Having logged thousands of hours designing custom AD deployments, specially trained consultants from award-winning Microsoft Gold Certified Partner The Henson Group, Inc. (THG) provide clients with AD solutions for both Internet and intranet environments, offering the hierarchical view, extensibility, scalability, and distributed security required by today's leading enterprises. These solutions provide intuitive naming of the objects contained in the directory; scalability from a small business to a global enterprise; and the ability to access application programming interfaces.

WHAT WE CAN DO FOR YOU:  MICROSOFT ACTIVE DIRECTORY

Active Directory Assessments: The Henson Group offers a unique Active Directory Infrastructure Assessment that will reveal just how effective you really are at managing the identities and relationships that make up your network environments. Distinctive from any service on the market today, this Active Directory Review was developed by some of Microsoft’s best Active Directory architects, who today staff THG’s Directory Practice. Possessing an average of 7.5 years of AD experience, members of this team will tell you if you are leveraging key benefits available in AD, show you how to achieve greater administrator/user productivity, and help you reduce costs while increasing efficiencies in the way you share and manage the various elements of your enterprise. For more information click the following button:

Unified Directory: As AD integrates the Internet concept of a namespace with the operating system's directory services, THG's solutions unify and manage the multiple namespaces that exist in the heterogeneous application and hardware environments of the client's corporate networks.

AD Planning: THG architects integrated internal and external namespaces. This includes designing and creating multiple, or single, domains, trees, forests, and OU hierarchies. The Henson Group strategically places servers for optimizing logon traffic and directory replication. THG also offers the expertise to consolidate Windows NT 4.0 domains in preparation for a migration to Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003.

AD Implementation: The Henson Group facilitates the client's domain migration, configures the AD database and shared system volume, and deploys mixed mode and native mode domains. THG also creates the global catalog and dynamic DNS and RIS services, while also establishing users, groups, publishing resources, and trusts. Designing

AD Security: The Henson Group establishes AD permissions, permission inheritance, rules for delegating administrative control of objects, auditing, and class security. THG also recommends configurations for setting Access Control Lists based on users and groups, and establishes two-way trust relationships between the domains in a forest. Extending

AD Schema: The Henson Group modifies AD to permit the modification of attribute values, and the deletion and the manipulation of objects. THG also configures AD replication, including proper directory back-up, restoration, and the resolution of lost and ghost objects.

Greater Flexibility: Active Directory introduces important new features ensuring that it is one of the most flexible directory structures in the marketplace today. As directory-enabled applications become more prevalent, organizations can utilize the capabilities of Active Directory to manage the most complicated enterprise network environments. Internet data centers, extranet application deployments, large distributed branch office enterprises – the improvements provided by Windows Server 2008 simplify administration and increase performance and efficiency, making it a very versatile solution.

Reduced Total Cost of Ownership: Active Directory has been enhanced to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and operation within the enterprise. New features and enhancements have been provided at all levels of the product to extend versatility, simplify management, and increase dependability.

Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS): ADFS provides Web-based extranet authentication/authorization, single sign-on (SSO), and federated identity services for Windows Server environments, increasing the value of existing Active Directory deployments in scenarios involving B2C extranets, intracompany (multiforest) federation, and B2B internet federation.

Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM): Previously available as a Web download, Active Directory Application Mode (ADAM) is now included on the Windows Server media. An independent mode of Active Directory without infrastructure features, ADAM provides directory services for applications. Operating as a stand-alone data store or interacting with an Active Directory domain controller, the flexibility of ADAM enables administrators to tailor their directory services infrastructure to varying degrees of local control/autonomy or shared services.

UNIX Identity Management: UNIX integration helps to establish uninterrupted user access and efficient management of network resources across operating systems, by enabling AD domain controllers to act as master NIS servers, and synchronizing user passwords in Unix and Windows environments.

Domain Rename: This supports changing the Domain Name System (DNS) and/or NetBIOS names of existing domains in a forest, keeping the resulting forest still "well formed." Administrators have greater flexibility in changing the Active Directory structure after it is deployed. Design decisions are now reversible, which benefits organizations that may be in involved in a merger or significant restructuring.

Schema Redefine: The flexibility of Active Directory has been enhanced to allow the deactivation of attributes and class definitions in the Active Directory schema. Attributes and classes can be redefined if an error was made in the original definition.

Group Policy Improvements: In conjunction with Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is releasing a new Group Policy management solution that unifies management of Group Policy. The Microsoft Group Policy Management Console (GPMC) provides a single solution for managing all Group Policy–related tasks.

GPMC lets administrators manage Group Policy for multiple domains and sites within a given forest, all in a simplified user interface (UI) with drag-and-drop support. Highlights include new functionality such as backup, restore, import, copy, and reporting of Group Policy objects (GPOs). These operations are fully scriptable, which lets administrators customize and automate management. Together these advantages make Group Policy much easier to use and help you manage your enterprise more cost-effectively.

Group Membership Replication Enhancements: Some directory information does not need to be made globally available. This feature provides the capability to host data in Active Directory without significantly impacting network performance by providing control over the scope of replication and placement of replicas.

Application Directory Partitions: Some directory information does not need to be made globally available. This feature provides the capability to host data in Active Directory without significantly impacting network performance by providing control over the scope of replication and placement of replicas.

Install Replica from Media: Instead of replicating a complete copy of the Active Directory database over the network, this feature allows an administrator to source initial replication from files created when backing up an existing domain controller or global catalog server.

Dependability Improvements: Active Directory includes several new features that increase dependability such as Health Monitoring, which allows administrators to verify replications between domain controllers, improved global catalog replication, and an updated Inter-Site Topology Generator (ISTG) that scales better by supporting forests with a greater number of sites than Windows 2003.