The correct answer is that there is no correct answer. What works best for you might not work for others. There are compelling arguments on both sides, but it is fair to assume that even an all-in-one application won't meet every one of your needs. You will very likely end up with multiple servers each running their own applications. Your IT department will probably have logins to every application, and some of your managers and users will have access to multiple applications–each with their own user database, specific groups and permissions, different sets of potentially sensitive data and a super user account set up for vendor training and support. This presents quite a challenge for your security and compliance efforts.

It also presents a challenge for your users; users are forced to remember multiple logins and passwords for different applications. Some may require a password change periodically. Inevitably, passwords fall out of sync, changed passwords are forgotten and frustration abounds. This is a problem we all face in some way, primarily because many of our vendors do not support external authentication. It is for that reason that little discovery was used to determine what it would take to provide a consistent password for my users across all applications, securely updating all application passwords whenever a user's domain password was changed or reset. After speaking with several departments it was learned that users were already doing this manually, so it seemed worthwhile to investigate automating it. What was found was very troubling.

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Eliza Selig
Staff VP, Marketing and Communications
+1 512 220 4026
HFTP

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