ADFS supports, internal structure of ADFS, etc.
n Pamela Dingle, Consultant with Nulli Secundus presented recipes for setting up an Identity
Provider to create and validate corporately branded information cards, and to enable
consuming applications both within and outside network perimeters to accept company
information cards.
n Jeremy Palenchar, Infrastructure Architect with Avanade, offered delegates “10 ways to
improve the performance of your ILM system”. Based on results gathered from projects at
multiple Fortune 100 companies and several government agencies, these recommendations
can improve the performance of most ILM implementations.
n Danny Kim, CTO of Full Armor, covered “Workflow Enabling the Datacenter,” a session
which discussed how a large telecom implementation used Windows Workflow Foundation,
Windows Communications Foundation, and Microsoft PowerShell technologies together to
provision services for up to 80,000 servers utilizing virtualization technologies.
Survey Demographics
The DEC survey continues to attract strong response from attendees, gathering 280 respondents
out of 565 overall attendees for a response rate of almost 50% in 2008. Previous surveys
attracted 314 (2007), 235 (2006) and 101 (2005) respondents. Given the size and breadth of
participation, we are confident that the survey results constitute a representative sample of
attending roles and organizations. The survey’s sample size is large enough to support a variety
of statistically valid breakdowns into subgroups. These groupings will enable readers to compare
more accurately their organizations and experiences with those of their peers.
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This section provides us with an understanding of the demographic make-up of the survey
participants in order to give context to the subsequent survey results.
Most Survey Participants are Technicians

n Breakdown by Job Category
As expected given the mission of the DEC conference, respondents are almost entirely
“hands on” practitioners (consultants, administrators, system engineers, or technicians
within the write-in portion of the “other” category). In 2008, technical practitioners
accounted for 91% of the survey respondents, up significantly from 77% in 2007. This
difference reflects a drop in IT Manager, Director, and VP respondents as well as a decline
in non-technical respondents within the “other” category.
Table 1: Breakdown by Job Category
2008 2007 2006 2005
Administrator 9% 7% 6% 10%
Architect 34% NA NA NA
Consultant 11% 19% 21% 18%
Systems Engineer 30% 40% 40% 46%
Systems or Business Analyst 5% 6% 6% 6%
IT Manager, Director, VP 8% 16% 11% 14%
Other 4% 11% 11% 7%
Industry Analyst/Trade Press <1% 1% NA NA
Blank 0% 0% 4% 0%
NA = Not Asked
n Architect was added as a demographic category in 2008. It was previously the most
popular write-in entry in the “other” category. We suspect that in previous years that
attendees who considered themselves architects distributed themselves between the
Systems Engineer, Consultant, ‘other” and possibly even the IT Manager categories. All
those categories saw a significant drop in 2008 with the addition of Architect option.
n The Architect category supplanted Systems Engineers as the most popular attendee
category at 34%, due in part to the factors described above.
n Write-in respondents in the “Other” category were mostly developers, but included a
product manager, security architect, and security analyst.
A Majority Work in Large Corporate or Government IT Organizations

n Breakdown by Organization Type
n DEC attracts a healthy mix of attendees from IT organizations and companies

providing software and services
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o 211 (just over 75%) of respondents are members of either a corporate (66%) or
government (9%) IT organization
o Non-IT respondents include Consultants (12.9%), Service Providers (7.5%) and

Software Providers (4.3%)
n To provide a more accurate picture of best practices and technology usage patterns,
where appropriate, this analysis will break out government and commercial IT
organizations separately. Each analysis will note whether it refers to overall survey
responses or specifically to IT responses.
n IT Organization Size
n Corporate and government IT respondents are mostly from large organizations. Of IT

respondents designating the size of their IT organization (199 out of 211)
o 92% are from IT organizations with over 100 employees
o A remarkable 75% work for very large IT organizations with over 1000 employees
DEC Attendees Support Large Numbers of Users

Large IT organization size also means large numbers of users to support, with 59% of survey
respondents working in organizations that support over 20,000 users. Survey respondents
from vendor organizations also tended to support many users, with a similar percentage (55%)
supporting over 20,000 users. However, a higher percentage of vendor respondents supported
smaller user bases. This distribution highlights the difference between vendor personnel
(consultants and managed services support teams) who serve customers in large scale IT
organizations and those who provide support within their own companies.
Table 2: Number of Users Supported
Users supported it vendor
Over 20,000 users 59% 55%
5,000 to 20,000 users 25% 9%
1,000 to 5,000 users 12% 11%
500 to 1,000 users 1% 5%
100 to 500 users 0% 7%
Less than 100 users 3% 13%
Most Respondents Have Multiple Responsibilities

n Technical Responsibilities
The table below provides a breakdown of IT organization attendees by areas of technical

