As usual at TechEd, we got a great reaction to our shirt. That is kind of a given, we spend a lot of time designing a wearable t-shirt, something that has our message but also doesn’t scream “I am wearing a free t-shirt from a tech conference.” You know, because those are the shirts that are used to wash cars. We want our customers and prospects to enjoy our shirts. And wear them.
Of course, we don’t go to TechEd just to give out free t-shirts. It is a great opportunity to talk to a lot of IT professionals, show them our products, and discuss how GroupID can solve their business issues. In our day to day marketing and sales discussions, our conversations are self selecting. We only talk to people with Active Directory issues, or why would they have reached out to us?
At TechEd, people come by the booth not always knowing they have Active Directory group management problems. A few quick questions and they realize that there are better ways to manage Active Directory. Here’s a small sample of what we found:
- One very large organization is still on the unsupported ActiveGroups product from Quest. They know that they cannot upgrade Exchange or Active Directory with that old skeleton haunting them. BTW, we have a migration wizard to help this!
- About 50-60% of attendees said they use ADUC and the help desk to manage Active Directory groups. The largest? Over 20,000 users!
- Group glut is alive and well in corporate IT. One admin estimated that they have 3 times as many groups as users. Ouch.
- Everyone loves dynamic groups. Many did not know that there is a commercial product that can automate it. And many have created custom scripts that they have very little idea who is supporting them.
- Only one company of any scale said that they don’t use the group structure in Active Directory.
- There are still eDirectory holdouts that need a way to get off of it.
- People love our t-shirts!
Our next show is going to be the Connections show in Las Vegas in late Fall. Hopefully, we’ll see more of you there and more will have solved their Active Directory group problems with GroupID by then. Check out our whitepaper for best practices on managing Active Directory groups.
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.