How SLB secured and scaled Active Directory management across its global offices with AD360
About SLB
SLB is a global energy technology company operating across hundreds of sites spanning every major time zone. It serves the energy industry with expertise in reservoir production, drilling, and processing. With a workforce of approximately 130,000 employees distributed across the globe, SLB operates at a scale that places it among the most complex enterprise environments in the energy sector.
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Company
SLB -
Industry
Energy -
Location
United States -
Employees
130,000+
Core features used:
- Real-time Active Directory (AD) auditing
- AD and Microsoft Entra ID backup and recovery
Business challenges
At the scale SLB operates, even standard identity management tasks become formidable engineering challenges. The organization's primary AD domain alone tracks over 500,000 objects, while its Microsoft Entra ID tenant carries over 800,000 objects, making SLB's identity environment among the largest and most complex in the enterprise world.
For years, SLB had relied on Quest Change Auditor for AD auditing. However, the accumulated licensing and maintenance costs had grown into a significant overhead, prompting the organization to look for a more cost-effective alternative that could deliver the same depth of capability without the long-running financial burden.
On the backup and recovery side, the situation was more precarious. Prior to adopting Recovery Manager Plus, SLB had no commercial backup solution for AD. The organization depended on a combination of local scripts and subscription-based tools, an approach that left critical identity infrastructure without the enterprise-grade protection it required.
We did have a huge problem doing the backups of our Entra ID. At first it was taking like 40 hours for just incremental backups.
Scott, IT team, SLB
Solution
SLB adopted the AD360 suite, encompassing ADAudit Plus, Recovery Manager Plus, and ADSelfService Plus, as a unified platform to consolidate identity auditing, backup, and self-service capabilities under one solution. OnboardPro, ManageEngine's implementation and professional services team, led by implementation expert Moulana Madani, worked directly with SLB's IT team to configure and tune the environment across its full scope.
The onboarding process involved critical architectural decisions, including server distribution and configuration tuning as well as coordinated back-and-forth with ManageEngine's development team to address environment-specific performance issues. Targeted patches were developed and applied to resolve the Microsoft Entra ID backup performance problem, bringing object backups from 40 hours down to a consistent 3–8 hour range.
With ADAudit Plus, the team successfully replicated the full auditing and alerting footprint previously handled by Quest, configuring out-of-the-box alerts, scheduled compliance reports, custom attack vector reports, and configuration hardening. The implementation achieved near-complete parity with the legacy Quest setup, delivering everything SLB had before and more.
The OnboardPro service was definitely useful, from deciding whether to go with one server or split across multiples to the configuration changes along the way. We were constantly in contact, and that back-and-forth was what made it work. It takes the guesswork out of what could otherwise be a very painful process.
Scott, IT team, SLB
Result
ADAudit Plus and Recovery Manager Plus are both live in production at SLB. Both AD and Microsoft Entra ID now have a reliable, commercial-grade backup and recovery solution in place for the first time. Microsoft Entra ID backup jobs that previously ran for up to 40 hours now complete within 3–8 hours. Auditing and alerting requirements previously met by Quest have been successfully transitioned to ADAudit Plus, with compliance reports and custom configurations in place. ADSelf-Service Plus is currently in the testing phase as the team works through a personnel transition.
SLB rates its overall experience with ManageEngine at 8/10, with the expectation of a higher score once the final kinks are worked out.
About AD360
ManageEngine AD360 is a unified identity platform that seamlessly connects people, technology, and experiences while giving enterprises full visibility and control over their identity infrastructure. It offers automated life cycle management; secure SSO; adaptive MFA; and risk-based governance, auditing, compliance, and identity analytics—all from a single, intuitive console. With extensive out-of-the-box integrations and support for custom connectors, AD360 easily integrates into existing IT ecosystems to enhance security and streamline identity operations. Trusted by leading enterprises across healthcare, finance, education, and government, AD360 simplifies identity management, fortifies security, and ensures compliance with evolving regulatory standards. For more information, please visit https://www.manageengine.com/active-directory-360/.
About OnboardPro
OnboardPro is a ManageEngine service that provides solution implementation to clients upon request. This service includes the installation and customized configuration of ManageEngine solutions. It enables clients to seamlessly begin work without worrying about the complexities of product installation, deployment, and use. Every client environment is unique and requires additional support beyond the basic installation and standard features. With custom onboarding, clients have the option to engage a team of product experts to manage the installation, implementation, customization, and training based on their business needs. For more information, visit manageengine.com/onboarding/manageengine-onboardpro-iam-and-siem-professional-service.html.