Challenge
Siemens Wind Power was using legacy Active Directory tools from 3'rd party providers that no longer suited the needs for the future. We were primarily looking for a tool that offered a high degree of customization and had the possibility to easily integrate with cloud solutions like Office 365 / Exchange Online. Secondly, we also needed to find a tool that could offer all our employees a secure self-service option.
Solution
Using Adaxes, we now have the possibility to create self-service portals that offer IT services to our end users. Our end users can request to create and modify AD accounts, functional mailboxes, AD groups etc. directly from the web front-end, all while maintaining global naming standards that are enforced by using the "property patterns" feature in Adaxes. If there's a specific action that requires approval, it can be easily configured as well. This effectively moves IT closer to the business and shortens the "resolution time" tremendously. For example, we created a functionality where a user could request the creation of an AD account. [Using SelfService Portal] This request would only be processed if approved by the manager. [Adaxes Approval workflow] After approval, the creation of the account is triggered, and a script is run to create a linked mailbox in a separate Active Directory forest. [Business rule that triggers the execution of a script]
Benefits
When it comes to Active Directory administration, and depending on how you choose to configure Adaxes, one can almost say "if you can think of it, it can be achieved via Adaxes". It's really just a matter of configuring the functions to work in the exact way you want them to. One of the strongest benefits we've achieved is reduction of "resolution time" by bringing the tedious recurring IT service tasks in the hands of the business users. A side benefit of this is that it also frees up IT personnel's time who can now focus on other more demanding tasks in the future.
Martin Ellemose Jensen
Senior IT system administrator