JumpCloud’s Cloud Is Open to Everything

JUMPCLOUD IS THE FIRST to admit that employing directories to manage users, privileges, and devices isn’t exactly a newfangled concept for channel pros.

“Having one single open directory platform where they’re going to manage all their identities, all their devices, all their applications—that’s new,” says Katie Braband Clouse (pictured), the company’s vice president of Global MSP sales.

It’s also more relevant than ever, she continues. Go back five, or even three, years and MSPs spent most of their time managing networks and endpoints. In the present age of remote and hybrid work, however, much of what SMBs do never touches a network, and what channel pros need to monitor, manage, and secure is much more about identities and access rights than hardware.

“The world’s entirely changed. The way we work [has] entirely changed,” Clouse says.

“MSPs’ tools really haven’t changed. They’re still approaching things from this device-centric approach.”

Research JumpCloud published two months ago illustrates how big an impact that fact has on IT professionals within and beyond the channel: Nearly 60% of respondents to the study declared themselves overwhelmed by managing remote workers.

The JumpCloud Directory Platform is purpose-built for tackling that problem. Unlike RMM solutions, vendor-specific SaaS management consoles, and tools like Microsoft Active Directory and Azure Active Directory, the system provides a consolidated, multitenant repository for managing both cloud and on-premises applications, networks, and infrastructure, plus Windows, MacOS, and Linux devices, all from a user-centric point of view.

“It’s about managing those users and making sure they have access to what they need, they don’t have access to what they don’t need, and they can work from anywhere,” Clouse says.

Core capabilities include lifecycle management features for provisioning and single sign-on, zero-trust security features for enforcing MFA and password complexity rules, and a cloud-based RADIUS tool for managing access to VPN and Wi-Fi networks.

All of that is designed to supplement rather than replace an MSP’s current management stack. “JumpCloud is going to play nicely with an MSP’s existing toolset,” Clouse says. The platform integrates with Active Directory, Google Workspace, and Microsoft 365, as well as managed services solutions from ConnectWise and Kaseya’s Datto unit, and there are more such back-end connections coming.

“We have a quite extensive roadmap through the rest of the year around adding more integrations,” Clouse notes.