About University of the Free State
The University of the Free State (UFS) is one of South Africa’s oldest higher education institutions. UFS has two campuses in Bloemfontein and one in Qwaqwa, serving 24,000 students and 4,500 staff. The university is recognised as a leader in the transformation process in South African higher education.
Challenge
The IT department at UFS was using a combination of different systems to provide services for the university. The organisation managed its staff and student records using PeopleSoft solutions from Oracle. Novell eDirectory™ acted as the identity repository for its Novell GroupWise® e-mail environment, and for file and print services.
"The PeopleSoft solutions each had their own user directory, and were not integrated with Novell eDirectory," said Louis Marais, Assistant Director of the Computer Services Department at UFS. "Keeping these separate directories synchronised correctly was a time-consuming manual process. Staff and students can join or leave the university at any time, so we continually need to create, edit or delete user accounts. On average, we were probably spending an hour and a half a day on this basic administration work."
The proposed introduction of a new Microsoft SharePoint solution, which would require Microsoft Active Directory, was set to make the situation even more complicated. The IT team decided to simplify matters by integrating all the different user directories into a single identity management solution.
Novell Solution
"After looking at various options, we selected Novell Identity Manager because we felt that it opened a lot of doors in terms of architectural design," said Marais. "We are planning to replace many of our main systems in the near future, so we wanted a solution that would be open enough to support the migration of our users onto whatever new platform we choose. Of all the solutions we evaluated, Novell Identity Manager seemed the most flexible and easy to integrate, so it was a straightforward choice."
Working with Ubusha Technologies, a leading systems integrator, UFS installed Novell Identity Manager and created an identity vault, populated with staff and student data from the PeopleSoft systems. The team then linked these digital identities to the existing eDirectory accounts, providing staff with access to the Novell GroupWise e-mail system.
Next, the team created an LDAP authentication store, which is used for all applications that leverage the directory as a credential source–including the PeopleSoft systems and Novell GroupWise clients. Finally, UFS integrated its new Microsoft Active Directory environment to manage access to SharePoint and other Microsoft applications.
"Novell Identity Manager is now integrated with all our main systems, and the process of creating and deleting user accounts is fully automated," said Marais. "We have introduced a universal password for all applications, and also created a self-service password reset portal, which means that our helpdesk no longer gets inundated with calls from users who have forgotten their password."
The whole project was completed within seven months, meeting all deadlines.
"As a result of some close collaboration between Ubusha and the in-house team, the implementation was highly successful," said Marais. "In addition to their impressive technical skills, the Ubusha consultants really helped us get involved in the project, and provided the knowledge transfer we needed to take ownership of the solution."
Results
The fully integrated and automated Novell solution has dramatically simplified user account management at UFS. Now, when new students or staff members join the university, an administrator enters their details into the relevant PeopleSoft system, and Novell Identity Manager automatically provisions the correct user accounts in all appropriate systems. Equally, when users leave the university, the solution automatically de-activates their account–helping to ensure that all systems remain secure.
"In general, the IT team no longer needs to be directly involved in user provisioning or password resets, as both processes are fully automated," said Marais. "This saves about an hour and a half every day–or almost 4 man-days per month–which helps us focus on more important tasks and strategic projects."
A second advantage is the flexibility that the new solution provides. It has been easy to introduce the new SharePoint solution, and the planned migration to new core systems should also be straightforward.
"We are already starting projects to extend the solution," said Marais. "For example, next year we will start using Novell Identity Manager to set up Gmail accounts for all our students, and we are also planning to integrate our telephone system so that we can match phone extensions to user accounts. The potential benefits for the university are very exciting."