responsibility. As expected from the name of the conference, the majority of attendees have
responsibility for AD. However, the mix of responsibilities has evolved as the conference has
broadened its mission to incorporate all Microsoft IDA technologies. This trend is highlighted
by the growth in the percentage of respondents who have responsibility for MIIS/ILM.
5
Survey respondents could specify multiple areas of responsibility. Of those listing their
responsibilities, 52% support at least three of the listed technologies, only 18% support a
single technology and 3% support all 7 listed technologies.
Table 3: Technology Responsibilities
Technology 2008 2007 2006 2005
Active Directory 81% 72% 90% 96%
DNS 48% 43% 54% 59%
Exchange 27% 15% 19% 29%
MIIS/ILM 30% 40% 40% 46%
Sharepoint 5% 6% 6% 6%
Non-Microsoft Platforms 8% 16% 11% 14%
Entire Network 4% 11% 11% 7%
Other <1% 1% NA N
n Organizational Responsibilities
The 2008 survey further refined the split between technology and organizational
responsibilities started in the 2007 survey. Operations (68%) and Administration (67%)
are the two most prevalent responsibilities for IT organizations, while Security (56%) and
Administration (52%) are the most prevalent for Vendor respondents. Again, respondents
were able to specify multiple choices. Of those listing their responsibilities, 52% support
at least three of the listed roles, and 27% support only one role. How these roles overlap is
interesting. Of those IT respondents specifying responsibility for User Support, 91% also
have responsibility for Administration and 74% include Operations. Those listing Audit/
Compliance responsibilities (39% of the total) typically have additional Operations (78%),
Administration (81%) and Security (67%) responsibilities.
Table 4: Organizational Responsibilities
organizational role it vendor
Operations 68% 44%
Administration 67% 52%
User Support 31% 21%
Software Development 17% 40%
Audit/Compliance 39% 35%
Security 57% 56%
Other 13% 13%
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Highlights and Analysis

I. Challenges
The DEC survey was modified in 2008 to improve its ability to identify operational problem areas
within the IDA community. This year’s survey asked respondents to rate eleven areas – password
management, user provisioning/ de-provisioning, delegating administrative rights, server
configuration, security configuration, GPO administration, compliance reporting, diagnostic
and repair, back up / archiving, data recovery and disaster recovery – by the level of challenge
they present to the respondents’ organizations. The rating options were: “Out of Control,”
“Problematic,” “Manageable,” “Handling Well,” or “Non-Issue.”
Plenty of Opportunity to Improve Performance in Key Areas

While survey responses showed considerable diversity in how the areas were rated, clear
patterns emerged, making it simple to stack rank the areas that were the most challenging as
well as identifying the areas most likely to be handled well. The following two charts contrast
the most problematic areas with the least problematic areas across all respondents. The
two categories are similar when viewed by the percentages of respondents rating them as
“manageable,” but strong differences appear when comparing the low (“Out of Control” and
“Problematic”) and high ratings (“Handling Well” and “Non-Issue.”)
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Highlights
n “Manageable” was the most common answer for virtually all areas for both IT and vendor
respondents, indicating considerable room for improvement
o For IT respondents, server configuration was the only area where the percentage
of respondents rating their organization’s situation as “Handling Well” exceeded
“Manageable”
o Vendor respondents had no areas where “Handling Well” exceeded “Manageable”
n Fortunately, only 5% or fewer organizations are “Out of Control” in any area, but each area
had respondents in this category
n Many factors affect the rating of a given area including its effort requirements, level of risk,
tediousness and time pressures. The quality of available automation is also statistically
significant. Areas supported by mature tools, such as Back up / Archiving are deemed
less challenging than areas such as Compliance Reporting, where available automation is
viewed as weak. The automation section of this report examines the quality of available
automation of each of the eleven listed areas.
User provisioning / de-provisioning, delegating administrative rights, and compliance

reporting are the three most problematic areas for IT
The top issues were ranked by adding the percentage of respondents rating a given area
as either “Out of Control” or “Problematic.” Not surprising, as shown in table 5, the most
administratively tedious and cumbersome areas rose to the top.
Table 5: The most challenging areas
top issues (it) negative top issues (vendors) negative

1 User provisioning / de-provisioning 35% 1 Compliance reporting 30%
2 Delegating aministrative rights 29% 2 User provisioning / de-provisioning 20%
3 Compliance reporting 27% 3 Password management 19%
4 Disaster recovery 23% 4 Delegating administrative rights 17%
5 Password management 19% 5 Diagnostic and repair 17%
6 Security configuration 18% 6 Security configuration 12%
7 GPO administration 16% 7 Disaster recovery 12%
8 Diagnostic and repair 13% 8 Back up / archiving 10%
9 Server configuration 12% 9 Data recovery 10%
10 Data recovery 11% 10 GPO administration 7%
11 Back up / archiving 8% 11 Server configuration 4%
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n User provisioning / de-provisioning easily captured first place among IT respondents with
over 1/3 rating this area problematic at minimum. A tedious area subject to high volumes
of requests, 5% of respondents rated it as “Out of Control” in their organizations, and only
28% rated it as “Handled Well” or a “Non-Issue.”
n Delegating administrative rights is an area fraught with potential security and compliance
risks and it presents a challenge to 29% of the responding IT organizations.
n Compliance reporting is an increasingly time-consuming overhead area that draws

