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The IT world has changed. No longer are companies packed wall to wall with cubicles and Windows® desktops. Today’s workforce is armed with a variety of platforms, systems, and most importantly of all, they’re wireless. With cross-platform endpoint environments now the norm, IT admins are searching for a hosted cloud endpoint management solution.
Endpoint Management: Then and Now
Historically, the IT environment was almost entirely Microsoft® Windows-based, and completely located on-prem. Because of the inherent nature of the workplace at the time, endpoint management tools were Windows focused and worked best with on-prem resources. The major endpoint management solutions of the time—Microsoft’s Active Directory® (AD) and SCCM®—reflected that inherent nature.
But, as we know, the IT world has changed. Servers are now hosted in the cloud by AWS® or Google Cloud Platform™. Mac® and Linux® systems are becoming more popular. WiFi and laptops have enabled remote workers to be able to work all over the world, regardless of their location. Traditional endpoint management solutions are struggling under the rapid advancements of the industry.
IT organizations started to look for ways to manage heterogeneous environments that could be a mixture of on-prem, cloud, and remote resources. Because so many IT resources had made the leap to the cloud, IT admins started to search for endpoint management solutions that could be delivered from the cloud as well.
Fortunately, it just so happened that a new generation of cloud endpoint management solutions began to emerge. These solutions take a much more holistic approach, akin to what Active Directory did for Windows-centric user and system management, but on a larger scale. These new solutions are expanding the traditional definition of endpoint management into the modern era by hosting it in the cloud.
What is Hosted Cloud Endpoint Management, Then?
Hosted cloud endpoint management is about securely managing user access to Windows, Mac, and Linux machines, as well as enabling GPO-like policies across all three major platforms. Further, because user management is such a critical aspect of managing endpoints, modern endpoint management solutions also include a core, authoritative directory service, as AD had done in the past for Windows environments. Most importantly, hosted cloud endpoint management differs from other endpoint-centric solutions in that it can be managed remotely, making it usable for a wider spread of use cases.
This combined approach to user and system management is highlighted in the cloud identity management solution, JumpCloud® Directory-as-a-Service®.
Hosted Cloud Endpoint Management from JumpCloud®
JumpCloud Directory-as-a-Service (DaaS) is a reimagination of Active Directory; it’s an endpoint-centric, cloud directory service for the modern era. By utilizing downloadable Agents, JumpCloud manages users’ systems, regardless of platform or location. Admins can then implement controls across their system fleets via a remote console in their web browser using cross-platform, GPO-like Policies.
Feel free to contact us to learn more about hosted cloud endpoint management and JumpCloud as a whole. You can also check out tutorials and updates to the DaaS platform on our YouTube channel. To try JumpCloud for yourself, consider signing up for a free account. Your first ten users are on us to get you started.
