Web-based User Provisioning with ADAXES

I’m a fan of Softerra’s LDAP Administrator, which I have reviewed here, and finally got around to checking out their new web-based AD management application. Web-based AD managers leverage Active Directory to make it useful for all users in an organization. As a result, they are priced higher than desktop applications that are only used by IT Admins.

The first thing I noticed was that Softerra’s ADAXES product is split between a web interface and a separate desktop application. Some organizations may prefer to have the IT Admin features in a desktop console and the general user features in a separate web app, but I would prefer all the functionality to be contained within one web-based central console that uses roles, and access rights to limit the features that general users, and IT admins can use. My initial impression was that a basic web-interface was provided along with their existing desktop application in order to take advantage of the higher pricing model of web-based AD management apps.

Otherwise, I did like the application. It installed smoothly, and has some nice features including template-based user object creation with built in templates for Users, Computers, and Groups. The desktop admin application allows you to create workflows and business rules with textual commands such as creating a home folder after a user has been created. The web-app includes reports, and user self-service updates. It has a feature I’ve seen in a couple other products, called Business Units, which I think is really useful, too. A Business Unit is like a virtual OU that can map to multiple  OUs in AD and allow for unified management and delegation.

For a v1 product, I think Softerra ADAXES has many features of a good user provisioning system, and it will be interesting to see how Softerra improves it in the next version.

Website: www.adaxes.com

Price: $12 per user in your AD forest, or $10,000 for a site license.

Tags: Active Directory, self-service, user-provisioning, Web-based

This entry was posted on July 17th, 2010 and is filed under Management, Web-based. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.