October 09, 2008
Automating Routine Information-Technology Tasks
By: Francois Depayras
Much of the burden of handling user-provisioning tasks fell to David Truong, senior systems engineer, who manages change-control needs, such as password resets, and mobile device access. Because the help desk received 20 to 30 tickets per day for each of its three locations, this equated to three hours per day just handling those requests.
In the course of less than a decade, online banking has taken off, now growing at a rate of about 27 percent per year. This is not surprising, given that it provides a more convenient option for customers and is a cost-saving move for financial institutions.
CashEdge has assisted financial transactions for institutions such as Bank of America, Citibank and Wachovia since 1999. As the online banking trend has grown, so has CashEdge.
The company's rapid growth, combined with its multiple locations, has presented a challenge for its IT team when it comes to user provisioning. CashEdge maintains multiple servers for both Microsoft Active Directory and Exchange in multiple locations. In addition, CashEdge's security and compliance regulations mandate the strict enforcement of IT policies and require the necessary audit trails across the entire infrastructure. As a result, CashEdge was forced to limit user-provisioning tasks to only a few individuals despite the use of scripts.
Much of the burden fell to David Truong, senior systems engineer, who manages change-control needs, such as password resets, mobile device access and user provisioning. Because CashEdge's help desk received 20 to 30 tickets per day for each of its three locations, this equated to roughly three hours per day just handling those requests. The manual process also affected productivity, since employees were required to wait, on average, half a day before receiving a response.
In an effort to automate tasks, such as setting up new users, Truong manually wrote and ran a variety of scripts. Each script had to be individually tested and launched for every instance on every server in every location. Once approved, each script had to be copied and verified on the target server where it would run. Manually performing the administrative tasks was error prone and lacked the necessary audit trail required by corporate compliance initiatives.
After evaluating several solutions for the automated provisioning of its IT services, including various open-source initiatives, CashEdge chose a system-management software solution that solved its current problems, offered dedicated customer support and provided an upgrade path for future provisioning needs. The product also met all of its needs in the areas of change management, mobile and client device configuration and support, delegated administration, and resource optimization, all via a role-based Web portal.
"The solution we chose met our requirements for easy integration with Microsoft Active Directory, Exchange and our existing user portals," Truong says. "By configuring policies and then implementing them through this product, we can enable users to change their own passwords without having to rely on IT."
CashEdge installed the complete provisioning system in its collaboration infrastructure and was up and running in less than one hour. The solution now streamlines CashEdge's day-to-day provisioning, configuring and managing of users. Instead of manually updating Active Directory entries or scripting for routine activities, IT leverages built-in templates to deploy changes at the click of a button. The solution also serves as a centralized platform for rolling out applications and configurations to all servers based on established IT policies.
Employees can reset their own passwords and map their own drives as required by CashEdge security policies. By reducing password resets from three hours per day to just under 30 minutes, a significant burden has been lifted from IT. Additionally, users get their passwords immediately, rather than having to wait for IT to complete the task.
Implementing the new platform has significantly reduced the number of help desk tickets logged by automating password resets and new employee account setup, Truong says, freeing IT administrators to focus on strategic server projects rather than administrative issues.
By reducing password resets from three hours per day to just under 30 minutes, a significant burden has been lifted from IT.