resources away from more beneficial IDA tasks. It takes third place as a challenge, with a
27% rating, but last place in areas rated “Handled Well” or a “Non-Issue.” It also receives
the lowest rating for quality of available automation.
n Disaster Recovery is a surprise 4th place challenge - Given the impact and level of publicity
generated by natural and geopolitical disasters in recent years, one would expect most
organizations to have strong plans, processes and tools to handle Disaster Recovery. Yet
only 1/3 of survey respondents rate their organizations highly in this area and 23% consider
the area problematic.
Compliance reporting is the number one issue for the vendor community
Overall, the vendor community rates their challenges similarly to those of IT respondents.
Nevertheless, some interesting differences exist:
n Customer demands for compliance reports clearly impact consulting firms and service
providers, earning compliance reporting the number 1 spot on the vendor issue list with a
30% negative response.
n User provisioning / de-provisioning takes 2nd place, receiving problematic ratings from
20% of the vendor respondents.
n Relying more heavily on automation to support their operations, vendor respondent report a
lower percentage of problematic ratings across all 11 areas.
Positive ratings exceed negative ratings for most areas

With the exception of the top three challenge areas for IT as noted above, positive ratings (the
sum of “Handling Well” and “Non-Issue”) exceed negative ratings (the sum of “Out of Control”
and “Problematic”). Among the vendors, positive ratings were higher in all areas except for
compliance reporting.
Server Configuration is the least challenging area for IT organizations

Most IT respondents (51%) believe they have server configuration solidly under control, followed
by back up / archiving (45%) and data recovery (43%). Interestingly, although placed 2nd by
vendor respondents, only 39% rated server configuration positively.
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Table 6: The least challenging areas
solid performance (it) positive solid performance (vendors) positive

1 Server configuration 51% 1 Back up / archiving 41%
2 Back up / archiving 45% 2 Server configuration 39%
3 Data recovery 43% 3 GPO administration 39%
4 Password management 40% 4 Password management 38%
5 Diagnostic and repair 39% 5 Data recovery 38%
6 GPO administration 37% 6 Disaster recovery 33%
7 Disaster recovery 34% 7 Security configuration 32%
8 Security configuration 30% 8 Diagnostic and repair 32%
9 User provisioning / de-provisioning 28% 9 User provisioning / de-provisioning 29%
10 Delegating administrative rights 27% 10 Compliance reporting 26%
11 Compliance reporting 25% 11 Delegating administrative rights 25%
II. Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction was added to the survey for the first time in 2007 with the goal of discovering
if DEC attendees are truly working at jobs they love. This year’s survey data provides the
opportunity to trend changes from last year. As in 2007, respondents were not shy about their
likes, dislikes and ideas for improving their jobs!
Job satisfaction demographics

In this analysis, we examined overall job satisfaction,
but we also looked it at by various demographic
breakdowns. These breakdowns include organization/
company type, organization size, respondent title,
(discussed in the previous section of this white paper)
and years of job experience, which was captured in
this section of the survey. As the chart demonstrates,
the average experience of DEC respondents declined
slightly from 2007. However, with almost 70% having
greater than 5 years of infrastructure support experience,
it remains a highly experienced group.
Overall job satisfaction declined slightly from 2007

IDA professionals continue to have high job
satisfaction with 70% saying they are satisfied or very
satisfied with their jobs. However, perhaps due to
pressures from the declining economy, they are not
quite as satisfied as in 2007. On a weighted basis,
job satisfaction dropped from 4.03 in 2007 to 3.88 in
2008. This change reflects a significant drop in “very
satisfied” responses and an 8% increase in ‘average”
and below responses. Very dissatisfied respondents
jumped from 1% to 3% in 2008.
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Who are the happiest DEC Attendees?

When it comes to job satisfaction, the type of company, level of job experience and specific job
responsibilities all matter. So if you want to improve your job satisfaction consider the following
findings:
n Type of organization – For the second year in a row, the happiest respondents work for a
software vendor. In 2008, 92% report they are satisfied or highly satisfied, up from 85% in
2007. In both years, 0% of respondents rated their satisfaction below average.
n Job experience – Confidence in your abilities and years of real life experience relieve a lot
of stress, leading to higher satisfaction levels among more experienced respondents for the
second year in a row.
n Responsibilities – The challenge of figuring out and implementing user needs is rewarding
– systems/business analysts report a 85% level of satisfaction taking first place by job title
and improving from an already high 81% in 2007
Who are the least happy DEC Attendees?

