Microsoft to offer stand-alone Active Directory "In the future, Microsoft believes the directory and the database will become one. "How many people can program against a directory? A large number. How many applications use a database? A large number," says Kim Cameron, directory architect for Microsoft. "Right now your identity and authentication data is segregated in the directory with its own protocols, it is hard to join with the database." Cameron says a lot of challenges have to be overcome to converge the two but that Microsoft will eventually integrate the two. He would not specify a timeframe."