The topic for our March 2005 Toronto Windows Server User Group meeting is Active Directory. We are very lucky to get the Nakisa Founder and CEO Babak Varjavandi to do a talk on extending Active Directory as more than a Network Operating System (NOS) Directory.
I attended Nakisa's talk at the 2004 Fall TechNet Tour (the Winter Tour is just around the corner) at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre - their presentation was excellent and very well received by the crowd in attendence. If you can make it out to Microsoft Canada in Mississauga on March 8th, be sure to visit us - have a bite to eat, connect with your peers and learn actionable info about AD.
Here are the meeting details - the registration link will be available on the TWSUG website and this blog entry by Friday, February 18th - 12:00 PM EST. Check back soon to sign up!:
"Active Directory" - More Than Just A NOS Directory
Sponsored by Nakisa (http://www.nakisa.com)
Date: March 8th, 2005
Time: 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Location:
Microsoft Canada / Events Entrance
1950 Meadowvale Boulevard
Mississauga, Ontario Canada
L5N 8L9
Presenter: Babak Varjavandi, Founder and CEO, Nakisa Inc
Babak Varjavandi is the founder and CEO of Nakisa Inc. He oversees the vision, overall leadership and the product strategy for Nakisa. With 16 years of IT and Human Resources experience, Babak played a key role in the design of Nakisa’s ProvisioningManager for Active Directory. In addition he led Nakisa to be a key player in the Organization Management field by creating strategic partnerships with Microsoft, PeopleSoft and SAP.
Abstract
While IT typically focus on AD implementation as a NOS directory, it is important to realize that AD can provide the capabilities for a full-fledged directory, eliminating the need for maintaining additional Directories. As a result, it is more important than ever to keep information in AD up-to-date, and this is a task that requires collaboration with the rest of the organization. At the same time, AD's role as the NOS directory makes it difficult for IT to willingly allow non-technical users the capabilities to modify information in the security store. This dilemma can be solved by providing non-technical users with the capability to maintain content in AD, while securing information with ad's native security and further extending it to Role Based Access Control using Microsoft Authorization Manager. Furthermore, a third facet of security can be provided in the form of workflow driven approval processes to ensure that IT maintain full control of changes at all times. This workflow process lends itself naturally to provisioning and other business processes that can also leverage this delegation and collaboration model.
About Nakisa
Nakisa Inc. provides organizational management solutions to Fortune 1000 companies, government agencies, and educational institutions around the world. Its flagship product Nakisa OrgManagement Series, a web-based data visualization and modeling tool, connects to HR data and displays it real-time as an organizational chart, directory or floor plan, and offers additional flexibility through data editing and authentication capabilities. Able to connect to multiple data sources such as ERP, RDBMS and LDAP, and scalable to meet the performance needs of any global enterprise, Nakisa OrgManagement Series is the only enterprise-class solution of its kind.
Meeting Agenda:
6:00 - 6:30 - Registration and Refreshments
6:30 - 6:45 - TWSUG Announcements
6:45 - 7:45 - Active Directory Presentation
7:45 - 8:05 - Break
8:05 - 8:30 - Demo / Q&A
8:30 - 8:45 - Draw for prizes & Future events
Registration Link
Available on Friday, February 18th - 12:00 PM EST - Come back soon!