While the majority of consultants are still satisfied with their jobs, as a group they moved to last
place in overall satisfaction in 2008, a significant drop from second place in 2007. Given the
direct impact of economic pressures on billing rates and job security in the consulting industry,
the drop in job satisfaction is not surprising.
n Type of organization – Long hours and too much travel drove down satisfaction levels
among consulting company respondents to 58%, down from 68% in 2007.
n Job experience – Breaking into infrastructure management can be tough given workloads
and a stiff learning curve. This year, respondents with 1 to 2 years of experience were the
least satisfied. On the plus side, 62% have above average job satisfaction, but 12% report
below average satisfaction.
n Responsibilities – By job title, consultants dropped from 78% satisfaction in 2007 to 57% in
2008, with 11% expressing negative levels of satisfaction.
Satisfaction by type of organization

No matter where they work, the majority of survey respondents are satisfied with their jobs. On
the negative side, Corporate and Government IT organizations tied with 4% dissatisfied and 4%
highly dissatisfied employees in 2008.
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Satisfaction by job experience

In 2007, job satisfaction was linear based on years of
experience. In 2008, this tendency is still apparent
with the exception of a surge in satisfaction among
employees with “less than 1 year” of experience.
The “5 to 10 years” category had the highest overall
level of satisfaction (77%), but it also had the highest
percentage of dissatisfied respondents (15%).
Employees in the “1 to 2 years” group had the second
highest level of dissatisfaction (12%) as well as the
lowest overall satisfaction rate (62%).
Satisfaction by job title

Comparing 2007 and 2008 highlights the drop in job
satisfaction among respondents who identify themselves
as consultant. Note that the architect job title was just
added in 2008. As 11% and 30% of the respondent
pool respectively, the drop in consultant and systems
engineer satisfaction levels was sufficient to pull down
gains in other categories. Most importantly, the IT
manager, director, VP category improved from 69%
satisfaction and next to last place in 2007 to 76%
satisfaction in 2008.
Most IDA professionals work between 40 and 50 hours per week

Excessive hours is a common complaint among IDA professionals. To explore this issue, the
2008 survey included a new question on work hours. As shown in table 7, almost 2/3 of the
IDA professionals responding to the survey work an average of 40 to 50 hours per week. When
weighted and averaged across all respondents, the “typical” IDA professional works 46.7 hours
per week. Despite war stories to the contrary, very few respondents consistently work over 60
hours per week.
Table 7: Distribution by Average Work Hours
hours worked per week percentage
35 to 40 13%
40 to 50 64%
50 to 60 19%
60 to 80 3%
Over 80 hours <1%
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Administrators work the longest hours

When analyzed by title using weighted averages, administrators work the longest hours,
providing an extra 8 hours per week to their employers. Consultants follow closely behind to
capture 2nd place.
Table 8: Average Hours by Title
title weighted hours
Administrator 48.0
Consultant 47.7
IT Manager, Director, VP 47.1
Architect 47.1
Systems or Business Analyst 46.8
Systems Engineer 46.0
Other 43.5
Consulting firm employees work the longest hours by organization type

When analyzed by organization type, the least happy and the most happy organizations work
the longest hours. As expected, consulting firm employees, as expected, work the longest
hours, but software vendor employees follow closely behind. Despite stereotypes to the
contrary, Government IT employees work slightly longer hours than do their private sector
counterparts.
Table 9: Average Hours by Organization Type
category weighted hours
Consulting Firm 48.2
Software Vendor 47.7
Government IT 47.0
Corporate IT 46.7
Service Provider 44.4
Shorter work hours don’t always translate to greater job satisfaction

While popular wisdom equates long hours with decreased job satisfaction, this observation
does not bear out in the survey data. IDA professionals may frequently complain about
hours and workload, but respondents working the shortest hours had the highest levels of
dissatisfaction. Ironically, no individual working over 60 hours per week fell below average
in job satisfaction. These findings show that while work hours are perceptually important to
respondents, they are outweighed by other factors, such as travel and work environment when
assessing satisfaction.
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Note: the 80+ hour category was omitted from this chart due to its small sample size
Respondents love learning new technologies, solving problems and working with others
Survey respondents are inquisitive and highly dedicated individuals who have a passion for
technology and want to make a difference in their organizations. The ability to continuously
learn and work with new technologies was by far the most popular answer to an open-ended
question about the best aspects of their jobs. Solving tough problems took second place,
followed closely by working with others (teammates and users) in third place. The range of
responses was enormous, but other positive job aspects include:
n Ability to work on many varied assignments
n Flexibility in schedule and assignments
n Freedom / empowerment to do what is needed
n Encountering and handling new challenges on a regular basis
n Level of responsibility and impact on their company’s operations
n Regular use of creative skills to solve problems and apply technology in new ways
n Contributing to their company/organization’s success
Workload/work hours top the list of the worst aspects of the job
Respondents weren’t shy about listing the worst aspects of their jobs. Issues run the gamut
from complaints about clueless management to overly repetitive tasks, job stress and working
with incompetent outsourcers. On a percentage basis, workload/work hours complaints topped
the list, accounting for over 20% of the comments. Politics remains a common annoyance,
taking 2nd place in mentions, down from 1st place in 2007. Other frequently mentioned issues
include:
n Not enough people resources
n Incompetent coworkers
n Insufficient automation
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n Ineffective processes and standards
n Excessive travel
n Lack of decisions and/or clear direction from managers
n Time spent on “administrivia” and other overhead tasks
Getting better tools and automation tops respondents’ wish list for the 2nd year in a row
Respondents are surprisingly pragmatic in their improvement ideas. This year’s list was topped
by suggestions for reducing workload. Getting better tools and automation topped the wish
list in both 2007 and 2008. However, hiring/adding more people resources supplanted 2007’s
higher pay in second place. Getting better direction from management tied with higher pay as
the 3rd most common improvement theme. Other frequently mentioned improvements include:
n Improving processes to increase efficiency
n Establishing stronger control over architectures and technical environment
n Enhance teamwork across organizations
n Reduce internal politics
n Additional/better training
III. Current Practices

