Innovative and Independent User Management

by Bernd Seidel, freelance journalist

Harz University of Applied Sciences (Hochschule Harz) manages its 3,500 IT users based on the open standard Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). In line with its educational mission, the university's IT department is committed to a clear strategy: providing solutions that are both innovative and vendor-independent. This approach ensures students experience a wide range of state-of-the-art technologies, preparing them for a diverse technological landscape rather than a single proprietary ecosystem.

A Philosophy of Technological Breadth

Klaus-Peter Rohr, a System Administrator at the university, elaborates on this core principle. "Innovative applications and infrastructure are crucial because we want to provide students with solutions that reflect the current state of technology." The goal is to foster broad expertise. "Being independent from any single provider is key, allowing students to work with many different products and experience the full breadth of technology," he adds. This philosophy guided the search for a new user authentication solution.

With a central LDAP directory already in place, the university faced the common challenge of a heterogeneous IT environment. Students and staff needed access to resources across various platforms, including Windows and Linux workstations in different labs and departments. The lack of a unified login system meant increased administrative work for tasks like password management and account synchronization, and a less-than-ideal experience for users who had to juggle multiple credentials.

Finding a Flexible, LDAP-Native Solution

The primary goal was to implement a Single Sign-On (SSO) solution that could seamlessly integrate with their existing LDAP infrastructure without compromising their vendor-neutral strategy. The university needed a system that could authenticate users on different operating systems against their central directory, simplifying access and centralizing control.

After evaluating the market, Harz University chose the product suite from the Viennese software house Comtarsia IT-Services GmbH. Comtarsia's solutions were a perfect match for the university's requirements, offering robust, cross-platform logon clients that work directly with LDAP. This allowed the IT department to leverage their existing directory as the single source of truth for user identities, without the need for complex and costly directory synchronization or modifications to the client operating systems.

Comtarsia's products enable platform-independent Single Sign-On, significantly reducing IT administration overhead and increasing convenience for all users.

Results: Lower Overhead and Higher Convenience

The implementation of Comtarsia's logon solutions has brought tangible benefits to Harz University. The IT administration team now enjoys a much more streamlined user management process. With a single point of control in their LDAP directory, managing access rights, passwords, and user accounts across the entire campus has become far more efficient.

For the 3,500 students and staff, the change has been equally positive. The introduction of single sign-on means they can now access all necessary IT resources with one set of credentials, regardless of whether they are in a Windows lab or a Linux-based research environment. This increased convenience has improved productivity and user satisfaction.

By partnering with Comtarsia, Harz University has successfully optimized its user management in a way that fully aligns with its core principles. The new system is innovative, vendor-independent, and provides a superior experience for both administrators and end-users, reinforcing the university's commitment to providing a first-class technological education.