Remember those times when your company just started to grow? Almost any modern day business began as a 5–10 people doing things they were passionate about and planning to concur if not the whole world, but at least the market they were operating in. And as the further expansion started there surely was a point at which came the understanding that the company needs its own IT system.
Active Directory was the thing
Active Directory was an obvious way to go in most cases. After you have set everything up, you could feel the benefits straight away. As more people joined your company, they had their own AD accounts created, the system was well structured, so you could control and maintain your environment and everything was nice and smooth.
If you did all those things right, it meant that Active Directory has made your life a lot easier. After all, that is what IT is for. Users had an easy way to access information, logon to your company’s systems, etc. and the management could have great level of control, a way to give out permissions, restrict access and more.
Nothing is perfect
However, as time passed everything started to become more complicated. The number of accounts in the system grew and despite all the benefits that Active Directory brought to you, maintaining it was gradually becoming a big pain. Hiring more IT personnel could have solved the problem for a while, but everybody understood that it’s just a band-aid that could heal some of the symptoms, but not the initial cause of the problem.
So the problem was quite clear. The growth of your company has lead you to a barrier that you had to overcome, just as you did when you have taken a decision to implement Active Directory in the first place. Something that could make your IT be a helpful tool again rather that a thing that stopped you from further development.
Adaxes. A missing layer
The first and foremost thing you could do with your workflow is automate it. Stop your expensive and highly trained IT personnel from doing simple monotonous tasks. You know people are not suited for that, don’t you? They need to eat, to sleep and they make a lot of mistakes. So why not leave this job to machines that you already have? You just need to give them right instructions.
And here is where Adaxes comes in. It is an Active Directory automation and management software solution that acts as a missing layer between AD and your users. It really does a lot to fill the gaps that appear as your company continues to grow.
Adaxes allows you to automate practically any task that you perform in Active Directory, such as your provisioning routine (creating accounts, adding them to necessary groups, creating mailboxes, enabling accounts for other systems, etc.) or practically any other operation. All you need to do is predefine conditions when certain tasks need to be executed and add it to the system. You can also schedule those operations if you need. Benefits from that don’t need any explanations. You can release your staff from dull routine that needs to be done and give them more challenging tasks that can use the skills that you have hired them for in the first place.
Adaxes also gives users an opportunity to access your company’s Active Directory through a web browser. It allows you to set up different types of Web Interfaces depending on the type of users that will access it, and therefore granularly give out the instruments needed.
Problems of delegation of access and permission are solved with the Role-Based Access Control model. Adaxes introduces the concept of Security Roles that give you centralized control of the privileges based on users’ job functions. All roles can be flexibly assigned, so you can be sure that you follow the least privilege principal.
Another enchantment that Adaxes can bring to your Active Directory environment is Approval-based workflow. It can allow you to delegate more responsibilities to lower level users, define most sensitive operations and execute them only after approval from a user with greater level of responsibility is granted. As a result, managers and other higher level staff can delegate more simple tasks to users but still retain the level of control.
For all those locked accounts and forgotten passwords Adaxes also has got a solution. With a Password Self-Service Portal users will be able to unlock their accounts and reset passwords by either answering security questions or confirming their identity with an SMS code. Such system can be integrated in the Adaxes Web Interface, standard Windows logon screens or even your own authentication forms.
As you can hardly find a company that does not need email, Exchange is a very important part of practically any Active Directory environment. So Adaxes could not leave it out. With its help you can automate mailbox creation and lifecycle management, delegate Exchange tasks to users, control Exchange from the Web Interface and much more.
If you are using Office 365 in your company, you can automate it as well. With the help of Adaxes you can streamline license assignment and even let users request them from their managers. Same Role-based system can be used as users in Office 365 can be updated according to their job duties. All that can be conveniently controlled from the same Web Interface that acts as a single centralized control point.
Just make Active Directory cool again
Installing Adaxes can really help a lot in your company’s everyday life by making your IT systems work for you again rather than continue sucking the resources of your business without any marginal benefit.
Overall Adaxes is a thing that can bring you back the joy that you originally had when you first installed Active Directory for your company and felt all the benefits from it. It helps you to overcome the restrictions that are present when managing AD with native tools. Stop your IT systems from being a bottleneck that slows your business’ further growth down. Try it and you will see that Active Directory can still be cool.