Policy Management for Modern Infrastructure

The days of one platform prevailing over an IT environment are over. Today, the typical office is leveraging Mac®, Linux®, and Windows® systems. Unfortunately, this heterogeneous environment is causing problems for IT management solutions. So, a common question we hear is whether there is a policy management solution for modern infrastructure.

The short answer is yes, there is. It’s called JumpCloud® Directory-as-a-Service®, and it is not only managing user access, but setting policies on devices much like what Group Policy Objects (GPOs) have done for Windows machines. The good news is that this cloud-based IT user and system management tool is able to set policies across all three major OS platforms. However, before we can dive into the JumpCloud solution for policy management, let’s quickly recap what policy management is and why legacy solutions are no longer as effective.

How Policy Management Came to Be

The concept of policy management really came into its own when Microsoft® introduced Active Directory® in the late 1990s. While the initial goal for AD was to centrally manage user access to Windows infrastructure, a key feature was to be able to manage the Windows devices themselves. Called Group Policy Objects, these policy management features would enable IT admins to manage a fleet of Windows machines. For example, GPO’s enabled IT admins to determine if users could use USB storage devices on their Windows systems, or whether or not the screen locked after a certain amount of time of inactivity. They worked pretty well, and for a time, IT organizations had effective system management.

Then the IT landscape started to shift to a more heterogeneous environment, and AD wasn’t nearly as focused on Mac and Linux devices as it was on Windows machines. So, as more Mac and Linux machines arrived in corporate networks, IT admins wanted to start to manage them. Without AD as a potential solution, IT organizations started to search for other policy management solutions.

Unfortunately, there weren’t great options for the longest time. You could find Mac centric device management (Read more...)