New UserPilot tool makes user management and unified log-in simple with Active Directory synchronization
2009-01-27
Intermedia, the leading software as a service (SaaS) provider specializing in messaging and collaboration solutions, today announced the availability of UserPilot, a tool that allows users of Intermedia's hosted applications to better integrate with their on-premise applications. With more and more companies leveraging a mix of hosted and in-house software applications, user administration has become increasingly time consuming and complex for IT administrators - a problem that UserPilot aims to solve. UserPilot also equips end-users with unified log-in capabilities, making it easier and less time-consuming for users to access multiple applications.
UserPilot allows Intermedia customers to leverage their existing on-premise Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure to simplify user management across on-premise and Intermedia-hosted applications including hosted Exchange, hosted SharePoint and hosted Office Communications Server 2007. Using UserPilot customers can securely synchronize user log-in credentials to enable a single username and password combination for individual users across on-premise and hosted applications. If a user changes or an administrator resets a password through Active Directory, the change will sync with Intermedia automatically so the user can log in to Intermedia services using the new password.
"Many companies are now finding that it makes the most business sense to leverage packaged software for some applications and hosted software for others. Unfortunately for IT administrators, this makes user management and application integration a far bigger challenge than in the past," said Jonathan McCormick, Chief Operating Officer for Intermedia. "Intermedia recognizes this pain among IT administrators and believes that UserPilot will be a big first step into the integration of hosted and on-premise applications -- which is where the future of software deployment is headed."
"Intermedia gets it. We already using Active Directory to manage our users across all our applications," said Derek Christensen, Director of Information Systems for Juice Harvest Corporation, an Intermedia customer. "It makes sense that we should be able to manage our Intermedia users from the same Active Directory portal, and UserPilot lets us do that."
As SaaS becomes mission critical to businesses, richer integration and management services are necessary to eliminate inefficiencies in user management. With UserPilot, the maintenance of a SaaS-based email solution is effortless because hosted services are seamlessly integrated with existing on-premise software and user management applications.
Many other SaaS providers require that customers create and maintain user databases that are unique to their services but do not integrate with customers' existing user management systems. This results in inefficiencies for IT staff as they must manage multiple directories and log-in credentials, and deal with limitations on data integration across the firewall between hosted SaaS services and on-premise software. Since UserPilot keeps on-premise login credentials synchronized across Intermedia-hosted applications, time-consuming password and new user updates are eliminated for Active Directory users.
UserPilot integrates seamlessly with Intermedia's other hosted Microsoft Exchange offerings to allow for quick and easy installation. And because no business can afford to compromise the security of the information within their Active Directory, UserPilot was built with world-class SSL encryption and mutual authentication to provide total protection and provider validation for complete data integrity and security.
UserPilot is part of Intermedia's larger vision of creating a software continuum from on-premise to hosted, breaking down the barriers separating software as a service from on-premise applications. After an extended beta period, UserPilot is now available to all of Intermedia's direct customers and through its channel partners.
Companies interested in learning more about Intermedia's hosted messaging and collaboration solutions should visit http://www.intermedia.net.