Single Sign-On for Extension Mobility

Users do not want to and cannot remember codes, passwords and other identification methods for everything anymore. So what do they do? They write down their passwords and PIN’s on a post-it, use their ‘first name +01’ as their password or their birthday as their PIN. For access to computers and most of the corporate applications on their desktops or laptops this problem does not occur because most of the business applications or corporate resources like SharePoint, Exchange, file sharing are already part of this SSO enabled infrastructure. For non-SSO enabled applications it is still easy to login because a PC has a keyboard and if a user needs to enter their credentials they just type it in.

But with Extension Mobility it is a little bit different. In most EM environments users have to enter the Fully Qualified Name (FQN), which in most cases is their e-mail address, and this is causing issues.

Here is an example:
John Doe is a user within ACMECorp, his e-mail address, and thus his FQN, is john.doe@acmecorp.net. The IT department decided that John needs to use his e-mail address as his Extension Mobility login name because the ACMECorp’s Communications Manager is synced with Active Directory (AD). To get access to his contacts and be able to get contacted by phone by his customers and colleagues John needs to login using the keypad on the phone. So every day John has to enter his UserID and his PIN manually on the little keypad of the phone.

To give you a better understanding of what John needs to enter on his phone using text messages like key strokes, examine the sequence below:

services globe, arrow down, arrow down, select, 5, 6, 6, 6, 4, 4, 6, 6, *, 3, 6, 6, 6, 3, 3, *, *, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, *, 6, 6, 3, 3, 8, arrow down, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, submit

This is more than 50 clicks, 50 buttons that John needs to press to login to his Extension Mobility enabled phone.

This is the main reason ACMECorp is using ALM. ALM automates and simplifies the Extension Mobility login and logout process.

For more information please contact us.