Thoughtworks began its journey away from Active Directory (AD) less than three years ago, though Philip Ibarrola, Thoughtworks TechOps Head of Technology, says it was a long time coming. Thoughtworks was once a Microsoft-only shop: Microsoft servers, Windows-based laptops, and security and authentications, all managed by AD. But since 2011, the company has taken a cloud-first approach, favouring cloud-based apps and eliminating on-premises servers. “We thought it was the future of work then, and we still do,” says Ibarrola. “Work is more and more distributed and more geographically dispersed, and the tools to enable that are in the cloud.” Meanwhile, Thoughtworks employees had began choosing Mac laptops over PCs—at last count over 95% of employees used Macs. “So Microsoft AD was becoming a less important, and less interesting, part of our infrastructure,” says Ibarrola. “It wasn’t evolving and became an area of risk because we didn't have people who.