Enterasys Networks

Enterprise Networking Provider Upgrades Environment for Gains in Productivity, Security

With its focus on secure network infrastructure solutions, Enterasys Networks strives to keep its IT environment at the forefront of technology to constantly improve security. Enterasys also works to give its employees the tools that they need to stay efficient. The company decided to take advantage of new technology by upgrading to Windows Vista™, the 2007 Microsoft® Office system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. Part of its upgrade efforts include a proof-of-concept to automate the process for provisioning for new employees using Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. With its new capabilities, Enterasys has improved user and IT staff productivity and completed a successful proof-of-concept—new employee setup is now 30 to 60 percent faster. Enhanced security capabilities have helped contribute to not only a safer environment but also to a reduced burden on the IT staff.

 

Situation

Enterasys Networks develops centralized command and control software, advanced security applications, and security-enabled network infrastructure products, such as policy-enabled switches, routers, wireless products, security software, and services. A renowned enterprise networking leader, the company has more than 20 years of experience and holds more than 500 patents.

Giving people the ability to search other Web servers, Outlook, multiple platforms and drives, and other applications with Windows Vista will let everyone get more done with less frustration every day. Dan Wakefield IT Operations Manager, Enterasys

Enterasys is a global organization, with offices located in North America, South America, Asia Pacific, and Europe. In the past, the offices functioned separately, with their own reporting structures and distinct software environments. However, Enterasys recently consolidated its organization, moving management to the company’s corporate headquarters in the United States and deciding to establish standardized operational processes across its worldwide offices.

Manual Processes
As it evaluated its many current processes, Enterasys found that the manual steps involved in carrying them out hampered productivity, particularly in cases where human oversights caused rework or delays. For instance, the process for getting new employees up and running hinged on multiple e-mail messages sent to and from many different parts of the organization, from human resources to accounting to IT. The process included several Web-based forms along with non-standardized e-mail requests sent out by the new employee’s manager to obtain appropriate approvals and equipment.

The process often took longer than necessary; with so many assets and different requirements for each one, along with the risk of e-mailed requests being missed, the process could grind to a halt if a specific e-mail message inadvertently went unread. “Especially in the face of consolidation, it was important to institute new ways to run our business that did not depend so heavily on individuals,” says Dan Wakefield, IT Operations Manager for Enterasys. “We wanted to refine our workflow, automating as many steps as possible to simplify how we work together.”

User Aggravation
To further its aim of simplifying processes, Enterasys sought a better way to locate documents across its enterprise. Historically, the company’s users stored all versions of their documents in e-mail files or on local drives and servers, which increased the difficulty of finding a specific item as well as the chances of using an outdated document. “With multiple versions of any given document located all over the company, people couldn’t be sure where to look or what to use,” recalls Rich Casselberry, Director of IT Operations for Enterasys. “The company’s performance suffers if people have to spend a lot of time searching for or recreating documents, so we wanted to give them a comprehensive way to search for and quickly locate exactly what they need.”

Distributed Work Force
As part of its streamlining efforts, Enterasys closed certain offices, choosing to have some employees travel or telecommute to serve its customers. Approximately 25 percent of the company’s employees now travel extensively, which creates new challenges for the IT support team. The remote work force uses portable computers and an air card to connect through cellular towers to a virtual private network (VPN) to gain access to the Enterasys network. “The trouble with VPNs is that they require a system to be booted up, an Internet connection to be made, and a VPN connection initiated,” explains Wakefield. “That can be a real challenge and expense for sales folks who are on the road and want to quickly accomplish a simple change.”

Mobile users’ primary means of communication, however, is handheld devices. “We want our mobile employees to be able to stay productive, regardless of their location,” says Wakefield, “but handheld devices are limiting because they aren’t well integrated and make it difficult for employees to manage things from the road in a secure manner.” The company’s policy levels for handheld devices do not permit the higher standard of password protection that is available from within the Enterasys corporate network. “Our mobile workers’ devices contain sensitive information—such as confidential e-mail messages—so we want to do everything within our power to mitigate risks associated with a device’s potential loss,” says Casselberry.

