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Southern Water, a water utility company in England, faced challenges in managing its Active Directory (AD) infrastructure due to complex IT elements, including SQL clusters and virtual platforms.
To streamline user management and reduce manual administrative tasks, it implemented ADManager Plus. The solution helped automate key processes, improving efficiency and security compliance.
With expert guidance from the OnboardPro team, ManageEngine's implementation service, Southern Water overcame the technical hurdles, such as domain admin restrictions, and adapted its setup to meet its operational needs.
ADManager Plus significantly enhanced productivity, simplified user management, and ensured compliance with internal security policies, reducing manual workload and potential risks.
Southern Water
Utility sector
Worthing, West Sussex, England
2,092
Southern Water is a leading water and wastewater utility company serving Southeast England, including Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight. Headquartered in Worthing, West Sussex, the company provides drinking water to approximately 1.1 million properties and treats wastewater for over 4 million customers.
With a workforce of over 2,000 employees, Southern Water operates 91 water treatment works and 365 wastewater treatment facilities. The company is committed to delivering high-quality water services and has been investing in infrastructure to meet the growing demands of its customer base.
Shaun George, a contracted infrastructure engineer at Southern Water, stated that the organization encountered several technical challenges while streamlining AD management. It had to implement an environment involving a SQL cluster back end, which required extensive manual configurations—ranging from editing encrypted files to managing multi-subnet settings.
Compounding these challenges was a policy restriction that prevented the use of domain admin-level service accounts, forcing the team to abandon their original plan for a high availability (HA) setup. These roadblocks emphasized the need for a centralized solution that could be tailored to Southern Water's infrastructure without compromising internal security and compliance protocols.
Given the technical setup requirements and internal policy constraints, the team needed a solution that could integrate smoothly with their environment and be configured with minimal manual effort.
One of the technical team members had prior experience with ADManager Plus and recommended it based on its reliability and ease of use. This led Southern Water to choose ADManager Plus.
To address its AD management challenges, Southern Water adopted ADManager Plus to eliminate inefficiencies in handling user accounts and permissions. Before its implementation, managing AD was largely manual and prone to delays and configuration errors.
While George's role focused on setup and configuration, ADManager Plus was deployed to support streamlined AD tasks, such as user provisioning, access rights management, and reporting. The product's centralized console and automation capabilities were expected to reduce manual effort and align with internal policies.
said George, infrastructure engineer at Southern Water.
By leveraging ADManager Plus, the organization gained greater visibility and control over its AD environment, reducing administrative overhead and improving operational consistency.
To ensure the solution was implemented smoothly and in line with its unique infrastructure, Southern Water opted for ManageEngine's OnboardPro implementation service. Given the complexity of its setup—including SQL clustering and adjustments from the original HA plan—expert assistance was crucial.
emphasized George, infrastructure engineer at Southern Water, highlighting the value of expert assistance.
Through the tailored onboarding process, ManageEngine's team configured ADManager Plus to suit Southern Water's specific technical and security requirements. As a result, the deployment was efficient, and the platform was fully aligned with the organization's internal policies and operational goals.
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 Entra ID management. For more information about ADManager Plus, visit manageengine.com/products/ad-manager/.
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.
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