Canaccord Capital
Canaccord Capital guarantees uptime, standardizes practices using Microsoft solutions
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Company Overview
Founded in 1950, Canaccord Capital is Canada's largest independent investment firm. Canaccord specializes in small-, mid- and large- size capitalization companies and offers a full range of professional investment services, including private client division, investment banking, fixed income, research, institutional sales and trading, international trading, and insurance and estate planning services. Aside from major Canadian banks, Canaccord is the largest independent brokerage company in Canada. With approximately 1,200 employees including 650 licensed employees worldwide, dispersed throughout Canada and internationally, Canaccord offers a full range of professional investment services.
Business Challenge
Canaccord is committed to remaining at the forefront of the Canadian financial industry. Within the competitive financial services industry, Canaccord continually strives to provide the best in client service and maintain a high level of efficiency. In order to provide the best possible client service, Canaccord realized it had to take measures to maintain the safety and reliability of its IT infrastructure by deploying a more secure, organized and reliable patch management program.
With over 1,700 workstations and 160 servers in its environment, the IT management team found that the time and cost of patching systems was a daunting task. Patching systems could take up to four weeks and the organization found that there was a high rate of patch failure and inconsistency and there was a concern that security may begin to have an impact on the organization’s bottom line.
“Because of the nature of our industry, we can't afford to experience downtime. Technology is the backbone of our business, and as a result, security is a major concern. “We were hit by a virus in the summer of 2003 and we were not prepared. As a result, we experienced downtime, lost revenue and our employees were frustrated. We knew we had to put into place something to address this,” says Scott Collins, Manager of Technology and Infrastructure, Canaccord Capital.
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Solution
To address its immediate security requirements, Canaccord began the development of a streamlined patch management process to protect its infrastructure, comprised of 1,700 desktops and 160 servers running on the Microsoft-based platform.
Implementing Controlled Change
In order to facilitate this process, Canaccord’s IT operations obtained upper management approval to set up a Special Projects Department comprised of one team lead and a senior contractor to oversee the entire patch management process. Canaccord realized that the organization required more than an ad-hoc approach to patch management. As a result, the department turned to its core skills set and relied on the Microsoft Operations Framework (MOF) as a guideline for putting new policies and procedures into place.
The Microsoft Operations Framework provides technical guidance that enables organizations to achieve mission-critical system reliability, availability, supportability, and manageability of Microsoft products and technologies.
The framework gives customers operational guidance in the form of white papers, operations guides, assessment tools, best practices, case studies, templates, support tools, and services. This guidance addresses the people, process, technology, and management issues pertaining to complex, distributed, heterogeneous IT environments.
Using the MOF and its core skills set, Canaccord’s Special Projects Department is now able to quickly identify and remediate operational inefficiencies to help reduce Canaccord’s overall IT risk profile.
“Special Projects controls and manages the program which consists of a lead consultant and other dedicated resources that we have. Together, they handle the whole patch management process. We now have a streamlined process in place whereby everyone in the organization is comfortable with and involved in this coordinated effort,” says Collins.
Selecting the Right Products
The organization selected management tools for Windows Server System™ integrated server software, specifically, Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 and Microsoft Software Update Services to facilitate a streamlined approach to the patching process. Microsoft Operations Manager 2000 enables IT operations to stay aware of issues and respond to these issues quickly and accurately. Microsoft Software Update Services (SUS) has enabled Canaccord’s administrators to quickly and reliably deploy the latest critical updates and security updates to its servers and desktops. Together these systems have enabled Canaccord’s IT operations staff to ensure the IT infrastructure is safer and more secure, by making certain that the latest updates are deployed.
In addition to having these safeguards in place, Canaccord monitors all of Microsoft’s Security Bulletins on a weekly basis. The organization is now able to bring all of its workstations up to a baseline and is able to keep them all properly patched. By implementing these security measures, Canaccord has now built the foundation for a more thorough security plan from the perimeter level down to patch management.
