Active Directory Announced as part of Windows NT 5.0

At the Professional Developers Conference (PDC) in 1997, Microsoft officially unveiled its plans for Windows NT 5.0, later renamed Windows 2000. Active Directory was highlighted as a cornerstone feature, promising a scalable, LDAP-compliant directory service.

Significance

This was the first public declaration of Microsoft's ambition to create an enterprise-grade directory service, signaling a major strategic shift to compete with Novell NDS and promising to revolutionize Windows network management.