Headquartered in Canada, this utility services consultancy with customers across North America helps telecom, energy, and natural gas companies with distribution and infrastructure optimization, providing engineering support, design, and preconstruction services, among other things. Founded over a decade ago, the organization has 325 employees who work in a mostly remote hybrid environment.
Ensuring business continuity during the pandemic
Like many businesses, the organization had to rapidly pivot to remote work when the Canadian government mandated everyone stay home to stop the spread of COVID-19 during the onset of the pandemic. At the time, the company used Active Directory as a directory service and Google Workspace as a productivity suite; almost all of their devices were Windows, with a few Linux servers sprinkled in the mix.
“We had to come up with a solution really quickly to have asset management, infrastructure, and identity management,” says the company’s IT manager. “We had to be able to manage our entire fleet of users and devices and we had to do it quickly because the government mandated everybody go home and we didn’t want to stop operating.”
Choosing JumpCloud as an Active Directory alternative
Needing an Active Directory replacement, the IT manager began searching for a solution to the problem. After running a simple Google search for “alternatives to Active Directory,” he came across JumpCloud, the cloud-native unified identity, device, and access management platform, and began researching the platform.
It just seemed like a natural fit. The marketing material that JumpCloud had was very, very on point for being exactly what we were looking for. Every little subset of what we were looking for had a page that was well-written and tackled the problem that we had perfectly.
IT Manager
Increasing IT productivity & maintaining a hybrid workforce post-pandemic
JumpCloud turned out to be the exact tool the utility consultancy needed — to the point the organization never fully transitioned back to the office after the pandemic.
“We’ve been able to stay fully remote thanks to JumpCloud,” the IT manager says. “Right off the bat, we were just using it for identity management and inventory management. Then we later graduated to using it for automatic provisioning of devices. And now we’re using it for PowerShell and managing devices in a bit more of an intricate way.”
Accelerated onboarding
Thanks to JumpCloud, setting new users up on devices is simple. Once someone on the technical team receives a new device, they set up initial accounts, run Windows updates, and then install JumpCloud agents.
“Once the JumpCloud agent is installed, thanks to Dynamic Groups, it automatically assigns the device to our workstation group which then applies all of our policies,” explains the company’s IT project coordinator. “We then run a couple of post-install scripts for some proprietary software, and once all those finish running, we have a fully functional workstation ready to assign to a user.”
With JumpCloud powering onboarding, “hands-on time dropped dramatically.”
“At one point, I think I staged five PCs at once,” the IT project coordinator continues. “They were all done in the same amount of time as it would have taken to do one previously. It’s kind of an exponential gain, too. If we had more onboarding, it would be an even bigger gain.”
Improved security
With JumpCloud, the utility services firm has been able to strengthen its security posture using multi-factor authentication and conditional access policies, which help them ensure that only authorized users can access sensitive company resources. With a workforce that primarily works out of the field, about half of employees currently use JumpCloud Protect for multi-factor authentication on mobile.
We use a whole host of policies. One of my favorites from a security perspective is the fact that we can automatically enable BitLocker and have this key stored within the JumpCloud portal.
IT Manager
“Largely, it’s been great. We have had issues with some of our field staff having issues with it, although I suspect that’s more due to the fact that sometimes they’re quite literally in the middle of a farmer’s field without any connectivity,” the IT project coordinator says with a laugh.
The team also makes use of other policies and custom commands to further shore up security.
“We use a whole host of policies,” he continues. “One of my favorites from a security perspective is the fact that we can automatically enable BitLocker and have this key stored within the JumpCloud portal.”
Remote support
JumpCloud’s Remote Assist tool has also been a life-saver in certain situations when technicians have needed assistance in the field.
“It’s one of those tools that — when you need that level of access — it’s great to have,” the IT project coordinator says. “It saved the day on a couple of occasions for us and has gotten us out of some really tight situations.”
[Remote support] saved the day on a couple of occasions for us and has gotten us out of some really tight situations.
IT Manager
Future-proofed IT management
Looking ahead, the consultancy is planning to utilize several additional JumpCloud features, like patch management and single sign-on. The team is also happy about JumpCloud’s updated reporting capabilities, and they’re keen on being part of JumpCloud’s early access program, which enables them to test new functionality early and share feedback that they’ve later seen incorporated into those features.
“We’ve seen a ton of benefits from it,” the IT manager says.
On top of this, the team appreciates the fact that JumpCloud is regularly rolling out new features, proving it’s a tool that can keep pace with the organization as it scales as its needs change.
Constant progression and improvement in the tools is something we look for in the vendors that we utilize, and we’re absolutely getting that with JumpCloud.
IT Manager
About JumpCloud
JumpCloud® delivers a unified open directory platform that makes it easy to securely manage identities, devices, and access across your organization. With JumpCloud, IT teams and MSPs enable users to work securely from anywhere and manage their Windows, Apple, Linux, and Android devices from a single platform.
To see the power of JumpCloud yourself, request a demo or start a 30-day trial today.