“In terms of our patch management process, we’re using Microsoft Operations Manager to monitor and alert our systems. Custom automated scripts are used to patch the servers and SUS is used for our desktops. SUS has enabled us to get critical updates out to our desktops efficiently and effectively and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) has helped our operations staff stay aware of important issue on our servers. Both have enabled us to help ensure that our systems are properly patched and ensure that the latest updates are deployed across the enterprise,” says Collins.
Business Benefits
Canaccord is experiencing several benefits as a result of updating its patch management program. The organization is experiencing improved operational efficiency and has standardized its procedures across the enterprise. Canaccord’s mission-critical applications now remain stable and more secure without interruptions and the team has received a great deal of positive feedback from information workers and senior management. Additionally, the organization has been able to realize significant annual savings as a result of having a standardized patch management process that has reduced downtime across the enterprise.
Improved Operational Efficiency
A major benefit of the implementation of Canaccord’s patch management program is that its IT infrastructure is better protected creating increased security across the entire organization. In addition, Canaccord’s systems are easily kept up to date with all recent updates, thereby helping to increase overall security levels across the enterprise.
“Prior to implementing this patch management program, we had difficulty even rebooting our systems and as a result, we received a lot of negative feedback from the organization as a whole. There was a fear by the user community that systems would crash during the critical businesses processes or that something would go wrong. Now, we are praised on the work that we do. It’s been really good for raising the visibility of the IT department as being a very proactive department rather than being some reactive place where we just fix fires all the time,” says Collins.
Guaranteed Uptime
Canaccord’s mission-critical applications now remain stable and secure without interruptions. The IT department is confident that its infrastructure is reliable and knows that Canaccord employees can be assured that the systems are more secure and dependable. In turn, Canaccord employees have confidence in their IT department. In making the patch management process a number one priority by creating a proactive framework around the initiative, Canaccord’s systems are more secure and reliable.
“What has resulted from this is that with the more patching we’ve done, we’ve made people a lot more comfortable in their workspace. We are not having problems and we are definitely getting there. It is evident that stress levels have gone down as we are not receiving negative feedback from the business users, and IT operations is allowed to be more proactive,” says Collins.
Saving Time and Money
Increased efficiencies and streamlined processes have resulted in significant cost and time savings for the organization. What once took four weeks to patch all desktops and servers has been decreased to five days. Further, the automation has resulted in less human intervention which in turn has improved consistency and reduced the amount of errors involved in the process. Overall, the organization has estimated that its annual savings equates to roughly $86,000.
“The time to patch our systems has been significantly reduced and we are now able to reallocate resources internally within our department,” says Collins. “As a result of improved processes we will be able to save $86,000, which is a significant amount of money within one department. The decision to address the issue of security and make it our number one priority is paying off in more ways than one.”
Looking Into the Future
Canaccord realizes that implementing a more secure infrastructure requires many steps. The organization is now establishing its priorities as the IT department understands that protecting its systems requires several steps of security measures. Canaccord knows that this is just the beginning – security is an issue that will have to be monitored on an on-going basis.
In terms of expanding on its current security initiatives, Canaccord is using Microsoft-based services in order to develop a high level security plan. It plans on prioritizing its security necessities, focusing on the most critical systems and analyzing the security for those systems to see what needs to be deployed.
“We talk about the Onion Effect, with all the different layers of the onion. Each of those layers is a different layer of security, and we are confident that each layer is an integral part of the process. Right now we are patching the servers and have set up a firewall and everything, but there needs to be more layers in behind there for protecting systems. It all revolves around prioritizing our critical systems. We are able to focus on the most critical systems and analyze the security for those systems. We have developed the foundations to give Microsoft something to work with,” says Collins.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft® Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com
For more information about Canaccord Capital products and services, call (604) 643-7300 or visit the Web site at: www.canaccord.com