Not surprisingly, security is a major theme for Enterasys. The company makes it a point to incorporate advancements in technology in order to enhance the security levels of its products and services, as well as to further safeguard its internal systems. “There’s always room for improved security,” says Casselberry. “Adopting the best available tools and putting the right processes into place helps us keep our environment—and our information—safe.”

Solution

To promote both security and productivity throughout the enterprise, Enterasys decided to upgrade its client operating system, messaging system, and desktop productivity tools. The company moved from Microsoft® Windows® XP to Windows Vista™, from Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003 to the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system, and from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007.

“A lot of people would consider a triple deployment to be pretty aggressive, but it’s a smart decision for us,” says Wakefield. “Simultaneously upgrading all our desktops is definitely more efficient for our IT staff, and it gives users both a new suite of productivity tools and a new operating system at the same time.”

Operating System Upgrade
For the move to Windows Vista, Enterasys worked with consultants from Microsoft Services to upgrade a pilot group of computers in its IT department, help desk, and engineering department. The team used the Microsoft Solution Accelerator for Business Desktop Deployment 2007 for guidance and automation for Zero Touch Installation (ZTI) using Microsoft Systems Management Server 2003 (SMS 2003).

To maximize efficiency, Enterasys opted to upgrade each workstation or portable computer a single time. For that reason, it deployed Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007 as it implemented Windows Vista, so that the same 30 pilot users are working with the 2007 Office programs as well.

Workflow Proof-of-Concept
Enterasys selected its problematic process for “on-boarding” new employees as the subject of a proof-of-concept solution based on Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007. The solution will facilitate achievement of its overall workflow automation goals. In addition to a mix of Web-based forms and e-mail messages, the previous method required human resources staff to send messages from a third-party application to Microsoft Identity Integration Server (MIIS) 2003 to establish the proper identifications for each new employee.

Enterasys is working with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner EMC to help automate the new employee on-boarding process. When a new person is hired, the human resources system automatically sends a message to MIIS, which triggers a Microsoft Office InfoPath® 2007 form to be posted to a SharePoint site. At that time, the hiring manager is automatically notified that the form needs to be filled out; once it’s completed, Office SharePoint Server 2007 initiates multiple workflow processes to get a new employee the appropriate furniture, computer, telephone, and so on.

One of the company’s goals was to customize and deploy the proof-of-concept solution with a minimal amount of required customization. “Coding costs time and money and usually requires ongoing support afterward,” says Wakefield. “So far, we’ve been able to take the 2007 Office system out of the box and work with next-to-no coding.”

Having completed development for the proof-of-concept, Enterasys plans to make the solution available to its entire user base by November 2006. There also are several projects currently underway that extend the solution to automate tools and improve other common processes around the company. Says Wakefield, “In the long term, we expect to bring additional features to the on-boarding module to incorporate a wider range of new-hire requirements, and we plan to enable employees to conduct equipment refresh activities using SharePoint Server 2007.”

Messaging Upgrade
For the implementation of Exchange Server 2007, consultants from Microsoft Services assisted Enterasys in an initial pilot rollout to 10 percent of the work force (approximately 100 users). Half of the pilot users are IT staff members; the rest were chosen from information workers who are located around the globe so that the company could get a true sense of the messaging solution’s capabilities for worldwide collaboration and productivity improvements.

As of October 2006, the company has a single computer running Exchange Server 2007 at its Massachusetts headquarters that makes up the entire Exchange Server environment. After Exchange Server 2007 goes into full production at Enterasys, however, the company will use three clustered servers on the front end and EMC storage on the back end. Enterasys also plans to use the Unified Messaging and Edge Transport server capabilities in Exchange Server 2007.

The planned timeline for the triple launch is to upgrade the entire organization to Windows Vista and the 2007 release of the Microsoft Office system by March 2007. At that time, the company will move over all of its mailboxes to Exchange Server 2007 as well.

