Active Directory provides many benefits to administrators including group management, organizational management, trust relationships, and node/application replication. Group management is made simple with Active Directory. There are two types of groups in Active Directory, distribution and security. Distribution groups are used solely for email purposes, and all members of a certain department or team are get grouped together. For example, the finance department of a company typically only communicates with other members of that same group. An Active Directory distribution group allows all members of the finance department to email without having to type every individual name in the email. Security groups are used to provide or deny access to users or devices to shares, files, or even other devices, these are called security permissions. Security permissions can be added to any distribution or security group, however email cannot be sent to a distribution group. Active Directory allows administrators to designate network users as owners or delegates of other security or distribution groups, to be updated as needed. Organizational management is made possible through the use of Organizational Units aka OU’s. Basically, OU’s allow users, computers, or devices on the same network to be grouped together to best fit the Companies needs. This makes searching for or accessing a device, user, or group far less complex than if all domain items were listed together. For example, the Company I work for has over 20 sites spread across the U.S., and to simplify user management and security each site has OU’s setup within Active Directory. This means that users in Georgia are grouped differently than users in California, which allows administrators to only apply the security rights needed for that site. Also Active Directory is full of shortcuts to assist in account creation