Education

ADManager Plus enables seamless user management at Muscogee County School District

Muscogee County School District

About Muscogee County School District:

Spread across 56 schools, centers, and magnet programs, and with a community of 30,000 students and 5,500 professionals, the Muscogee County School District is a diverse public school system located in Columbus, Georgia. The institution aims to enhance the educational experience for all students in the county.

  • Country

    USA
  • Industry

    Education
  • Employees

    5,001-10,000

Business challenges:

  • Automation of user management: The organization was looking to automate identity life cycle management actions across a vast user community by leveraging a dynamic database feed.
  • Simplification of complex processes: Prior to using ADManager Plus, Muscogee County School District relied on Microsoft Identity Manager, whose complexity proved to be cumbersome and required significant IT resources, such as additional servers.

The Problem:

Muscogee County School District faced the dual challenge: the catering to the access requirement of a vast user base that shuttle between various locations and the limitations of Microsoft's Identity Manager. Lincoln King III, senior network support specialist, stressed the need for automation, "We have a large organization of around 40,000 users, and they move from location to location daily. So we need an automated system that would look at a database feed of the changes and make them automatically."

The complexity of Microsoft Identity Manager, which King called, "difficult to maintain," further compounded the problem. The organization required a solution that streamlined these complexities for more efficient user management. With the IT department already reaping benefits from ADAudit Plus, ManageEngine's auditing solution, they zeroed in on ADManager Plus.

The Solution:

With its template-based orchestration and scheduling of workflows to expedite end-to-end user management actions, ADManager Plus was the ideal solution for Muscogee County School District. "[We're] able to make multiple schedules at one time," said King. "We can even have an overlap, and they're still getting the job done." This capability has addressed the organization's need for simultaneous and overlapping job executions.

The product's ease of use further solidified the school district's positive experience. "The learning curve was not that large compared to other products," said King. The organization successfully transitioned from its manual processes to an automated, efficient, and seamless user management system.

When asked about the effectiveness of the custom onboarding services provided by ManageEngine, King said he believed that it paved way for proactive resolution of queries. "Whenever I needed help, the team was there," he said, adding, "[ManageEngine] reached out to make sure that communication was always open." This ongoing support contributed to a smooth implementation and their ability to use the product to its full potential. Lincoln also that the implementation services made his team understand the solution better and utilize to its fullest potential, adding that "We were going down one road and then the (custom onboarding) team helped us realize that there was another better way of handling (the implementation). So that was definitely an appreciation there."

Offering a strong endorsement, King highlighted three main reasons he would recommend ADManager Plus: The price point, the product's stability, and "how the solution only requires one server to actually use the product." ADManager Plus demonstrated its reliability, ease of use, cost-effectiveness, and ability to address complex IAM challenges, earning the confidence of Muscogee County School District.

About ADManager Plus

ADManager Plus is an identity governance and administration (IGA) solution that simplifies identity management, ensures security and improves compliance. With ADManager Plus, manage the user life cycle from provisioning to deprovisioning, run access certification campaigns, orchestrate identity management across enterprise applications and protect data on your enterprise platforms with regular backups. Use over 200 reports to gain valuable insights into identities and their access rights. Improve the efficiency of your IGA operations with workflows, automations and role-based access control policies. ADManager Plus' Android and iOS applications help with on-the-go AD and Azure AD management. For more information about ADManager Plus, visit manageengine.com/ad-manager.