Global Law Firm Uses OptimalCloud to Unify Data For Use With Mimecast
About The Company
The customer is one of the largest law firms in the world with lawyers located in more than 40 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific. Their clients range from multinational, Global 1000, and Fortune 500 enterprises to emerging companies developing industry-leading technologies. They advise governments, more than half of the Fortune 250 and nearly half of the FTSE 350 or their subsidiaries.
Challenges
The law firm needed to sync enterprise wide data with unified email management provider, Mimecast. Because Mimecast requires a single directory to sync with, it was necessary to consolidated the active directories (AD) throughout the law firm.
The firm is comprised of numerous independent operating entities located across the globe. Each entity is administratively autonomous and each has their own unique AD forest. The law firm needed to have the ability to synchronize objects from each entity’s on-premises domain into a Universal
Directory to create a consolidated view across all of the enterprise’s forests. To do this, many objects, like proxy addresses and UPN’s, needed to be manipulated. However, as with any multi-forest environment, there are always discrepencies in the data across those forests. Especially when each forest is managed by separate entities.
The law firm chose to host their Universal Directory in an instance of the OptimalCloud to support Mimecast security, continuity, and email address rewrite specifications. The Universal Directory structure was designed to provide each regional source domain with its own root level directory container. Then using the standard provisioning SCIM protocol, data is pulled into the Universal Directory. The Universal Directory requires specific attributes to support the Mimecast synchronization agent.
Additional attributes could be configured within Mimecast to be included as part of the synchronization process. This structure facilitates a simplified configuration for the Mimecast synchronization agent. The following diagram represents the domain synchronization between the multiple AD forests, the Universal Directory and Mimecast.
The user interface of the OptimalCloud allows administrators to search and view the properties of objects in the Universal Directory before, during and after syncronization.
Results
The ability to host the customer’s Universal Directory within the OptimalCloud has been a gamechanger when it comes to interacting with Mimecast. The customer can now confidently and securely provision multiple AD Forests on any scale and provide flexibility to grow in new directions.
The OptimalCloud has also brought the company the following benefits:
• Affordability – The OptimalCloud, uses an affordable flat monthly fee, allowing the customer to add or remove AD forests without unexpected administrative costs.
• Scalability – The OptimalCloud solution future-proofs the company by adapting to their needs while enabling them to scale quickly.
• Productivity – Allows IT staff to focus on other projects instead of maintenance related issues.
• Compliance – This solution follows GDPR and other compliance guidelinces.
