Santa Clara University

Success Story

Oldest university in California automates identity management with Novell Security and Identity to simplify account administration and strengthen security

Overview

Santa Clara University is a Catholic, Jesuit university in the heart of California's Silicon Valley and is the oldest university in the state. With more than 8,000 students and 620 faculty, the university offers rigorous undergraduate and graduate programs, with those in business and law nationally ranked.

Challenge

As with many universities, Santa Clara University is implementing more Web-based applications for its students, faculty and staff. However, the small IT staff at Santa Clara University was bogged down with account administration, ensuring that users had proper access to e-mail and other campus applications. Cumbersome, manual processes often resulted in several days of delay when creating new user accounts each quarter.

To access multiple applications, many users had to remember 6-8 IDs and passwords, which compromised security as they wrote them on sticky notes for reminders. The university began searching for an identity management solution to simplify user administration, improve security and establish a secure foundation for a single sign-on portal.

Novell solution

"Our Novell Security and Identity implementation will help enhance the reputation of our institution. We want to provide personalized services to students, faculty, staff and alumni to remain competitive and there is no way we could accomplish this without identity management."

Ron Danielson
CIO
Santa Clara University

Santa Clara University evaluated a variety of solutions and consulted analyst reports and trade press before selecting a Novell Security and Identity solution consisting of Novell eDirectory™ and Novell Identity Manager. The university also leverages NetWare®, Novell GroupWise® and Novell ZENworks® to manage its entire environment.

"Novell offered a full and compelling story for identity management," said Carl Fussell, Director of Information Technology at Santa Clara University. "We also find Novell to be extremely knowledgeable and experienced in the education sector."

Novell consultants conducted a discovery workshop to set the direction and focus of the secure identity management project. Consultants divided the project into multiple phases with specific deliverables to help the university incrementally manage its costs.

"We have nothing but positive things to say about Novell," said Ron Danielson, CIO of Santa Clara University. "Novell consultants demonstrated tremendous foresight and worked diligently to create a plan that we could actually accomplish. We have been impressed with both their business and technical expertise."

Novell eDirectory provides a single, global directory of user identity information for students, faculty and staff. Novell Identity Manager streamlines user administration by automatically synchronizing identities with PeopleSoft* and Novell GroupWise, freeing the IT staff from manual updates. In the future, Novell Identity Manager will synchronize identity information with other campus applications for course management, library services and more.

With the PeopleSoft and eDirectory integration, the university has accurate user identity information and the ability to provide students with network access on the first day of school, rather than days later. The university has also improved security by reducing the number of user IDs and passwords required for users, and by immediately revoking access for users when they leave.

"We currently manage about 12,000 accounts, but found and deleted nearly 8,000 old accounts that were no longer in use," said Fussell. "With Novell Security and Identity, we've been able to eliminate this kind of excess access."

By decreasing the amount of time spent on administering accounts, the IT staff can concentrate on more strategic projects and provide faster response to its users.

"We are currently understaffed for our responsibilities, but Novell solutions have given us some breathing room," said Todd Schmitzer, manager of Networking and Telecommunications at Santa Clara University. "We have reduced our IT workload so that our team can be more proactive and we can actually take some projects off the back burner. We're able to provide more IT services with less effort."

The university is implementing a portal to give students and faculty faster access to resources with single sign-on to Web applications. Students have access to self-service applications to pay tuition, register, get their grades, and update demographic information. All employees have access to payroll history and human resources demographic information, and faculty use the portal to access class rosters, detailed information about their student advisees and to perform degree audit calculations.

In the future, the university will be able to assign and track digital identities for prospective students, and is considering extending such services to alumni.

Results

With Novell Security and Identity, Santa Clara University is implementing a secure identity management solution that will streamline user management and free up its IT staff to provide better services. The IT staff has already reduced the amount of time spent on account management by 15 percent. The university has also strengthened security by reducing its number of IDs and passwords, and by eliminating 8,000 old network accounts.

"Our Novell Security and Identity implementation will help enhance the reputation of our institution," said Danielson. "We want to offer personalized services to students, faculty, staff and alumni to remain competitive and there is no way we could accomplish this without identity management."