Perhaps I could have said this more clearly: The way that Apple set up Open Directory within OS X Server is very much like the Windows NT domain services. OS X Server can be set up as an Open Directory master, or as a replica. Active Directory domain controllers use multi-master replicatiom, so there can be multiple primaries on the network, each having a read/write copy of the directory database.You are right that the cloud is becoming an integral part of networking, however, there is still a place for locally-hosted servers, so corporate datacenters will still be used by some people.IN much the same way that Apple has moved from its AFP-based file sharing protocols to Microsoft's SMB protocol, OS X Server should move away from Open Directory, and move toward Active Directory. The SAMBA project has built AD comain controller functionality into version 4 of their suite, so if this is possible with open-source software, then Apple may be in a position to do the same thing with their server so