Centralized Management

The Active Directory Services with Roaming Profile and File Services

All employees in a company possess different level of knowledge about IT, learing how to operate a computer machine, mainly adapted to their workplace environment and be peaceful with the IT infrastructures. There are many companies which started their business on one or few computers, grew slowly and suddenly bloomed to be business with many employees, while on the other hand the IT environment was not changed accordingly to company needs. The computers seems working peacefully within a company, but these computers indeed just a collection of independent units instead of working as a whole. This made it difficult to manage them as a group of resources. These companies often reported that:

Security Control

Lack of clear picture and control over which
IT rights on which employees possess.

Time consuming

Large amount of time spent on Changes
and permissions made on each computer.

Stolen Laptop & Computer Damage

All documents, emails and computer configuration go missing when a laptop was stolen or the harddisk of a computer damaged.

Virus Infection

Virus spread when administrative privileges was granted on the computer and the employee was (un)intentionally install the software.

Swapping computers

Swapping the computers due to some reasons,
all settings must be reset from the scratch.

Missing Documents

Documents were stored on a single computer are not
available to others, or files lost as the result computer crashes.

Data Audition

No possibility of blocking and tracking
the person who access the data.

Missing Password

No control over changing or reset a employee’s password.
Once it is locked, it requires the employee to open it.

Security Control

Lack of clear picture and control over which IT rights on which employees possess.

Time consuming

Large amount of time spent on Changes and permissions made on each computer.

Stolen Laptop and Computer Damage

All documents, emails and computer configuration go missing when a laptop was stolen or the harddisk of a computer damaged.

Virus Infection

Virus spread when administrative privileges was granted on the computer and the employee was (un)intentionally install the software.

Swapping computers

Swapping the computers due to some reasons, all settings must be reset from the scratch.

Missing Documents

Documents were stored on a single computer are not available to others, or files lost as the result computer crashes.

Data Audition

No possibility of blocking and tracking the person who access the data.

Missing Password

No control over changing or reset a employee’s password.Once it is locked, it requires the employee to open it.

The above problems are the tip of the iceberg and many are hidden. To prevail on this diversity and to ensure an adequate level of security, Microsoft introduced Active Directory, which catalogues users’ data, computers/workstations, peripherals and allows for easier and automated management, through data storage centralization, user administration, security policies and groups.

The Beneﬁts of Active Directory (AD) Services

AD is not merely a product by Microsoft, but it is a business study and planning how a company manages IT resources. There are too many features offered by AD, and the descriptions below are some exmaples how AD works:

Servers

Heart of all Infrastructures

Reduce overhead through standardization
One click to block all service access from a ﬁred/resigned employee, such as ﬁle access, internet access, sql database, remote desktop, email and other IT resources
3rd party software such as antivirus will require a domain in order to deploy.

Server Storage

Folders can be restricted and grant access to the authorized employee only.
All data is kept centralized in server, not dispersed and distributed in each individual computer.
To centralize all ﬁles shall ease to backup. Files are the intellectual properties of a company

Scalability & Change Management

The available services can be upgrade and downgrade for the employees easily.
AD can be reached across different geographical location; in another word, regardless how many office brunches, AD governs all.

Multiple Copies

Files and Folders can be restored at any timeline if the employees had accidentally overwritten an important ﬁles.
Files will be kept in multiple copies on different timeline.

Workstation

Workstation Control / Administrative

Restrict administrative rights and grant access when needed.
Show company Memo on logon screen
Rest password for a computer
Sign-in the IT resources using one username and password.
Automatically assign printers or folders to the employee in the respective department.
Block USB devices

Roaming Proﬁles

Employees can work from one computer to another, from upstairs to downstairs with his/her own computer settings.
All employees’ ﬁles are collected from the computers to server automatically.
Stolen laptop or broken computer can be replaced anytime without losing data.

IT Usage Policies / Security

One catalogue to manage the IT Policies and one click to apply these standards to each computer.
The security catalogues come with layman descriptions. Can be easily understood by a non-technical person.
Different policies can be applied according to individual or by department.