I keep receiving job postings for people with experience with LDAP...

But I can't for the life of me figure out why LDAP experience is being sought after... Especially since most of the stuff I'm receiving is for domain admin type roles... Are the recruiters just using LDAP as a term rather than Active Directory... or just keying in on LDAP as being necessary for domain administration? Or are there actually organizations who want an LDAP engineer (and if such a role exists, WTF do they do?)... LDAP isn't a terribly complicated protocol (in comparison to others that are out there...) and once a domain is brought online, LDAP (as a protocol) shouldn't be causing problems or need much administration...

I guess I'm just kind of mystified as to why LDAP experience (as opposed to Active Directory) is being sought out...

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Comments

crrussell3

I have been seeing a few more posting asking for LDAP experience but also listing AD. So like you, do they require LDAP knowledge for authentication through a 3rd party application? Or again, just throwing out acronyms?

Iristheangel

They might want you to be proficient in LDAP with Linux as opposed to just Windows operating systems. That's the first thing that stands out in my head.

dmoore44

The problem is that the postings invariably mention that the infrastructure is MS based... The only other thing I could think of is that perhaps the requiring organization wants to move away from MS and in to a *nix infrastructure?

Forsaken_GA

When I see people looking specifically for LDAP, to me, that screams Novell eDirectory, and a desire to migrate off of it.

erpadmin

As someone who is at a 100% Windows shop, I can tell you we have a good 5 or 6 applications (with network appliances) that use the 389 port and or 3268 port (GC). My ERP system is 100% dependant on AD for SSO. When I see LDAP, SSO (or applications that require AD authentication) is what is screaming at me.

A lot of shops aren't at SSO yet, but they will need apps configured that will use LDAP and GC for authentication.

paul78

Just a hunch - LDAP is used for authentication by lots of different products. I am guessing that a lot of apps are being converted to support multiple factor authentication (mfa) and a lot of federated identity systems used LDAP for an identy store. In the financial services industry, the FFIEC issued guidance last summer that multi-factor authentication should be used to deter fraud for all applications that perform consumer financial transactions on the Internet.

MiikeB

Yea normally LDAP to me means SSO is involved and some *nix machines. Maybe they have plenty of Unix guys to Admin those servers but need their Windows guys to know LDAP so they can understand how those applications/servers interface with the AD environment.