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University of Southern California Installs Centrify User Suite to Improve Learning of Its Students

By Jyothi Shanbhag
TMCnet Contributor

University of Southern California (USC), a private research university and home to more than 38,000 students and 3,500 full-time faculty members, has recently installed Centrify User Suite to offer protected remote and on-site single sign-on (SSO) access to university applications and computing resources.

Before the deployment, the university was offering its students with limited access to its state-of-the-art computing lab, and this forced some students to license software for their personal machines, which turned out very expensive.

After detailed research, the USC finalized on Centrify solution, which combined Aqua Connect's RDS product and USC's Windows PowerShell script, to extend access management via Windows Active Directory across the university's entire heterogeneous computing environment. The new deployment is helping the university to constantly improve learning for its 5,300 students, and also provide anywhere, anytime access to Mac-based applications.

"By simply enabling students to use their own devices, we have transformed our computing lab from endless rows of computers into a flexible classroom with more flexible and innovative teaching methodologies," said Michael Goay, executive director of IT for Viterbi Business Affairs, USC.

Centrify User Suite provides robust Active Directory-based authentication, policy management, single sign-on (SSO) and user self-service for connected and remote Mac OS X systems. With Centrify User Suite, Mac Edition, on-premise and remote Macs, and mobile devices are integrated into Microsoft (News - Alert) Active Directory (AD), leveraging organizations’ existing AD infrastructures, processes and skill sets to deliver enhanced security and easy management for IT.

Students at the university are now using their primary USC log-in through Microsoft Active Directory, and Centrify's SSO solution, to automatically get permissions and access based on course enrollment, without having to manage user accounts, log-in credentials or passwords.

The Centrify/Aqua Connect solution is also helping students to improve learning with anywhere, anytime access.

"USC is one of the world's leading research universities, and we are pleased to work with them to better equip their students in today's very competitive 24x7 learning environments," said Mark Weiner (News - Alert), chief marketing officer, Centrify.