“By providing remote and branch office users a quick and more reliable way to access the corporate network, … we’re saving more than U.S.$40,000each year.”

Jorge Ribeiro Ferreira, IT Consultant, Raona

IT services provider Raona has 120 employees who most are either at customer locations or within international teams away from the company’s offices. To access some of its corporate resources, these employees connect using aterminal services or virtual private network (VPN), which was time-consuming and unreliable. By upgrading to the Windows® 7 operating system, Raonais able to improve information access for mobile employees, reduce costs, and enhance security.

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2009


Business Needs

Raona is an IT consultancy based in Barcelona, Spain; the company has locationsin Spain, the United Kingdom, and Argentina. The Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner offers a broad range of IT services—from custom development and networking infrastructure solutions to mobility and unified communications solutions.

In order to support its 120 employees, who are mostly mobile and work outside of the office at customer locations, Raona provides each of its employees with a portable computer running the Windows Vista® operating system and Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2007. The company has 25 servers running primarily the Windows Server® 2008 operating system, including Windows Server 2008 R2, and is taking advantage of Windows Server 2008 Virtualization with the Hyper-V™ technology to optimize its server hardware.

Almost all of the employees at Raona rely on virtual private network (VPN) and Terminal Services connections to access information not published to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and Microsoft Office CommunicationsServer 2007. For example, branch employees in the Argentina office use a VPN connection because Raona uses a minimal networking infrastructure in that office, and direct DSL connections in the country are costly and unreliable. However, the VPN connection was slow, and employees found it difficult to access network resources. Also, employees working behind customer firewalls found it difficult to connect to the company network through VPN connections.

Adding to the challenge, once employees are connected to the network, searching for information could be time-consuming. Documents and other data are stored in multiple places, including Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007 document repositories and on file shares, which requires multiple, segregated searches for information.

Raona wanted a solution that would enable it to simplify information access for employees—enabling them to be more productive.

Solution

Raona decided to upgrade to the Windows® 7 operating system when the beta version was publicly available. On April 10, 2009, it started by upgrading computers in its internal IT department, followed by the finance and marketing departments. Just three weeks later, by May 2009, the company upgraded 25 computers. By the end of May, it will complete its upgrade to all 120 computers.

Raona used a manual deployment process for its initial rollout of Windows 7, using a clean-install process. The company did not purchase new hardware for the deployment. Furthermore, because any compatibility issues had been addressed during the company’s upgrade to Windows Vista, Raona did not run any formal application compatibility testing, although it designed a backup plan in the event of failure.

“We were excited to upgrade and wanted to deploy as quickly as possible,” explains Jorge Ribeiro Ferreira, IT Consultant at Raona. “When we upgrade computers companywide, however, I want to change our deployment strategy to one that is more dynamic and take advantage of Microsoft deployment technologies.” Specifically, the company plans to integrate the deployment with itsexisting Microsoft System Center desktop solutions, including Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager, to help it deploy, update, and manage its client computers.

For enhanced security and control, the company is evaluating several new features in Windows 7, including BitLocker To Go™ and AppLocker™. To further support its mobile workforce and provide information access to employees, it is using and evaluating DirectAccess technology, part of Windows Server 2008 R2, and Federated Search, a Windows 7 feature that enables users to search remote data from within the enterprise infrastructure.

Benefits

Only three weeks into its deployment, Raona already sees the benefits of upgrading. With Windows 7, the company is able to improve information access—including access for its remote employees, reduce costs, and enhance security.

Improved information access. Raona is providing its mobile employees the ability to access corporate resources without a VPN connection by using DirectAccess. In addition, Federated Search enables employees to extend their desktop search to document repositories and files in Office SharePoint Server 2007 document repositories—an important advantage for remote employees. What’s more, new Windows 7 Libraries makes finding and retrieving documents and data from the desktop easier.

Increased user productivity helps reduce costs. Based on results with the early deployment, Raona is looking forward to a surge in employee productivity. “By providing remote and branch office users a quick and more reliable way to access the corporate network, we’ll eliminate the need for them to have to connect to a terminal services,” explains Ferreira. “If you take into consideration that our average user spends a total of 10 minutes per day establishing a connection, by removing that barrier, we’re saving more that U.S.$43,000 each year.”

“Furthermore,” says Ferreira, “users are utterly satisfied with the stability, the speed, and performance of the new system.”

Enhanced security. The company plans to implement BitLocker To Go in order to extend its data security and help protect intellectual property that is saved to removable media devices, such as USB thumb drives. “With such a high concentration of mobile employees, your chances increase that laptops and hard drives are going to be lost or stolen,” says Ferreira. “BitLocker To Go will give us that extra peace of mind that our data is safe.”

Raona will use the AppLocker feature to prevent users from installing unwanted applications on the network and to give the IT department greater control. “We estimate that for each user affected by malicious software, we lose four hours of work time—and that’s conservative. “By using AppLocker, we’re potentially saving hundreds of man hours each year.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2009