DSP optimises the multi-technology approach for an Electricity Distribution Company

The customer had a network of multiple, but siloed applications with thousands of individual sign-ins and security methodologies which made for highly inefficient processes and reporting. These applications operated across both Oracle and Microsoft platforms which exacerbated the complexity.

DSP were appointed to conduct a streamlining exercise to identify user access to the customer’s applications and associated databases. We did this using pioneering techniques and the by creating documentation where it didn’t already exist.

The core component technology utilised was Oracle Access Manager (OAM) which also required use of Oracle Internet Directory (OID). Oracle OID was used for, storing users synced from Microsoft Windows Active Directory (which were used to login to the SSO environment with their ‘AD’ credentials) and for Oracle Forms & Reports, to store the database login, which was linked to the above account. The accounts were synchronised from Microsoft Windows Active Directory to Oracle OID, using the LDAP protocol and OID queries ‘AD’ when a user logs in to get the password. In Microsoft Windows Native Authentication (WNA) there was a requirement to synchronise a Kerberos ticket between the OAM server, the ‘AD’ server and the user’s client machine. Oracle OAM & OID also required a database repository to store the environment configuration.