How Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) triumphed in a crisis and is now seen to be one of the leaders in Identity Management for the Tertiary Education Sector.
Eastern Institute of Technology (EIT) developed a proprietary Identity Management solution using PowerShell scripts to transport users’ identity attributes (name, date of birth, ID number and email) across the multiple systems accessed by staff and students at the institute. This system of PowerShell scripts was maintained by a single employee who left EIT in 2012. Unbeknownst to EIT this system required a high level of manual maintenance by EIT IT staff. Subsequently the system collapsed during a critical period of new student enrolment and none of the existing IT resources employed by EIT knew how to fix it. As a result a whole lot of students were without an AD accounts this caused their helpdesk urgent work to create the accounts manually.
EIT looked around and knew the way forward was Microsoft’s Forefront Identity Manager (FIM). They wanted an easy to maintain and highly visible ‘out of the box solution’ they could configure rather than a bespoke solution. They began to install and configure it themselves when they quickly realised they needed a specialist company with more expertise and knowledge around identity management and large scaled sites. As a result, EIT engaged Business Mechanix to guide them through the implementation of Forefront Identity Manager to replace the old system of PowerShell scripts to move identity attributes for over 70,000 staff, students and alumni between Active Directory, Artena (Student Management System), Papercut (printing system) and the Cloud (Office 365).
Implementing FIM has ultimately meant EIT no longer has a strong reliance on a single staff member to keep their identity management system running. They have also eliminated piles of scripts moving user IDs and passwords from one system to another and they now have all identities centralized in one place, rather than in multiple. One huge advantage for EIT is now the ability to automate moves of Identities between systems. As a result of the successful project EIT engaged Business Mechanix to deliever a single sign-on solution for users with the Cloud (Office 365) using Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS).
Combining our expertise in complex large scale implementation and our Identity Management knowledge with our deep understanding of Active Directory, Portals, Office 365 and Student Management Systems such as Artena is a winning combination. We know why you need fantastic identity management and how to architect a solution to work for you.