Respondents are split on the effectiveness of their organization’s identity and access
management performance
Identity and access management practices are still evolving in many organizations. Compared
to the directory management practices queried in previous surveys, fewer companies consider
themselves above average in performance in identity and access management and only 6% of
respondents consider their organizational performance as “world class.” In contrast, 40% of
respondents rated their organizational performance as “novices” or “less effective than we wish.”
n 35% consider themselves either “world class” (6%) or “better than average” (29%)
n 25% rate their performance as “adequate”
n 29% consider themselves as “less effective than we wish”
n 11% consider themselves “novices”
Most IT organizations that follow formal infrastructure management processes consider

them to be overly bureaucratic
Less than 50% of IT respondent report that they follow formal system support processes. Of
the 47% using formal processes, 21% consider those processes formal and effective, while
26% consider them overly bureaucratic. Many IT organizations (42%) report their processes
as falling in between formal and informal. Only 12% report following informal processes and
3% rate those processes as tending towards chaotic. Fewer vendor respondents follow formal
processes (32%), but only 11% consider those processes overly bureaucratic.
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Schema extensions are usually controlled through formal processes

The majority of IT organizations (57%) follow formal processes for handing schema extensions,
with 17% using processes that fall between formal and informal and 16% using informal
processes. The need to control schema extensions appears well understood, only 12%
consider their processes overly bureaucratic, merely 2% are informal tending to chaotic, and
10% do not allow any schema extensions.
Role-based delegation should pass the 50% adoption mark in 2008

Overall, 47% of respondents are currently using role-based delegation in their organizations
with adoption reaching 50% among vendor respondents. Another 15% of respondents plan to
implement role-based delegation in 2008. Among IT respondents, 29% are still considering, but
only 10% have no plans to implement. Fewer vendor respondents (13%) are still considering
and 21% have no plans to implement role-based delegation.
Table 10 – The Adoption of Role-based Delegation
ROLE-BASED DELEGATION 2008 2007
Yes, already using 47% 42%
Yes, within 6 months 5% 5%
Yes, within 12 months 10% 10%
Still considering 26% 27%
No, don’t plan to use 13% 15%
Role-based access control adoption lags slightly behind role-based delegation

Survey respondents report very similar usage patterns for role-based access control as for role-
based delegation, however, current overall adoption stands at 44%. The adoption difference
should vanish in 2008, as 18% of respondents plan to implement the technology over the next 6
to 12 months.
Identity Federation remains a bleeding edge practice, but adoption is slowly growing
Usage of identity federation has grown from 4% of respondents in 2007 to 12% in 2008.
Another 18% of respondents plan to implement identity federation over the next 6 to 12 months.
IT organizations still considering federation dropped from 48% in 2007 to 37% in 2008. The
percentage of organizations with no plans to implement federation remains steady at about 32%
for both years.
Content-based rights management is still in early adoption

Contents-based rights management has limited traction among respondents, with only 17%
reporting its use within their organizations. Pending adoption is light with only 13% of IT
organizations and 8% of vendor respondents planning implementations within the next 6 to 12
months. Of the remaining respondents, 37% are still considering and 33% have no plans to
implement.
Virtual directories are used by less than 50% of respondents

The adoption of virtual directories appears to be heading to a plateau around the 50% mark.
Current adoption rates stand at 42% for IT organizations and 48% for the vendor respondents;
however, fewer than 10% of respondents have plans to implement the technology in the next
16
6 to 12 months. About 25% of IT organizations are still considering adoption sometime in the
future, while 24% have no plans for adoption.
Only 17% of respondents have fully automated provisioning

