“Presenting this as Exchange leveraging the NT Directory might be polite, but it is definitely not accurate.” –Subscriber Don Hacherl, Dev Lead on Exchange Directory from 1991-96, then on Active Dir.
This is a good parable for engineering managers. The line engineers are the only ones who really know what is going on. It is also an example that shows how most important decisions get made by line engineers. This is an example. Windows 3 is an example. This case is interesting in that some basic elements of the strategy seemed to make it through to the people doing the work. Or was it another example of historical chance? Or did the line engineers get from their interactions with MSIT that there was no way in hell they were going to manage two directories?
It is also a good example about writing the story of how a company and products came to be. One view of this story is a brilliant strategy executed as instructed. Another is people doing what they thought made sense that happened to end up right and similar to the strategy, but arguably insubordinate. What gets read about a company is based on who is telling the story and their perspective. It is probably why many “origin stories” are so difficult for engineers to read.
I remember a BillG/SteveB review in the early 90s about some aspect of networking technology. Three product teams were in the room -- the NT team, the Lan Manager team (before it got completely absorbed), and the small peer networking team in the Personal Systems Division (my team). We were arguing hammer and tongs about some detail which I have long forgotten. Some resolution was reached in the meeting, and after the meeting SteveB said "Wow, I should have had multiple networking teams long ago". I believe there was a strategy to have somewhat overlapping efforts in Systems, to harness the competitive energy of all the people in the Systems. There was certainly a lot of friendly but serious competition within the division.
Awesome! I discussed this "methodology" in the previous post on Cairo. By and large this was rarely an intentional strategy in the sense that teams were chartered with the same mission at the same time. There was always something at the core that had two teams pursuing the same goal (a new portable 32-bit kernel). More frequently teams thought they were doing different products and then gradually converged (like everyone did email, photo editing, messaging, etc.)
By the early 1990's this seems related to the admission that LanMan, while not yet absorbed, was not really working :-)
IBM using the multiple teams approach (often unknown to each other) would seem enough reason not to emulate that methodology.
It appears most of the commenters here are current or former Microsoft people. I only work in the industry (since MS-DOS 2.11), so for me reading the inside story of the evolution of directory services is fascinating. My first version of Exchange was 5.5 and I vividly remember a field on every mailbox where you would associate it to a related NT directory account.
Quite frankly I always though Microsoft used Microsoft Mail for internal email prior to Exchange. I certainly didn't think Xenix was in use at all beyond the very late 80s. The article on archive.org that Steven linked to how ITG migrated from Xenix to Exchange was super interesting, especially since I read a similar article in the past few years on how Microsoft IT migrated from Exchange Server to Exchange Online!
This post and the comment that prompted it are very interesting to me (to the point where I also paid the $10) because I have a long-standing fascination with Novell’s NDS/eDirectory. Both directories (AD and eDir) evolved out of a separate email product, both of them used a unique proprietary database controlled by their respective companies. However, the two products are very, very different in their scope and purpose. I would love to hear about how Microsoft thought about Novell as an enterprise and NOS competitor during this time period.
(I also worked for a Notes shop at one point, and the information about how Microsoft saw Notes has been fascinating and spot-on. Also worked with VMS so the DaveC cameo was appreciated.)
From AD's point of view NDS/eDirectory was the competition, the only competition, but it had real significant limitations. We were totally focused on building a directory product that would outclass NDS in scale, performance, functionality, and manageability. If we succeeded we'd secure Microsoft's place in the data center for years to come, but we knew that if we failed the best we could really hope for was Windows machines in Novell shops, controlled by NDS.
This is a good parable for engineering managers. The line engineers are the only ones who really know what is going on. It is also an example that shows how most important decisions get made by line engineers. This is an example. Windows 3 is an example. This case is interesting in that some basic elements of the strategy seemed to make it through to the people doing the work. Or was it another example of historical chance? Or did the line engineers get from their interactions with MSIT that there was no way in hell they were going to manage two directories?
It is also a good example about writing the story of how a company and products came to be. One view of this story is a brilliant strategy executed as instructed. Another is people doing what they thought made sense that happened to end up right and similar to the strategy, but arguably insubordinate. What gets read about a company is based on who is telling the story and their perspective. It is probably why many “origin stories” are so difficult for engineers to read.
I remember a BillG/SteveB review in the early 90s about some aspect of networking technology. Three product teams were in the room -- the NT team, the Lan Manager team (before it got completely absorbed), and the small peer networking team in the Personal Systems Division (my team). We were arguing hammer and tongs about some detail which I have long forgotten. Some resolution was reached in the meeting, and after the meeting SteveB said "Wow, I should have had multiple networking teams long ago". I believe there was a strategy to have somewhat overlapping efforts in Systems, to harness the competitive energy of all the people in the Systems. There was certainly a lot of friendly but serious competition within the division.
Awesome! I discussed this "methodology" in the previous post on Cairo. By and large this was rarely an intentional strategy in the sense that teams were chartered with the same mission at the same time. There was always something at the core that had two teams pursuing the same goal (a new portable 32-bit kernel). More frequently teams thought they were doing different products and then gradually converged (like everyone did email, photo editing, messaging, etc.)
By the early 1990's this seems related to the admission that LanMan, while not yet absorbed, was not really working :-)
IBM using the multiple teams approach (often unknown to each other) would seem enough reason not to emulate that methodology.
It appears most of the commenters here are current or former Microsoft people. I only work in the industry (since MS-DOS 2.11), so for me reading the inside story of the evolution of directory services is fascinating. My first version of Exchange was 5.5 and I vividly remember a field on every mailbox where you would associate it to a related NT directory account.
Quite frankly I always though Microsoft used Microsoft Mail for internal email prior to Exchange. I certainly didn't think Xenix was in use at all beyond the very late 80s. The article on archive.org that Steven linked to how ITG migrated from Xenix to Exchange was super interesting, especially since I read a similar article in the past few years on how Microsoft IT migrated from Exchange Server to Exchange Online!
This post and the comment that prompted it are very interesting to me (to the point where I also paid the $10) because I have a long-standing fascination with Novell’s NDS/eDirectory. Both directories (AD and eDir) evolved out of a separate email product, both of them used a unique proprietary database controlled by their respective companies. However, the two products are very, very different in their scope and purpose. I would love to hear about how Microsoft thought about Novell as an enterprise and NOS competitor during this time period.
(I also worked for a Notes shop at one point, and the information about how Microsoft saw Notes has been fascinating and spot-on. Also worked with VMS so the DaveC cameo was appreciated.)
From AD's point of view NDS/eDirectory was the competition, the only competition, but it had real significant limitations. We were totally focused on building a directory product that would outclass NDS in scale, performance, functionality, and manageability. If we succeeded we'd secure Microsoft's place in the data center for years to come, but we knew that if we failed the best we could really hope for was Windows machines in Novell shops, controlled by NDS.