Authentication & Microsoft Active Directory - Integrate Your Applications to Join together

Published on this site: November 23th, 2006 - See more articles from this month

In a perfect world organizations would have a single application that fulfills all of their business needs, sadly this is not possible. While it is a desirable goal to have as much integrated functionality within a single application as possible, even large, very expensive enterprise systems rarely address every need in the desired way. As a result, organizations must consider supplementary applications to address these specific needs.

A problem that arises when additional applications are added to the network (intranet /extranet or both) is the issue of burdening the users with an added application to have to login to. Administrators and End Users have enough work to do as it is and adding the obstacle of having to sign into multiple applications is a time added nuisance. End Users are forced to keep track of multiple passwords and the hassle of additional steps to do their work. In addition to this, network and application administrators are faced with the challenges of adding users to each system, keeping track of who has access to what and somehow keeping user names updated or synchronized between systems.

Some of the costs to an organization for these inefficiencies are:

• Decreased Productivity of high skilled Network & Application Administrators
  
  
• Reduced Benefits - In some cases users may tend to use the application less than they should because of the hassle of accessing it, forgetting their password, etc.
  
  
• Exposure to Risk - When application access is difficult to manage, someone could gain access to information they should not have (i.e. when an employee leaves the organization, etc.)

To effectively address these problems it is important that a new application being added to the network be able to tie into the existing authentication system (simply stated, authentication refers to the process of identifying the user). This is not just for the benefit of network and application administrators (i.e. maintaining a central login management system). It also provides a way for end users to be able to login to the network (or extranet web site) once and automatically have access to the applications and resources they need to effectively perform their jobs. Some applications that do provide single sign in modules often stop there - only providing benefits for authentication. An even higher level of benefit is achieved when the application not only provides single sign on capabilities, but also allows administrators to use a centralized system (i.e. Microsoft Active Directory) to control some level of what users have access to in the new application (authorization).

Some of the benefits to an organization of single sign-on access are:

• Increased Productivity - Simplicity of user management for administrators and reduced barriers for end users accessing the
  information and resources they need
  
  
• Improved Benefit/ROI - When applications are used more often for what they were designed to do, the organization receives the resulting benefit and achieves a quicker return on investment.
  
  
• Reduced Exposure to Risk - Provided when a greater degree of control of application access is maintained.

This commonly overlooked feature will save your company time & money. When selecting your next software application place a high value on having authentication integration with your current application or Microsoft Active Directory.

Rich Hunter - President of Novo Solutions, Inc. Novo Solutions, Inc. is an Independent Software Vendor (ISV) in Virginia Beach, Virginia specializing in Customer Support Software. Free trial versions of the Novo Help Desk Software, Knowledge Base Software and suite of web-based Customer Support Solutions are available. For more information contact [email protected].