In 2006, Bob and Lauren Monahan imagined a better stroller \u2013 one that was sleek, chic, and easy-to-use. As parents of three with experience at Reebok, the couple was highly qualified for the task. UPPAbaby launched in Hingham, MA with just one stroller: the VISTA. Streamlined and stylish, it was an immediate hit. In the 10 years since, the variety of UPPAbaby strollers has increased \u2013 and with it, their customers and employees. Now a \u201cgrown-up\u201d company with over 60 employees, UPPAbaby realized it was time for their IT infrastructure to grow up too. They brought Jeffrey Bailey on board to make UPPAbaby\u2019s IT as versatile, sturdy, and streamlined as their strollers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Jeffrey Bailey walked through the doors of UPPAbaby\u2019s office for the first time, he knew he had his work cut out for him. They had been outsourcing their IT. Now it was up to Jeff to bring everything in-house and up-to-speed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOne of the big draws for me to come here was that it was a blank slate. I could build something from the ground up, which is something that I\u2019ve always wanted to do,\u201d Bailey told us. \u201cI started to identify some of the needs. One major hole was that we had nothing in place for identity\/credential management.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “My background was working at a managed service provider, where we serviced all enterprise Windows shops. I handled a lot of domains, a lot of Exchange\u00ae, and the main identity management platform was Microsoft Active Directory\u00ae.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo, when I first came here, my initial thought was, \u2018We\u2019re going to need Active Directory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Jeff had enough experience with Active Directory to know that implementing it wouldn\u2019t be a stroll through the park.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSpinning up an on-premises server and infrastructure that is redundant with high availability is fairly expensive to do,\u201d said Bailey, \u201cand it\u2019s not very agile once you do it. Furthermore, it\u2019s not very easy to move away from that ecosystem once you get into it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe other big challenge with Active Directory was that we have a fair number of Apple computers in the office (about 70\/30). At my previous company, we didn\u2019t support Macs at all from an Active Directory standpoint due to the complexity and fragility of doing so.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo I was looking at how we could do it. We could get a Mac Mini server and link up the LDAP portion of Active Directory and have LDAP pass through there. But, I hadn\u2019t heard great things about that approach, and I didn\u2019t like the idea of having that many points of failure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Looking at the whole picture, Jeff concluded: \u201cActive Directory has its place, but it just didn\u2019t make sense for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n So Jeff rolled up his sleeves and began researching alternatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI was looking to see if there were options that weren\u2019t in my wheelhouse that could potentially be a better fit, both from a financial and a feature-set standpoint. That\u2019s when I stumbled upon JumpCloud\u2019s Directory-as-a-Service.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cJumpCloud offered an initial demo where you could sign up 10 users. I did that. I was just playing around in a lab setting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bailey found a lot to like about JumpCloud\u2019s Directory-as-a-Service\u00ae: \u201cRemote Users, cross-platform support, a single pane of glass for identity management for IT managers, single sign-on, being able to integrate with other directories like Office 365. It\u2019s very cool and very simple \u2013 and much better suited for a company that mainly relies on cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n For Jeff and UPPAbaby, the decision wasn\u2019t difficult: \u201cWe adopted.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n Setting up UPPAbaby\u2019s new directory required no big investment of time or money:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFor my Windows machines, I was able to use PowerShell to roll it all out remotely, behind the scenes. JumpCloud had KnowledgeBase articles on how to do that. Basically, I used PowerShell to push out a command that downloaded the latest JumpCloud Agent and installed it on all of my Windows machines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cSo that was the first step, getting it to show up on the systems. Then for the second part, getting all of the users to sign up, I went department by department and used the email template provided by JumpCloud. Then I just linked the user accounts to the computers and\u2026 done!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n “Straightforward. No heavy lifting there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cMost people went through the initial signup process, they set up their password, and With JumpCloud in place, Jeff got to work on improving UPPAbaby\u2019s security, infrastructure, and user experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe first task that I needed to complete was to establish password complexity requirements. JumpCloud filled that need right away and is continuing to. Now we can rest assured from a security standpoint that people aren\u2019t walking around with passwords like \u2018UPPAbaby\u2019 or \u2018Password\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “We\u2019ve also moved forward with Office 365 integration and that\u2019s going well. For our Office licensing and our Office 365 accounts, those credentials are synced up. So that\u2019s been good for us.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n \u201cJumpCloud is releasing new integrations very quickly, and I am happy to see that. Since our initial rollout, they have released integrations with our ERP, phone, and network systems. I am looking forward to rolling those out.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThere\u2019s no question in my mind that a cloud-based directory is the future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI think that Active Directory has been great for the last 20 years or so, but I think as more companies go toward a Software-as-a-Service infrastructure, the need for an on-premise Active Directory is minimized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cFortune 500 companies with 4,000 users are going to hang on to Active Directory for a while. But for small-to-medium companies, JumpCloud makes a lot of sense. It\u2019s very scalable and much more flexible in a cloud-based world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe haven\u2019t had any real problems, but when needed, JumpCloud\u2019s support team has been outstanding \u2013 every person I\u2019ve dealt with there. I get same day responses \u2014 and very thorough explanations. So I couldn\u2019t be happier with my experience with support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n “I\u2019m glad that I found JumpCloud. It\u2019s good to have everything in a single pane of glass. As a one-man-show to have everything there in one place \u2013 and not be spinning up a bunch of costly, redundant systems \u2013 it just makes everything simpler and easier to manage for me, and more importantly, our users.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" UPPAbaby grew quickly once their stroller line took off. They had no central directory service and turned to JumpCloud to build up IT from the ground up.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":70,"featured_media":43026,"template":"","categories":[42],"collection":[],"wheel_hubs":[],"platform":[],"resource_type":[2313],"funnel_stage":[],"coauthors":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCompany:<\/td> UPPAbaby<\/td><\/tr> Size:<\/td> 67 employees<\/td><\/tr> Location:<\/td> Hingham, Boston<\/td><\/tr> Problem:<\/td> No Directory<\/td><\/tr> Goal:<\/td> Password Management, Office 365 Integration, Single Sign-On<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/figure>\n\n\n\n Background<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Challenge<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
The Solution<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Implementation<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
then they\u2019ve forgot about it completely. JumpCloud just runs in the background for
them. So now I have rolled it out to all of our 60 users here, Windows machines, and
Mac machines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe Results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
Looking Ahead<\/h2>\n\n\n\n