3 ways to manage your users in the cloud and on prem

To the cloud. To most IT people that are not in sales or a cloud focused company that saying is a bad joke. For most of us “common” IT folk, we will continue to run on our own hardware for a number of reasons (existing hardware capacity, low latency, backup requirements,etc)

But even with those reason, smaller applications and infrastructure creep in or make sense to start moving to the cloud. For us Microsoft pretty much gave us o365 licenses with our EA this year. So I’ve been working on the best way to use o365 to extend our resources when it makes sense. Right now that is sharepoint and exchange. I’ve setup a hybrid environment for exchange and extended our active directory environment for authentication into o365.

English: Cloud Computing Image
English: Cloud Computing Image (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Changes like that have large impact on your user onboarding and decommission processes. But I found 3 tools that allow you to automate those processes against both local and cloud. This is just the first post on this topic, as I demo and try each out I’ll post a follow up. Right now all my comments are based off reading their support docs and website. I have not demo’d any of these products yet.

Softerra Adaxes

both a client and web-based product for both IT and the end user. I like the workflow and delegation. But I think in order for the reporting to capture everything I would have to remove all native access to AD,Exchange,o365, and lync from the admin side so all changes go through this product. There is an end user portal to reset passwords and change AD information if you allow them the rights. There is also a web based portal for HR,IT, and managers to fill out a form to start a process for user provisioning.

The website has a lot of good information and how-to articles. Their forums aren’t super busy, but they are active and support techs do answer and help directly in the forums. The company seems to be based outside the US if that is a concern. They also got back to me quickly when I posted a pre-sales question on twitter.

More information on Adaxes can be found here

Zohno

Includes two products Z-Hire and Z-Term, you can guess what each does by the name. This solution is built to be quick,simple, and cost effective for creating and terminating Exchange, AD, and Lync accounts.

To the point Zohno information can be found here

Cayosoft Administrator Suite

Cayosoft is similar to the Adaxes solution in that is handles user creation and much more. IT administration is key with their production, to improve efficiency and security. The client is a fat install for the IT admin. There is the ability to create dynamic active directory groups based off AD attributes.

Find out more about Cayosoft here.

2 thoughts on “3 ways to manage your users in the cloud and on prem

  1. Hi Jason,
    Great post again. I have found here 3 best ways to manage users in the cloud. I think Zohno will be a great choice here. Now all tech giants are going to cloud for better security and reliability.

    Best Regards
    Munna

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