It is not surprising that provisioning / de-provisioning tops the list of challenges described earlier
in this report due to the low level of successful automation. The majority of IT organizations
use either manual procedures (8%) or a mixture of manual and automated approaches (45%).
Another 14% are in the process of automating and 12% use automation, but are not satisfied
with the results. Full automation is more prevalent among vendor respondents at 25% with an
additional 13% of respondents using automation, but not satisfied with the results.
IV. Technical Environments

Over 90% of responding organizations use at
least one management framework
Management frameworks are a necessity
rather than a “nice to have” for running today’s
complex technology environments. Over
90% of survey respondents indicated that
organizations used one (52%) or more (39%)
of the management frameworks on the market.
A few respondents (0.4%) reported using five
different frameworks within their organization!
Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) is

the first place framework, used by 55% of
respondents
Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) garners a
healthy 55% share of DEC survey respondents,
showing solid growth over 2007 (41%) and
2006 (32%) figures for full deployment. MOM
is solidly the first place framework, exceeding
second place finisher HP OpenView by a ratio
of 2 to 1. CA Unicenter took last place among
the major frameworks with a surprisingly weak
showing of only 5%.
Exchange usage reaches 87%

After remaining steady at 74% in both the 2006 and 2007 surveys, Exchange usage jumped to
87% among the 2008 respondents. Respondents are also moving steadily to Exchange 2007,
which is already in use at 21% of responding organizations (IT and Vendor) and deployment is in
progress at another 19% of responding organizations.
n Vendor organizations are the early adopters of Exchange 2007, with 41% already using this
version versus 15% of IT respondents
17
n In contrast to the early adopter pace of the vendor community, IT organization adoption
plans grow over the next year with 5% planning to deploy in 3 months, 8% in 6 months and
20% in 12 months
n Of the respondents using Exchange, 17% of IT organizations and 14% of vendor

organizations have no current plans to migrate to Exchange 2007
MIIS/ILM adoption is essentially flat

Although somewhat skewed by the addition of the MIIS track at DEC, the percentage of
organizations relying on MIIS/ILM is effectively the same as 2007. These results suggest that
MIIS/ILM has reached a plateau after 3 years of steady growth.
Table 11: MIIS/ILM Adoption
miis adoption 2008 2007 2006 2005
Yes, already using 48% 50% 43% 31%
Yes, within 3 months 2% 2% 5% 6%
Still considering 18% 17% 19% 27%
No, don’t plan to use 28% 24% 26% 28%
* 2007 “Using” includes “deployment in progress”
ILM “2” is attracting early adopters

ILM “2”, the code name for the successor to ILM 2007, has sparked interest among current and
planned MIIS/ILM users. Microsoft unveiled the first public beta at TechEd 2008, and 13% of IT
respondents and 25% of vendor respondents plan to participate in the beta program.
n About 3% of respondents plan to implement ILM “2” upon general release, but are not
participating in the beta program
n Another 9% of respondents plan to implement ILM “2” within 12 months of general release
n 17% (IT) and 19% (vendor) of respondents plan to wait until general availability before
evaluating ILM “2”
n Finally, 29% of respondents are still considering their ILM “2” strategy
AD Federated Services has captured about 50% of the early market

The use of AD Federated Services (ADFS) is hostage to the overall adoption rate for identity
federation. Currently, only 2% of survey respondents report using ADFS, and another 5% report
that deployment is in progress. Given the 12% reported adoption of identity management in
2008, Microsoft appears to have captured about 50% of the current market. An additional
10% of respondents plan to deploy ADFS over the next 12 months, corresponding to the
18% planning to adopt identity management over that same period. About 38% of overall
respondents are still considering ADSF and 45% have no plans to deploy it.
18
Rights Management Services is used by only 2% of respondents

Rights Management Services (RMS) is in a very similar position to ADFS in its own market
segment. Only 2% of survey respondents report using RMS, and an additional 4% report that
deployment is in progress. RMS’s topic area, content-based rights management, has a 17%
adoption rate among attendees, with pending adoption at only 13% over the next 12 months.
Thus, RMS has approximately a 1/3 share of the current market, but will get some growth from
the 7% of respondents who plan to implement it over the next 12 months. About 38% of overall
respondents are still considering RMS and 49% have no plans to deploy it.
SharePoint continues to make rapid gains in adoption

SharePoint continues to be a major success for Microsoft, reaching 74% adoption in 2008.
While some market growth will continue over the next few years, the survey data shows
signs of a slowdown. Pending implementations dropped from 12% in 2007 to 6% in 2008,
while the number of organizations not planning to implement SharePoint remained stable
at 11%. The pool of potential future adopters is also shrinking, as the pool of organizations
considering adoption dropped from 12% to 9%. Judging from responses in the open-ended
usage question, the extent and diversity of SharePoint use within companies is expanding.
Respondents use it for document management, intranets and for many forms of collaboration
and information sharing.
Table 12: Sharepoint Adoption
sharepoint adoption 2008 2007 2006
Yes, already using 74% 66% 57%
Yes, within 3 months 1% 3% 2%
Still considering 9% 12% 12%
No, don’t plan to use 11% 11% 26%
PowerShell usage is growing within IT, but

