Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Signet Chemical Safeguards IT Infrastructure, Improves Communication and Collaboration
Overview
Country or Region: India
Industry: Chemical Trading
Customer Profile
Signet Chemical Corporation is an Indian specialty chemicals company based in Mumbai. It procures and sells a range of chemicals which are used in pharmaceutical, surface coating, paint, foundry, personal care, food processing and other industries.
Business Situation
Signet Chemical Corporation used an e-mail messaging solution from a local vendor in Mumbai. However, this solution had several limitations such as access only from a particular device and no mechanism to share contact information.
Solution
Magnamious Systems deployed Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server 2003 at Signet, capitalizing on Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 and Exchange 2000 Server to provide an e-mail messaging infrastructure.
Benefits
n Better communication
n Secure network
n Improved infrastructure management
n Regular backups / “We realized that unauthorized access to information and virus threats is a reality that we must cope with. Fortunately SBS 2003 provides a strong internal firewall, which offers world-class security.”
Harish Shah, Managing Partner, Signet Chemical Corporation
Signet Chemical Corporation, a Mumbai-based chemical trading company provides specialty chemicals to companies in the pharmaceutical, personal care, and food processing industries, among others. A small organization, its team members spend a number of days each month in other cities in the country or abroad. Its employees used to be cut off from e-mail during travel, which would delay responses to customers or suppliers. Signet upgraded from its existing e-mail solution to Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server. To create a secure IT infrastructure, it chose Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server 2003, which integrates with Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration Server 2000 as a proxy server and firewall. Today, Signet’s employees can securely access their e-mail from anywhere at anytime, improving communication and collaboration with partners, customers, and colleagues.
Situation
Signet Chemical Corporation is an Indian specialty chemicals trading organization, based in Mumbai. Since its inception in 1985, it has provided internationally manufactured specialty chemicals for a number of industries, including pharmaceutical, surface coating, paint, foundry, personal care, and food processing.
Signet provides cost-effective technical support, which takes into account all the customer's internal system parameters as well as the industry itself. Its extensive product line represents the world's leading manufacturers from the United States, Germany, Holland, France, Japan, Belgium, Portugal, and Norway.
Signet has become a market leader in the specialty chemicals arena by providing quality products and prompt service. To maintain its leadership position, it constantly adds new chemicals which would be relevant to new industries.
In 1999, Signet had deployed an e-mail solution by a local vendor. At that time, Signet employed approximately 8 to 10 employees. As the business grew, the top management, as well as the sales and marketing personnel, were required to travel extensively in India and abroad. This would take individuals out of the office for a few days or even weeks at a stretch. With e-mail available only on a particular PC setup in the office, it would lead to delays in closing business transactions and sometimes derail delivery schedules.
With the ubiquitous availability of affordable broadband communications, the company had opted for high-speed Internet access. However, Signet had not invested in any technology to prevent security breaches such as hacking or virus attacks.
Solution
IT consultants from Microsoft® business partner Magnamious Services suggested that the organization implement a messaging infrastructure that would provide secure e-mail messaging over the Web.
In addition, an immediate concern was to safeguard the network with a firewall. Magnamious specialists suggested the Microsoft Windows® Small Business Server 2003 operating system, because they felt that it would provide a cost-effective solution, and also provide Signet with technologies for the future. Windows Small Business Server (SBS) 2003 is part of Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server software.
Solution Implementation
The organization acquired 25 licenses of Small Business Server 2003 in April 2004.
There was no need to upgrade the local area network (LAN) infrastructure or the desktops, because Signet was using the Microsoft Windows 98 operating system hosted on Pentium II and Pentium III desktops PCs. Magnamious team did recommend that the server be upgraded to an IBM X225, an Intel-based server.
It took the Magnamious team only a couple of days to deploy Windows Small Business Server. The migration of mailboxes from Microsoft Outlook® Express to the Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 messaging and collaboration client took nearly a week. This was primarily because Signet had created a number of e-mail "rules" that had to be migrated as well.
“The migration from Outlook Express to Outlook 2003 took only one week. There was no system disruption during the migration,” comments Donald D’Souza, Manager of IT for Signet Chemical Corporation.
With the deployment of Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server,, mailboxes have been centrally located on the server. With Windows Small Business Server, the organization has been able to schedule regular backups, thereby avoiding loss of e-mail messages and information.
By deploying Microsoft Exchange Server in conjunction with Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, Signet employees can securely access e-mail over the Web.
The next step was to implement Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2000, also part of Windows Server System, to help prevent unauthorized access to the network. In addition to the internal firewall, Signet implemented Symantec Enterprise Edition antivirus solution to safeguard the network and e-mail server.
Once this was done, the Signet Chemical IT infrastructure was in place, with e-mail and secure Web access.
Benefits
Better Communication
Communication at Signet Chemical has improved dramatically. A centralized location for business contact data has been a big boon. “We don’t need to call employees who are on the road to get a particular contact that might have been on their PC. What’s more is that all employees can access e-mail over the Web, thereby reducing delay in communication,” explains Harish Shah, Managing Partner, Signet Chemical Corporation.
Secure Network
Round-the-clock, everyday network connectivity is a must when working with large corporations and international clientele. However, it brings with it a need for security that is often overlooked by small organizations.
“We realized that unauthorized access to information and virus threats is a reality that we must cope with. Fortunately SBS 2003 provides a strong internal firewall, which offers world-class security,” explains Harish Shah, Managing Partner at Signet Chemical Corporation.
Secure access to e-mail was also a very important aspect of the solution, since some of Signet’s employees spent as much as 50 percent of their time travelling overseas or to other cities in India. ISA Server 2000 provides secure authentication through Outlook Web Access over the Web, preventing unauthorized users from logging into the Web site. It also helps protect the e-mail servers through Secure Sockets Layer encryption and HTTP filtering.
Improved Infrastructure Management
Signet Chemical has capitalized on several intuitive features of Windows Small Business Server. It has utilized the Active Directory® directory service found in the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system (the foundation of Windows Server System) to create role-based access. Microsoft Exchange Server gave Signet a messaging infrastructure along with shared contacts, calendaring, and the like.
In addition, ISA Server 2000 provides several features that make firewall management an easy task. This includes policy-based inbound and outbound access according to user, group, application, or even schedule.
Regular Backups
The Microsoft Exchange Server mailboxes are located at the server. This allows the administrator to use Windows Backup Program to schedule backups of all mailboxes on a daily basis. “Windows Backup Program guarantees that there is no loss of e-mail messages,” comments D’Souza.
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System is a line of integrated and manageable server software designed to reduce the complexity and cost of IT. Windows Server System enables you to spend less time and budget on managing your systems so that you can focus your resources on other priorities for you and your business.
For more information about Windows Server System, go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem