[mschuster91]

Corp IT is still on AD as AD is literally the foundation of everything MS based. No matter if Exchange, workstations, file servers, even Office 365 - all is stored in Active Directory. Even their cloud services, even Microsoft Partner Program, it's all AD under the hood.

Sure you can use Samba / OpenLDAP / half a dozen of IMAP/SMTP servers for groupware but holy hell administering it is an utter hellhole of a mess compared to the MS offerings.

Corp IT cares about two things: retraining costs for employees and admins, and efficiency. And Apache Directory Studio just doesn't cut it compared with AD Editor.

[kazen44]

Also, AD is probably one of microsoft's best products.

It's actually rather stable, and can integrate with nearly everything.

[duelingjello]

Fun ancient fact from AD administration c. Win2k3:

AD can optionally replicate by sending email (SMTP) between sites.

[kazen44]

as far as i know this is still supported.

i know this option has existed till atleast 2008.