Our Directory is Your Directory

Posted by Bob Purvy & Robert Escorcio, Google Engineers

From the very beginning, we've recognized that, in order for customers to get the most out of Google Apps, they will want to enjoy the Apps but not rip out their infrastructure to do so. As a result, we've tried to have open APIs to our applications and to Google Apps administration. One key area is corporate directories, and most companies already manage their users through their LDAP or equivalent directory service.

To give customers a jump start in migrating and synchronizing users from their LDAP directory, we've created an LDAP synchronization tool that we are releasing on code.google.com. However, while many companies have an LDAP directory, they often use it in different ways. Because of this, we've decided to release this into open source, so many developers can improve and adapt the tool to their own needs. The tool is written in Python, and uses the Google Apps User Provisioning API to create, delete, and suspend users.

Best of all, we eat our own dogfood, and we've used this tool here at Google to synchronize with our own LDAP directory. We run our own business on Google Apps, and we want other companies to benefit from this effort.

We hope to see a thousands flowers bloom, and look forward to other developers adding to and morphing the tool for their own needs. You can find the project at: http://code.google.com/p/google-apps-for-your-domain-ldap-sync/