ROI, Dutch Institute for Public Administration

Easy, Integrated Solution Gives Workers Remote Access, Improved Productivity

ROI, the Dutch Institute for Public Administration, is a nonprofit foundation based in the Netherlands that provides training to government offices in Europe. Many ROI training consultants work from home, accessing the ROI system through a virtual private network (VPN). However, security management was difficult for administrators, because there was no integration between the VPN solution and the company’s Windows®-based IT infrastructure. The VPN solution was also unreliable, so remote employees often had to travel into the main ROI office to do their work. ROI recently implemented Whale Communications Intelligent Application Gateway, a remote-access solution that is part of the Microsoft Forefront™ line of business security products. Now employees can easily retrieve information from home, so they are more productive. The solution also integrates seamlessly with the ROI IT environment.

Situation

Using Intelligent Application Gateway, employees can connect easily, which means that our important customer information is accessible for them wherever they are.  Raymond Provily Manager of Facilities and IT ROI

ROI, the Dutch Institute for Public Administration, is a nonprofit foundation started in the Netherlands 25 years ago by the Dutch Ministry of Interior Affairs and Kingdom relations. The organization provides individual and corporate training programs for governments agencies. Headquartered in The Hague, ROI trains ministries, councils, and other government-related offices in the Netherlands and throughout Europe. Each year, the company’s 60 office-based employees and 350 remote contract workers coach and train more than 6,000 civil servants in the areas of public policy, public sector management, human resources, personal effectiveness, and public finance.

In recent years, the Dutch “polder model” of consensus decision-making, with its systematic contacts between all social partners, has been credited with growth and social stability in the country. ROI conducts its activities in the Netherlands and abroad within this context and adds to it experience in organizational development, institutional strengthening, and public sector training.

Because most ROI customers are in high-ranking government offices, project information viewed by ROI employees is highly confidential. “IT system security is extremely important to our company,” says Raymond Provily, Manager of Facilities and IT, ROI. “All of our customer data on the network is classified, and we can’t have anyone from the outside getting into our systems. We need to protect this information at all costs.”

ROI remote employees, who work from home offices in cities throughout the Netherlands, use their own personal computers to gain access to the ROI IT system through Microsoft® Office Outlook® Web Access. Employees used a virtual private network (VPN) to communicate with each other and share customer information confidentially via e-mail. User traffic on the VPN was carried over a private network from each employee’s Internet service provider.

However, managing authentication on this network had been a struggle for ROI administrators, because there was no integration between the VPN solution and the company’s existing Windows®-based IT infrastructure, which includes the Active Directory® service for centrally managed authentication and authorization. “ROI requires all employees to change their system passwords every two months,” says Provily. “But employees had to use several different user names and passwords, first to get through the VPN solution using their own Internet provider address, then onto our network. Every time employees changed their passwords, IT had to change them again, so employees were constantly calling because their changes didn’t take effect and they couldn’t log on to the system.”

Also, the VPN software that employees used was not reliable. “There were many technical problems, but also hardware issues, such as routers that failed,” Provily says. In addition, because employees had to manually configure the software, their computers often performed poorly.

Because of these issues, many home-based employees could not work easily or effectively from home, and were forced to travel to the main office in The Hague to gain access to the information they needed. “A lot of these people are dispersed across the country, so traveling to the office would easily take several hours in each direction,” says Provily. “So they were not as productive as we wanted them to be, and they were wasting time that could have been spent working on projects.”

To solve these problems, ROI began to look for a new remote access solution in early 2006.

Solution

Employees now save up to several hours each day because they no longer have to make that round-trip drive to our office.  Raymond Provily Manager of Facilities and IT ROI

In February 2006, a member of the ROI IT staff recommended that the company consider implementing Whale Communications Intelligent Application Gateway. Part of the Microsoft Forefront™ line of business security products, it is a remote-access gateway that provides Secure Sockets Layer (SSL)–based application access and protection. Intelligent Application Gateway combines an SSL VPN with Web-application firewall protection.

These features also integrate with Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006, an edge security server that helps protect IT environments from Internet-based threats.