Benefits

For Enterasys, upgrading to Windows Vista, the 2007 Office system, and Exchange Server 2007 will provide enhanced productivity and security in both the short and long term. “The benefits we’ll enjoy from these three new systems will extend to nearly every facet of our organization,” says Casselberry. “Our remote users will have greater flexibility and less reliance on PDAs because they can communicate through e-mail with the voice command system as part of Exchange Server 2007 Unified Messaging. And there will be countless advantages from storing everything on a central Office SharePoint Server 2007 server that’s available even to offline users. As for Windows Vista, everyone’s enthusiastic about the opportunity to search across all boundaries and actually find and use our information.”

Enhanced User Productivity
Enterasys considers the integration among its new solutions as critical to the projects’ success. “Access to granular pieces of information that are stored in such a variety of locations will significantly reduce the time that users spend hunting for specifics or for comprehensive information about a particular topic,” says Wakefield.

Windows Vista affords faster access to our data, and involving Outlook in our searches is a huge advantage for Enterasys because of our cultural tendency to use e-mail as data storage. Dan Wakefield IT Operations Manager, Enterasys

Windows Vista gives users the ability to conduct detailed searches that include Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007, and the search results provide information such as dates, so users can be sure of getting the most recent versions of the documents they seek. “Windows Vista affords faster access to our data, and involving Outlook in our searches is a huge advantage for Enterasys because of our cultural tendency to use e-mail as data storage,” says Wakefield. “Giving people the ability to search other Web servers, Outlook, multiple platforms and drives, and other applications with Windows Vista will let everyone get more done with less frustration every day.”

The company plans to use Unified Messaging in Exchange Server 2007 to help employees securely manage everything from the road. “We want our ‘road warriors’ to have options that contribute to their all-the-time productivity,” says Wakefield. “With the new Unified Messaging tools at their disposal, mobile users will have voice access to their calendars and contacts, making it quick and easy for them to notify customers that they’re running late or to update a meeting invitation to add key colleagues. Plus, they’ll be able to quickly and conveniently process e-mail tasks without a PDA or the need to later synch up the schedules on their separate devices.”

Mobile workers also can use Exchange Server ActiveSync® technology to take advantage of advanced search capabilities for finding specific information using their mobile devices. “People should be able to move business forward, even if they’re stuck in a taxi,” says Wakefield.

New Employee Setup 30 to 60 Percent Faster 
Establishing automated workflows for many of its operational tasks will help Enterasys streamline processes. “We’re extremely excited about the range of possibilities opening up for us with the adoption of SharePoint Server 2007 and the rest of the new 2007 Office system,” says Wakefield. “This is just the beginning.”

In the on-boarding process, Office SharePoint Server 2007 automatically alerts the appropriate manager and walks him or her through a quick set of options for what the new employee needs. Not only does the manager not have to remember to get the process started, but he also doesn’t need to know where to send each request because that’s part of the automated workflow.

Also, the approval process is faster and easier for approvers to take care of now because the InfoPath form is automated and can be quickly sent on to the next appropriate step. Neither managers nor new hires have to take time away from their primary tasks to determine where they are in the process because the Office SharePoint Server 2007 workflow shows them who has and has not dealt with their requests. Knowing if and where there’s a bottleneck enables managers to address issues and get new employees working in less time. The solution also stores a historical record of the completed transaction in case employees need to track who requested or approved specific equipment at what time.

As a result of just this single application of the new Office SharePoint Server 2007 technology, Enterasys believes that it will get the right equipment to new employees 30 to 60 percent faster than before, for an annual cost savings of approximately U.S.$88,000 in productivity gains. Plus, Enterasys expects to decrease the time managers spend on new-hire provisioning by 75 percent and reduce the number of equipment-related help desk calls by 95 percent. “Overall, we’re going to see a first-year savings of more than $100,000 in labor costs and increased productivity,” says Wakefield.

