Integrating network services of Windows and UNIX for single sign-on

We propose a practical method of building an enterprise system that realizes an environment where enterprise network users can access all authorized network resources seamlessly with a single password regardless of the platforms such as Windows, UNIX, and other network services. The proposed method is based on Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Samba suite. Apart from ours many single sign-on solutions have been proposed and commercialized. However, the previous solutions still suffer from proprietary restrictions caused by too much dependency on Microsoft Windows Server OS and its client access license (ACL) for Windows domain environment. Our method solves this problem, providing the system administrators with uniform authentication methods at both OS and application levels at minimal cost, and provides the users with reflexible and uniform interface to data storage and resources regardless of the platforms. We also touch upon the problems of migration from an old system to our integrated system.