Intelligent Application Gateway provides IT administrators with advanced capabilities such as consolidated network perimeter defense and endpoint security management. With this solution, administrators have access control, authorization, and content inspection for a range of applications.

Additionally, administrators can use a remote-access policy that is based on device, user, application, or other criteria. This makes it possible for IT staff to easily enforce compliance with application usage guidelines. Intelligent Application Gateway also contains integrated software modules known as Intelligent Application Optimizers, which have preconfigured settings designed for remote access to frequently used applications.

ROI implemented the solution as an appliance acquired thorough an original equipment manufacturer in April 2007.

Benefits

Intelligent Application Gateway helps ROI protect important customer information while giving its home-based employees easy access to that information. This has resulted in higher staff productivity and a reduction in remote employee travel time. Additionally, the solution integrates seamlessly with the ROI IT environment and provides easy administration for the IT department.

Easy Remote Access and Data Protection

Intelligent Application Gateway includes a powerful Web-application firewall designed to keep out malicious network traffic and maintain the integrity of the ROI network. It also uses SSL VPN-based Internet access to provide employees with browser-based access to company information and customer data. As a result, ROI can protect its data and applications while providing remote access. Remote employees are now able to easily use the Internet from personal computers and mobile devices in their homes. “Using Intelligent Application Gateway, employees can connect easily, which means that our important customer information is accessible for them wherever they are,” says Provily.

We’ve definitely seen an increase in internal e-mail usage since deploying Intelligent Application Gateway, which tells us that people are more productive.  Raymond Provily Manger of Facilities and IT ROI

More Productive Staff

ROI employees are now able to easily access important customer information over the Internet. “It’s now so much simpler for them to log on to the system, check e-mail, and research new customers,” says Provily. “There are no disruptions. Even our office-based employees can quickly and easily check their e-mail from home after work hours, to continue working on time-sensitive projects if they wish to.”

This means that overall productivity has increased. “Our remote employees are able to do more work, because they can perform their work exactly as they would if they were in the office, without technical problems,” Provily says. “Even if they’re out visiting and training customers all day, they can come home and finish their work easily. We’ve definitely seen an increase in internal e-mail usage since deploying Intelligent Application Gateway, which tells us that people are more productive.”

Less Employee Travel Time

Now that they are able to work more effectively from home, ROI remote employees no longer have to travel to the ROI head office to retrieve important project information. “With the heavy automobile traffic in the Netherlands, it was very frustrating and time-consuming for employees to try and travel to and from the office,” says Provily. “Employees now save up to several hours each day because they no longer have to make that round-trip drive to our office. Instead, they can focus their time on researching new customers and meeting and training those customers.”

Seamless Integration

Intelligent Application Gateway also integrates seamlessly with the other Microsoft applications used by ROI. “We recently migrated our e-mail messaging system from Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 to Exchange Server 2003, and the solution integrates very well with the updated version,” Provily states. “The user interface is also simple to use and integrates well with Outlook Web Access, which our employees use every day.”

The solution’s integration with the ROI Windows-based infrastructure also means that authentication is much easier for Provily and his team. “We already used Active Directory for those purposes, so now it is easier for us to manage employee password changes,” he says. “They only have to use one user name and password with Intelligent Application Gateway, and they’re into our system. And when they change their password, it is also changed automatically in the gateway. The integration makes that possible.”

Easy Administration

Because of its integration, Intelligent Application Gateway has reduced the complexity of managing remote access. “From our perspective, everything is easier to manage now,” Provily says. “It’s almost like there’s no manageability whatsoever, because of how well the application works. As a result, we don’t worry about secure access anymore, and the number of employee calls to our help desk has gone down dramatically.”

For More Information

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http://www.microsoft.com/

For more information about ROI, Dutch Institute for Public Administration products and services, visit the Web site at:
http://www.roi-opl.nl/

Microsoft Forefront Product Portfolio

The Microsoft® Forefront™ comprehensive line of business security products provides greater protection and control through integration with your existing IT infrastructure and through simplified deployment, management, and analysis. Forefront is a comprehensive solution that helps provide protection for the client operating system, application servers, and the network edge.

For more information about the Forefront product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/forefront

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published June 2007