2008 Experts Conference Survey White Paper

netpro 2008 directory experts conference Attendee Survey Results - Highlights and Analysis

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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



o



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. Delegating administrative rights (29%) and Compliance Reporting (27%) take 2nd and 3rd place as challenges. 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



o



o



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 SCOM/MOM is the most used IT management framework with 59% of IT organizations reporting its use (55% of overall respondents) Only 31% of IT organizations consider their infrastructure management efforts to be well-automated Getting better tools and automation tops respondents’ wish list for the 2nd year in a row

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

n

n

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%)

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.

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.

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis



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%

<1%

1%

NA

N

Other

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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 rolebased 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

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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%

Yes, within 6 months

3%

4%

4%

1%

Yes, within 12 months

2%

3%

3%

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.

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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%

Yes, within 6 months

2%

4%

1%

Yes, within 12 months

3%

5%

1%

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 adminfocused 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.

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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.

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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 wellautomated. 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 for the systems that you are responsible for?

2008

2007

2008

2007

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

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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.

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netpro 2008 directory experts conference attendee survey results - highlights and analysis

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 4747 N. 22nd St., Suite 400 Phoenix, AZ 85016 1.800.998.5090 | 1.602.346.3600 [email protected] | www.netpro.com Please visit our Web site for International contact information.

About NetPro Infrastructure Optimization software experts since 1991, NetPro drives security and compliance by extending and enhancing Microsoft technologies to simplify your IT infrastructure better for less. From Active Directory and Exchange to SharePoint and Server environments, NetPro solutions feature an integrated architecture with a Microsoft-like experience and the industry’s easiest deployment.

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