flat within the vendor community
Windows PowerShell, Microsoft’s admin-
focused command line shell and scripting
language has grown significantly within IT as
organizations in the evaluation stage in 2007
moved to usage in 2008. In contrast, usage
in the vendor community is essentially the
same for both years. Of particular interest,
the percentage of respondents not using or
evaluating PowerShell has remained stable
for both IT and vendors, indicating that
future growth will come from the evaluators
rather than non-users changing their minds.
Although vendor usage is flat, it still leads IT. However, PowerShell will likely not see significant
new growth in the vendor community until usage within their IT market increases.
19
Finding a balance between day-to-day work and migration efforts is the top Windows
Server migration challenge
Technology advances, changing business needs and security concerns force infrastructure
support teams to perform technology migrations on a regular basis, drawing resources away
from other assignments. Finding the time and resources to perform technology migrations while
still meeting the demands of day-to-day support is the highest ranked challenge by IT survey
respondents.
Table 13: Migration Challenges
windows server 2008 migration challenges
Balancing between day-to-day support

and migration effort 54%
Controlling / documenting changes 27%
Preventing service level degradation 23%
Finding / developing skilled technical resources 22%
Maintaining security 16%
Other 13%
Survey respondents could check as many challenges as applied in their organizations, allowing
us to analyze the overall level of concern on a percentage basis. Over the four years of this
survey, we have seen a steady decline in the percentage of respondents expressing challenges
for migrations, an indicator of improvements in migration tools and practices.
Most organizations deploy multiple

server operating systems
Most organizations officially support
more than one server operating
system (OS). The median number of
supported server OSs is 3, with 29%
of organizations supporting only 1 and
2% supporting all seven listed systems.
Microsoft Windows Server is by far the
dominant OS, supported by 100% of
the IT respondents and 95% of vendor
respondents.
20
Microsoft Windows dominates the desktop

In contrast to server OSs, 52% of responding
organizations support only one client OS
– Microsoft Windows. Of the remaining
respondents, 25% officially support two client
OSs, 16% support three and 7% support 4.
Windows is used by 100% of IT respondents and
98% of vendor respondents. All types of Linux
combined capture only 29% and Apple takes 3rd
place at 26%.
V. Automated Tools
Just over 30% of IT organizations consider their infrastructure management efforts to be
well-automated
Automation is making inroads into the IT infrastructure management community, but most
organizations remain only partially automated. Of the IT organizations that consider themselves
to be well-automated, most rely on native tools and scripts for their automation. Despite the
availability of many infrastructure management tools and solutions on the market, only 11%
of responding IT organizations use enough third-party tools to consider themselves well-
automated. Not surprisingly, the vendor community is more highly automated than IT (51%
versus 31%), with infrastructure service providers accounting for most of the well-automated
responses. Vendor adoption of third-party tools for automation grew by 50% from 2007 to
2008, while IT usage dropped slightly.
Table 14: Prevalence of Automation
IT Vendors
How would you describe your organization’s use of automation 2008 2007 2008 2007
for the systems that you are responsible for?
Well automated using third-party tools 11% 12% 22% 14%
Well automated using native tools and scripts 20% 14% 29% 21%
Partially automated 50% 56% 33% 39%
Lacks necessary automation 12% 12% 3% 6%
Primarily manual 4% 5% 8% 13%
Other 2% 2% 5% 7%
Respondents are underwhelmed by the quality of available automation for most tool categories
Respondents were asked to rate the quality of available automation for the eleven areas
assessed in the Challenges section of this report using a four-part scale (Poor, Fair, Good,
Excellent). The table below compiles the results by area and compares tool quality for each
area by the percentage of negative ratings (Poor and Fair) and positive ratings (Good and
Excellent). The results are stack ranked by subtracting the percentage of negative ratings from
21
the percentage of positive ratings. The table shows the results across all respondents. IT
respondents tended to mark slightly lower than vendor respondents.
Table 15: Quality of Available Automation Options
tool category NEGATIVE POSITIVE NET
Back up / archiving 46% 54% 8%
Server configuration 48% 52% 4%
Data recovery 51% 49% -2%
Password management 53% 47% -6%
GPO administration 54% 46% -8%
User provisioning / de-provisioning 55% 45% -10%
Disaster recovery 56% 44% -12%
Security configuration 58% 42% -16%
Diagnostic and repair 64% 36% -28%
Delegating administrative rights 64% 36% -28%
Compliance reporting 69% 31% -38%
Key observations:
n All tool categories have high percentages of negative ratings. Even the best category, Back
up / Archiving, has a 46% negative rating.
n Only two categories, Back up / Archiving and Server Configuration have net positive
ratings, and ratings drop quickly as one descends through the table.
n Respondent ratings for the quality of available automation by area have a strong positive
statistical correlation with their level of challenge rating for those areas. In other words,
respondents happy with the quality of available automation were much less likely to view
that area as a challenge than those who were unhappy with the automation (and vice versa).
n In some cases, such as Diagnostic and Repair, respondent experience in the underlying
task helps them overcome the perceived limitations of available tools.
22
MOM/SCOM tops the list of tools that improve the lives of IDA professionals
As the final question in the survey, respondents were asked to list the top three system
management tools that make their lives easier. As expected, this question generated an
enormous list of tools that ran the gamut from simple homegrown scripts to major Microsoft
product offerings. Many tools listed garnered only one or two mentions, but a handful of clear
winners emerged. The top tools were well ahead of their peers in mentions. They are:
1st place: Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM), formerly MOM
2nd place: Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM), formerly SMS
3rd place: NetPro ChangeAuditor
The next tier of tools includes:
4th place: Microsoft Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM), formerly MIIS
5th place: (Tied)
n NetPro RestoreAdmin
n Microsoft PowerShell
n Microsoft VB Scripts
n Microsoft Group Policy Management Console
After these tools, the number of individual mentions drops off quickly. None of the many
remaining tools listed received more than seven mentions.
In total, Microsoft offerings received the most mentions, but given the size of their tool portfolio,
the mentions were spread across many native tools and individual products. Although well
behind Microsoft in total mentions, NetPro was solidly in second place with its products
garnering almost three times as many mentions as third place Quest.
NetPro U.S. Headquarters About NetPro

