Impel is a SaaS software company that offers an AI-powered customer lifecycle management platform for automotive dealers, OEMs, and third-party marketplaces. Leveraging generative AI, Impel helps its customers deliver hyper-personalized experiences to car buyers by automating workflows and augmenting sales and service teams (e.g., with AI chatbots and interactive 360-degree walkarounds). Founded in 2014 and headquartered in Syracuse, New York, Impel is powered by a team of 500 employees spread out across the world.
Managing IT resources for a rapidly scaling startup
When Mike Case joined Impel as Senior IT manager in 2019, he was a one-man IT show — a “very, very busy and burnt-out one-man IT show,” he says — in charge of 80 users. At the time, the company didn’t have a directory service or any systems for endpoint management and identity management.
“Small companies can get away with things like that, but we were growing fast enough that we needed something more mature. To keep up with the needs of a quickly growing business, we needed endpoint management and identity management and a host of other things.”
– Mike Case, Senior IT Manager, Impel
As Case began looking for a solution, he ran into another problem.
“I realized that I was going to need five or six different major systems, integrate them together, and hope all those integrations hold together,” he explains. “The complexity was just really getting high.”
Complicating matters further, Impel’s environment consists of Windows, Macs, and Linux devices.
“There are various platforms out there that support one or maybe two of those, but finding one that can support all three was huge.”
Building IT operations on top of feature-rich JumpCloud
Case continued researching his options and came across a JumpCloud advertisement for directory services. A few days later, he saw a different JumpCloud ad for device management.
“I’m like wait a second, I thought they did directory,” he says. “Then I found out they did SSO, too. So I said to myself, ‘I have to check this out and find out what’s happening.’”
At this point, Case went to JumpCloud’s website, registered for a trial, and hopped on a demo.
“I got the whole overview and realized that JumpCloud actually does all of these things, and it’s all built into one system,” he says. “I got a test environment going and saw firsthand that it really does do the majority of what I wanted it to do.”
As added bonuses, JumpCloud also supported cross-OS device management and it was entirely cloud-native — the perfect fit for Impel, which had no on-prem infrastructure.
Liking what he saw, Case suggested JumpCloud to his boss.
“I told him we had the choice between buying five or six systems to do 100% of what we need them to do but in a very complex fashion or one system that does 80% of what we want it to do but is still preferable to the five or six systems and the complexity involved there,” Case continues. “We decided to go with JumpCloud.”
And that proved to be a wise choice.
“It would have been significantly more complex trying to integrate all those systems and many more that frankly would be covering the same ground JumpCloud covers now,” Case says. “If it was 80% when deployed, in the three years that we’ve had JumpCloud, they’ve covered that 20% and more in terms of the feature set added and the product roadmap.”
Supporting a global team today with a future-proof solution
With JumpCloud, Impel has found a solution that enables them to easily manage a global remote workforce and support IT operations as the company continues to scale.
“We’re very much in hyper-growth mode and don’t really anticipate that changing,” says Case, who now runs a two-man IT operation. “The more we can just augment our ability to do a lot with a little, the better off we are.”
The team is particularly fond of Remote Assist, which enables them to easily manage devices for their global workforce from one central location.
“It’s been incredibly helpful,” Case explains. “A lot of our workforce is remote overseas, so Remote Assist has been great for working through some of the different support issues we encounter.”
Improved security
Leveraging JumpCloud’s feature-rich nature, the Impel team has been able to sharpen its security posture considerably using multi-factor authentication, patch management to enforce automatic updates, and RADIUS for secure WiFi connectivity.
“We’re also using single-sign on,” says Cory Trickler, senior IT technician. “We’ve got about 10 applications set up through there, and I’m sure there will be a few more added in the next couple of months. JumpCloud has pre-built connectors for that, and that’s been awesome.”
On top of this, Impel is starting to use JumpCloud Go™ and has been testing Password Manager — both of which add even stronger security capabilities to their environment.
Commands
Trickler uses several commands to streamline IT operations; he uses commands for things like troubleshooting, enabling or disabling application features, and installing network security.
“The commands are extremely useful and integral to my day-to-day,” Trickler explains. “It’s very easy to script commands.”
Groups
Impel also uses JumpCloud groups to streamline the onboarding process.
“We have a lot of groups,” Trickler continues. “When a user gets added, JumpCloud assigns any needed resources usually based on their manager or their title. That has definitely been huge, and something I’ve been using more and more of the longer I’ve been here.”
Compliance
Impel is SOC 2 Type 2 certified, and JumpCloud played a key role in achieving that certification.
“JumpCloud was instrumental in helping us get through that audit,” Case says.
Future-proofing IT
In JumpCloud, Impel has found a solution they’re certain can keep pace with their growth; new features that meet the team’s needs are constantly rolling out.
“I’ve found that my own needs have largely been very much in lockstep with the direction that the product is going,” Case explains. “Just seeing the functionality added and improved on — I mean, it’s a completely different platform from what it was when we started with it, and significantly more capable. That’s been really, really awesome to see.”
In particular, Impel is looking at zero-touch enrollment, zero-trust access, and conditional access policies — which Trickler is “most excited about.”
Any advice for IT admins considering a solution like JumpCloud?
“Do it — seriously,” Trickler says. “When I started here, I never heard of JumpCloud and wasn’t aware that it existed. Now here I am two years later, and I really, really like it. On top of that, we have excellent support and very little downtime. I would never recommend Windows to someone in a million years even though everyone uses it. I would and have recommended JumpCloud to other admins and will continue to.”
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.