Pinger is a telecommunications company that builds free texting, second phone number, and business communication solutions. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in San Jose, California with remote offices throughout the United States and Europe, Pinger’s team consists of roughly 110 full-time employees and 75 full-time contractors.
Moving from Active Directory to a cloud directory
Since 2018, IT engineer Taylor Donato had been tasked with managing access and permissions for Pinger’s distributed team.
When he started, Pinger’s IT infrastructure was hosted in-house on a single Active Directory server. As technology continued to evolve, Donato was fielding more and more requests from folks wanting to use more modern, cloud-based tools, many of which didn’t integrate well with on-premises infrastructure.
“At the time, the idea of moving to the cloud sounded nicer and nicer,” Donato says. “It was a long-term solution for our operations team. We were always thinking about what would happen if our on-prem servers stopped working — just servers in our office in a 100-plus-year-old building.”
When Donato’s Pinger journey began, employees were largely using Windows. In the ensuing years, the team has gradually gravitated toward Mac laptops; they also maintain hundreds of Linux virtual machines.
“We had been using Active Directory, but AD domain management infrastructure doesn’t do anything for Macs,” Donato explains. “We decided to put our user directory in the cloud to create a single source of truth.”
Finding JumpCloud after a quick Google search
As Donato began searching for a solution, he ran a quick Google search: What is LDAP?
“I was trying to figure out how to get a user directory into the cloud,” he says. “The SSO application was part of it, so that really drove us toward OneLogin and Okta. But they didn’t provide a user directory.”
Instead of cobbling tools together, Donato wanted a streamlined solution. So, he refined his search — How do I get a user directory in the cloud? — and the query led him to JumpCloud.
After testing the solution and seeing its features in action, Pinger decided JumpCloud was the ideal solution for its requirements.
Creating a single source of truth for all user identities
By delivering a robust cloud directory solution, JumpCloud met Pinger’s immediate need for cloud-based identity management.
The company is also using it to control access to tools like Google Workspace, Slack, and the Atlassian suite — Jira, Bitbucket, and Confluence.
In particular, Donato is keen on JumpCloud’s dynamic user groups feature, which he estimates helps him save 75% of the time involved with granting permissions by hand.
Looking ahead, Donato and his team continue to explore JumpCloud features and plan to leverage more of the platform. Now that Pinger has JumpCloud, the company was able to shut down Active Directory, eliminating it from its footprint in its entirety.
Mobile device management made easy
To centralize IT control, Donato and his team installed JumpCloud on every device the company ships to its now-distributed team.
“We have the agent installed on every machine that goes out the door,” he continues. “My hope is that we can get all of our devices to JumpCloud in the future.”
As a result, Donato can keep tabs on company devices over a single pane of glass.
While Pinger is still using Jamf minimally, the team intends to make JumpCloud its exclusive provider for mobile device management in the coming months.
“I wholeheartedly believe that JumpCloud’s mobile device management solution is smoother,” he says. “It will reduce overhead significantly. It will save money.”
Seamless transition to remote work
In what turned out to be a lucky happenstance, Pinger rolled out JumpCloud toward the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“COVID forced everyone to work remotely,” Donato says. “Just about that time, we officially released JumpCloud at the company. I was like, ‘This makes it a whole lot easier to manage users remotely.’ It was just good timing.”
With JumpCloud, Donato can manage employee devices from anywhere — all through a single interface.
Future-proofing IT
Before the pandemic, Pinger was largely based at its San Jose headquarters, with a few employees in remote locations like Santa Barbara and Colorado. When COVID hit, Pinger eventually realized that most people wouldn’t be coming back to the office, and the company pivoted accordingly.
“We started hiring in 20 states,” Donato explains. “The company started to grow, and we decided we couldn’t really grow just being in San Jose.”
By ensuring JumpCloud ships on every device issued to new employees, Pinger can rest comfortably knowing that they have control over all machines.
Looking ahead, the company is planning to migrate more and more of its applications to the cloud, and Donato considers JumpCloud to be the “connecting piece” for everything.
Due to the company’s structure, Pinger works with many contractors who come and go on a project-by-project basis, Donato says. Thanks to JumpCloud, it’s easier to manage their permissions and protect company resources — all without leaving the same interface he uses to manage employee access.
Donato is “passionate” about JumpCloud and routinely recommends it to folks in his circle; he was recently trying to convince his brother to use it at his job.
If you’re in need of a cloud directory or mobile device management solution, Donato doesn’t hesitate to recommend JumpCloud.
“Give it a try and you’ll see and understand its power,” he concludes.
Learn more about JumpCloud
JumpCloud changes the way IT administrators manage their organizations by providing a comprehensive and flexible cloud directory platform. From one pane of glass, manage user identities and resource access, secure Mac, Windows, and Linux devices, and get a full view of your environment.
To see the power of JumpCloud with your own eyes, request a demo or start a 30-day trial today.