As a nearly 25-year-old tool, Microsoft Active Directory (AD) has remained a persistent component of many SMEs. And as a Microsoft product and a core infrastructure component, it tends to put down stubborn roots. For IT teams, it can be easier to ignore or work around AD鈥檚 faults than to confront the idea of modernizing it.
But AD has not sufficiently modernized to meet the modern business鈥檚 needs on its own, and the longer you leave it unattended, the more its issues will compound. For many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), AD is restrictive and unwieldy. In addition, managing legacy technology is expensive and doesn鈥檛 offer SMEs modern, cloud-based security. As cost-efficiency, security, and supporting decentralized work are poised to top SMEs鈥� priority lists in 2024, IT teams can鈥檛 afford to ignore these shortcomings.
Fortunately, modernizing AD isn鈥檛 as hard as it may seem. There are many paths SMEs can take to modernize their AD instance. Making a change might be easier than you think 鈥� and the benefits may surprise you. Read on to learn how and why to modernize AD in 2024.
Why Modernize AD?
Many SMEs don鈥檛 realize how much an outdated AD setup can affect their business, from flexibility to security to cost-effectiveness.
Flexibility and Productivity
In general, AD can be rigid, tedious and hard to navigate. This is due to a few factors:
- AD caters to enterprises. As an extension of Microsoft, AD is designed to serve enterprise-level companies. For SMEs, this can make it overly complex and difficult to manage.
- AD is complex and prescriptive. In general, AD tends to be prescriptive, complex, and formal: you conform to it 鈥� not the other way around. AD has an established way of doing things, and working outside of those specifications is difficult. Even understanding Microsoft鈥檚 licensing scheme and following AD best practices takes significant effort.
Case in point: a few months ago, a redditor asking the r/sysadmin community whether there was a straightforward breakdown of Microsoft licensing out there. The top comments were sarcastic gifs and colorful iterations of the word 鈥渘o.鈥� - Microsoft favors Microsoft. No surprises here. While AD can support solutions from other vendors, it鈥檚 never as easy as maintaining a homogeneous Microsoft/Windows environment. But homogeneity doesn鈥檛 usually lend itself to creativity or growth. The tedium and costs associated with getting AD to play nicely with other tools can discourage IT teams from thinking and working outside the box.
All this friction can significantly slow down your team and work against your ability to optimize your resources. It keeps you boxed into the Microsoft ecosystem, which can make it feel hard to grow, change, and support new initiatives.
When you modernize AD with a cloud-based directory, on the other hand, you enjoy more freedom to work the way you want, and with the resources you choose. This makes your infrastructure flexible and adaptable, which is critical in today鈥檚 fast-paced and frequently changing work environment.
Security
Because AD is legacy-based, it aligns with an outdated, perimeter-based security model. This approach centers security around a physical perimeter 鈥� i.e., the physical domain. However, the rise in mobile, offsite, and cloud-based work calls for a shift to identity-based security, otherwise known as Zero Trust security.
Zero Trust security requires identity verification before accessing every resource 鈥� not just before accessing one outer perimeter. This decreases the chances of a breach (especially for companies with mobile and hybrid environments) and helps prevent lateral movement, should one occur.
In addition, it can be difficult to maintain full security and visibility of legacy equipment, especially if it isn鈥檛 meticulously kept up. AD tends to have a sprawling footprint, which leads to blind spots, outdated equipment, unprotected servers, and other legacy weaknesses. These are perfect entry points for a bad actor looking for a way into your central network.
Finally, some of the most important security functions in AD 鈥� like Health Check, password protection, and privileged access management 鈥� require expensive subscription tiers.
A cloud-based directory helps SMEs shift away from the legacy risks AD poses and adopt zero trust, a more reliable approach in a cloud-based environment. It also offers SMEs access to more modern security solutions and enables IT teams to reliably maintain an updated infrastructure.
Budget
Maintaining an on-premises domain isn鈥檛 cheap 鈥� especially when you factor in the costs to upgrade, monitor, and maintain the equipment. According to our estimates, switching to a cloud directory could reduce the annual costs of a 200-person company by over 75%. (We got this number from our pricing calculator 鈥� try it out!)
On top of the costs of owning and maintaining legacy equipment, Microsoft鈥檚 notoriously confusing licensing can lead companies to pay for more than what they need without realizing it.
Modernizing AD can help you optimize your resources by offering you more flexibility and capabilities while reducing the costs of owning and managing a legacy solution. You鈥檒l enjoy more modern functionality at a lower cost with less upkeep to worry about.
How to Modernize AD
Even though your directory is a core piece of infrastructure, modernizing it might be easier than you think. 鈥淢odernize鈥� doesn’t necessarily mean 鈥渞ip and replace鈥� (although that is an option). There are essentially three pathways you can take to modernize your AD instance.
- Extend AD with point solutions. Rip-and-replaces aren鈥檛 always feasible, especially as short-term solutions or for SMEs fairly entrenched in legacy technology. In these cases, SMEs can keep their AD instance, but extend its capabilities with solutions such as SSO, MFA, and device management.
- Wrap AD with modern IAM – Many SMEs are minimizing their AD footprint to only must-have legacy applications. This allows them to keep AD (at least for the time being) while still enjoying the benefits of a cloud-based IAM and a cloud-forward infrastructure with modern capabilities. One method of doing this is by syncing AD with 探花大神, a cloud-based directory. 探花大神 can act as an identity provider (IdP) or defer IdP responsibilities to AD, which allows you to configure your infrastructure exactly how you want to 鈥� and offers the option for a slow, controlled transition off of AD.
- Shift to a cloud directory – More organizations are simply removing AD from their infrastructure and shifting to an open, standards-based platform. In this scenario, you enjoy the freedom of completely breaking ties with AD. Many SMEs that take this path see improvements in their flexibility, productivity, savings, and security almost immediately.
Modernize With 探花大神
探花大神 is a cloud-based open directory platform with options for expanding, wrapping, or replacing AD. It鈥檚 designed to work with or without AD 鈥� so, if you鈥檙e ready to replace AD, 探花大神 offers a migration tool designed to transition you from AD to 探花大神. If you鈥檙e not looking for a complete replacement, 探花大神 can integrate with AD seamlessly, allowing you to use 探花大神 for what you need and keep AD for the rest. You can keep AD as your core IdP or shift that responsibility over to 探花大神. It鈥檚 all up to you.
When you modernize AD with 探花大神, you enjoy the ability to support both cloud and on-premises resources with an open and flexible directory. 探花大神 can support just about any resource you need it to, regardless of operating system or vendor. And its pricing is clear and transparent, so there鈥檚 no question of what you need to support your environment.
Finally, 探花大神 unifies user and device management and offers a full suite of tools that allows you to make work happen securely, and from just about anywhere. That includes single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, patch management, and more.
To learn more about how 探花大神 bridges the AD gap, download in the eBook, Modernize Active Directory: Break Free from the Limitations of AD.
