Advans Group chooses Zentyal to simplify and centralize their user management
“Thanks to Zentyal we can centralize the management of Users, Computers and Policies. As we can do this remotely, on-site service requests have dropped dramatically. This reduces significantly the cost and time spent in user management.”
Rached Ourari, Infrastructure Support and Security Administrator, Advans Group
In their search for a domain & directory server that would help them to manage network resources for their rapidly growing staff, Advans Group learnt that Zentyal offered them a reliable and cost-effective solution. Thanks to Zentyal, Advans manages remotely a staff of over 2500 in seven different affiliates, dramatically reducing the time and cost in user management.
The challenge
The Advans Group is a quickly growing microfinance group. Due to the rapid growth of the company and the number of new employees joining their branch offices, their IT Department found themselves spending a growing amount of time in simple user management tasks. On-site service requests were also increasing, driving up the IT infrastructure management costs even further. As each affiliate had their own directory server solution – or no directory server at all, this further complicated the management of the network resources.
In this context, when Advans learnt about Zentyal they had already been looking for some time for a domain and directory solution that would allow them to unify and centralize the management of Users, Computers and Policies for their affiliates. The solution they were looking for had to be reliable and cost-effective and it would ideally also provide other complementary network services (mail server, gateway…) to cater to the specific needs of each branch office.
The solution
After successful testing period, Advans decided to install a single Zentyal Server on the headquarters of each of their seven different affiliates. The specific requirements of each branch office vary a little, but generally there are 300-400 users per server and the deployment is done on 4vCPU, with 3 GB of RAM and 80 GB disc.
In the first phase of their Zentyal deployment project, Advans has decided to configure Zentyal Server as a stand-alone domain controller. Once all the authentication has been centralized through the first domain controller, they plan to add an additional domain controller to guarantee high availability of their domain. In the future, Advans also wants to evaluate taking part of their Zentyal Server infrastructure on the could.
The experience
For Advans the experience of deploying Zentyal Server has been extremely positive. First and foremost Zentyal has helped them to solve the issue they had with user management: they now have a single interface for centrally managing users and computers, which reduces significantly the time they need to allocate on simple user management. Thanks to Zentyal’s Domain Controller, the IT Department of Advans is also able to remotely deploy the necessary user policies and new tools instead of being forced to make multiple time-consuming on-site visits to carry out this kind of tasks.
Besides providing a cost-effective and reliable solution for their problem, that helps Advans to reduce their IT costs, they are also very satisfied with the pre-sales support they received. “Our Sales Representative at Zentyal was always there to respond to our questions and concerns, providing us accurate answers. Having such a helpful team makes an open source tool such as Zentyal Server very effective”.
About Advans Group
Advans Group is a leading international microfinance group established in 2005. The group’s shareholders are six development finance institutions including, European Investment Bank, International Finance Corporation, FMO (Netherlands), KfW (Germany), FISEA (AFD Group, France) and CDC Group (UK). Advans is currently present in 9 countries, hires more than 7,000 employees and has more than 1 million clients globally.
The financial services provided by Advans affiliates range from micro loans to SME loans to current accounts, savings plans, insurance, transfers, etc. Advans aims to respond to the need for financial services of small businesses and other populations who have illadapted, limited or no access to formal financial services through providing tailored financial services in a sustainable and responsible manner.