* One year later, the combined Quest-NetPro team is proving to be a success
This past week was 2010’s The Experts Conference in Los Angeles. Formerly it was the Directory Experts Conference, which was started almost 10 years ago by NetPro’s Gil Kirkpatrick. In recent years it’s expanded to cover not only Active Directory but also Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint. Even NetPro’s acquisition by Quest Software early last year has changed very little — it’s still very much Gil Kirkpatrick’s baby.
But what about the marriage? How are the Quest and NetPro cultures getting along? And what about overlapping products — how is that being handled?
Tech M&A deals of 2010
I had the opportunity to sit down with Kilpatrick and Michael Tweddle, senior director of product management at Quest Software. We were talking about the soon-to-be-shipped version 5.0 of ChangeAuditor, a product that came to Quest along with the rest of the NetPro line. ChangeAuditor, as it’s name implies, audits changes to Active Directory. But Quest also had InTrust, an auditing package for Active Directory as well as other platforms. Will there be two product lines?
Yes, and no.
Both products will continue to sell, but ChangeAuditor assumes the role of the AD agent for InTrust. At the same time, ChangeAuditor gains (among other things) the logging and archiving benefits of InTrust — as well as a way to play with non-AD environments. It certainly sounds like a win-win.
The version 5 release of ChangeAuditor adds role-based access, object protection and event logging (the InTrust connection). According to Tweddle, these additions provide administrators with a granular solution, enabling them to meet the requirements of both external regulations and internal security operations, all at the same time.
Administrators will now be able to grant role-based access to users based on their authorized permissions, giving auditors the ability to track activity and run the specific reports they need without taking time away from an administrator.
Object protection provides a “safety” button for both users and administrators. Administrators can secure critical Active Directory objects, Exchange mailboxes, and Windows files and folders to prevent any changes from occurring. Avoiding a potential disaster saves time and money, and this protection grants administrators the appropriate privileges without hindering them from completing the rest of their work.
It seems to be a slick product, a worthy successor to NetPro’s ChangeAuditor 4 and the harbinger of great things to come from the combined Quest-NetPro team. Everybody wins.
