AST ESM simplifies, automates Windows 2000 Active Directory

AST Enterprise Solutions Management (ESM), a business unit of the AST Group, has announced the release of Quest Software`s FastLane ActiveRoles version 4.0, a major upgrade to its Active Directory role-based administration solution.

FastLane ActiveRoles is now the only Active Directory management solution that provides role-based administration, data integrity enforcement and Group Policy management in a single application. ActiveRoles is also unique in its architecture in that it that relies on Active Directory itself for distribution of application information.

"Windows 2000 and Active Directory are very flexible and scalable systems that require equally flexible and scalable management solutions," says Geoff van den Bosch, MD of AST ESM. "FastLane ActiveRoles will allow our clients to manage the permissions and content of Active Directory. The new Group Policy features in ActiveRoles will allow them to efficiently manage the Group Policy infrastructure of Windows 2000, enabling organisations to realise their aggressive plans for workstation lockdown and policy consistency across their network."

FastLane ActiveRoles is a directory-enabled management solution provided in an MMC (Microsoft Management Console) and used by administrators of Active Directory. New capabilities in version 4.0 allow administrators to:

* Automate and report Resultant Set of Policy (RSoP) calculations;

* Use the `What If` analysis to simulate group and OU membership changes and determine the affect upon Group Policy settings before committing the changes; and

* Leverage the published COM interface to ActiveRoles to automate common tasks such as role creation and role assignment.

In addition,

* The Group Policy setting can be dynamically mirrored across multiple domains, eliminating the need to manually track and set GPOs in different domains, and

* Help Desk staff can use the ActiveRoles Web client to simplify routine tasks such as user account, creations, password resets and group membership changes.

"New features that Quest has introduced into this version of FastLane ActiveRoles 4.0, especially the Group Policy management capability, are very timely. This unified solution could prove quite valuable to companies needing to more quickly get the best AD has to offer," concludes Van den Bosch. "We have found that a solid Active Directory management offering is fundamental to a robust migration solution."