4747 N. 22nd St., Suite 400
Infrastructure Optimization software experts since 1991, NetPro drives security and compliance by
Phoenix, AZ 85016
extending and enhancing Microsoft technologies to simplify your IT infrastructure better for less. From
1.800.998.5090 | 1.602.346.3600 Active Directory and Exchange to SharePoint and Server environments, NetPro solutions feature an
sales@netpro.com | www.netpro.com integrated architecture with a Microsoft-like experience and the industry’s easiest deployment.
Please visit our Web site for International

contact information. 23

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netpro 2008 directory

Your IT infrastructure. Simplified.

High points from the survey:

o User provisioning/ de-provisioning is the toughest challenge for IT organizations. 34%

o SCOM/MOM is the most used IT management framework with 59% of IT organizations

o Only 31% of IT organizations consider their infrastructure management efforts to be

n Federated Identity, highlighting ADFS and CardSpace

n Information Protection, with specific emphasis on Windows RMS

n AD Federation Services (ADFS) Deep Dive – Presented by Microsoft product management,

Most Survey Participants are Technicians

Table 1: Breakdown by Job Category

2008 2007 2006 2005

Consultant 11% 19% 21% 18%

Systems Engineer 30% 40% 40% 46%

Systems or Business Analyst 5% 6% 6% 6%

IT Manager, Director, VP 8% 16% 11% 14%

Other 4% 11% 11% 7%

Industry Analyst/Trade Press <1% 1% NA NA

A Majority Work in Large Corporate or Government IT Organizations

n DEC attracts a healthy mix of attendees from IT organizations and companies

o Non-IT respondents include Consultants (12.9%), Service Providers (7.5%) and

n Corporate and government IT respondents are mostly from large organizations. Of IT

o 92% are from IT organizations with over 100 employees

DEC Attendees Support Large Numbers of Users

Table 2: Number of Users Supported

Users supported it vendor

Over 20,000 users 59% 55%

5,000 to 20,000 users 25% 9%

1,000 to 5,000 users 12% 11%

500 to 1,000 users 1% 5%

100 to 500 users 0% 7%

Less than 100 users 3% 13%

Most Respondents Have Multiple Responsibilities

The table below provides a breakdown of IT organization attendees by areas of technical

Table 3: Technology Responsibilities

Technology 2008 2007 2006 2005

Active Directory 81% 72% 90% 96%

DNS 48% 43% 54% 59%

Exchange 27% 15% 19% 29%

MIIS/ILM 30% 40% 40% 46%

Non-Microsoft Platforms 8% 16% 11% 14%

Entire Network 4% 11% 11% 7%

Table 4: Organizational Responsibilities

organizational role it vendor

Operations 68% 44%

Administration 67% 52%

User Support 31% 21%

Software Development 17% 40%

Audit/Compliance 39% 35%

Security 57% 56%

Other 13% 13%

Highlights and Analysis

Plenty of Opportunity to Improve Performance in Key Areas

o Vendor respondents had no areas where “Handling Well” exceeded “Manageable”

User provisioning / de-provisioning, delegating administrative rights, and compliance

Table 5: The most challenging areas

top issues (it) negative top issues (vendors) negative

n Compliance reporting is an increasingly time-consuming overhead area that draws

Positive ratings exceed negative ratings for most areas

Server Configuration is the least challenging area for IT organizations

Table 6: The least challenging areas

solid performance (it) positive solid performance (vendors) positive

II. Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction demographics