Increased IT Staff Productivity
In addition to promoting end-user productivity, the upgrades will have a positive effect on Enterasys IT staff productivity as well, both in terms of deployment and ongoing support. “We see ourselves saving a significant amount of time and effort thanks to the Windows Vista deployment tools,” says Wakefield. Enterasys currently has to rely on third-party tools that primarily limit support to Web postings. Also, right now IT staff have to rebuild the image when updates are released for its operating system or drivers.

Continues Wakefield, “We’ve been dealing with a pieced-together (but functional), unsupported deployment environment, so using all the new deployment tools will help us carry out much faster, smoother deployments than before. The ability to use patch and driver injection to update an image on the fly will save us an estimated one to two full days of image building each time, which adds up to about $4,000 in labor cost savings annually. And zero touch installation scenarios through SMS 2003 also will be a resource saver.”

Wakefield adds, “When we deployed Windows XP, we deemed it critical that a well-trained deployment representative from IT be present at each site for deployment. By using ZTI, we hope to build such confidence in our deployment process that an upgrade can occur remotely. Once we’ve established the image, we’ll also experience improvements in the amount of time and effort it takes to manage our workstations because of the management tools we can use with Windows Vista.”

To further improve operational efficiency, Enterasys has decided that its solution based on Office SharePoint Server 2007 will provide the central point through which the company can organize and access all its different solutions. “As a company of our size changes and strategies evolve, there can be a tendency to end up with a mixed environment of solutions,” says Casselberry. “We look at SharePoint Server 2007 as the perfect system for simplifying the environment to reduce TCO as well as improve both internal and external customer satisfaction.”

Additionally, the fact that Enterasys was able to develop the Office SharePoint Server 2007 solution with 80 percent of the functionality coming out of the box and the 20 percent requiring coding. “Normally, a project like this would be required nearly 100 percent coding,” says Wakefield. “I estimate that the out-of-the-box functionality cuts about $80,000 out of a venture like this.

Enhanced Security Capabilities
The IT department also plans on using the new Edge Transport server role in Exchange Server 2007 to both streamline management and reduce the cost of operating antivirus software. This server role, deployed at the network’s perimeter, supports Simple Mail Transfer Protocol routing, provides anti-spam filtering technologies, and supports antivirus extensibility.

The EdgeSync technology in Exchange Server 2007 publishes information to the Edge Transport server for use in robust filtering, which boosts Enterasys security levels because communications between the Edge Transport server and the internal network in an Exchange Server 2007 organization are encrypted by default. Edge Transport also includes anti-spam technologies that safeguard at many layers. Says Casselberry, “The potential cost savings from using the Edge Transport server for antivirus and anti-spam functions mean that we can replace our current solution.”

Enterasys views its multiple technology upgrades as having an impact on its level of overall security, which is important, given the company’s security-related business. “One of the biggest changes we anticipate is our ability to do an even better job protecting our upgraded environment,” says Wakefield.

“That includes not just keeping the operating system security up-to-date, but improving our update management of Office programs and other important applications. For instance, once we incorporate it with Windows Vista, Internet Explorer 7 will be even better protected. Right now, we have to spend anywhere between 30 minutes and 8 hours cleaning infected systems of spyware and adware. Those same tasks will take just minutes with Windows Vista, which will save us as much as $440 in labor costs each time. What’s more, we’ll be able to be more proactive and lower the instances of infection by warning users away from suspicious sites.”

In addition to notifying users of suspicious sites, the new system also will guard users from unwanted client installations on their machines. Spyware will be reduced because users will be asked if they want an executable file installed and can be trained to answer no.
 
Windows Vista
Windows Vista can help your organization use information technology to gain a competitive advantage in today’s new world of work. Your people will be able to find and use information more effectively. You will be able to support your mobile work force with better access to shared data and collaboration tools. And your IT staff will have better tools and technologies to enhance corporate IT security, data protection, and more efficient deployment and management.

For more information about Windows Vista, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsvista

 

For More Information

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For more information about Enterasys products and services, call (978) 684-1000 or visit the Web site at:
www.enterasys.com

For more information about EMC products and services, call (508) 435-1000 or visit the Web site at:
www.emc.com