While deleting the hundreds of photos my 5 year old takes on my phone every week, I came across this photo of his Angry Bird stuffed animal. And it occurred to me that Angry Birds is what made my phone useful for him.
Not the stuffed animal, but the game.
Since I was sitting at work while doing this, I thought about how this relates to Active Directory. What is the Angry Birds of Active Directory?
Network authentication is more like the phone function of Active Directory. It’s the whole point of the thing. Being a central identity store is probably most similar to email on your phone. It’s what makes it a smartphone instead of just a phone.
But if Active Directory is just sitting there, letting you on the network and knowing who and what you are, what exactly makes that compelling to the allegorical 5 year old with his Dad’s iPhone? This 5 year old is your user base in case I’m not as clear as I’m hoping to be.
Groups, AD security groups specifically. These security groups are granting access to resources, permissions to systems, having GPOs applied against them, ensuring that the proper SharePoint content is being displayed. These security groups are the “Angry Birds” that are getting your “5 year olds” to use the network. And use the network productively.
Active Directory might just be the single most important piece in your network infrastructure. Once you leverage its group functionality correctly, your “5 year olds” will never put it down.
Hey, comments are open, let me know what part of Active Directory is indispensable to you.
Jonathan Blackwell
View ProfileSince 2012, Jonathan Blackwell, an engineer and innovator, has provided engineering leadership that has put GroupID at the forefront of group and user management for Active Directory and Azure AD environments. His experience in development, marketing, and sales allows Jonathan to fully understand the Identity market and how buyers think.