Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Mobile users at outsourced software products development company boost productivity with wireless connectivity
Overview
Country or Region:India
Industry:Software Development
Customer Profile
Persistent Systems offers outsourced software product development services and employs over 3000 people in India.
Business Situation
Persistent wanted to provide wireless connectivity to all its employees within the office premises. This had to be done seamlessly, while ensuring security and preventing unauthorized access.
Solution
Microsoft Internet Authentication Service was used to provide seamless security interface, through the RADIUS protocol, while the Active Directory group policy ensured controlled, authorized access.
Benefits
Higher employee Satisfaction
More operational efficiency
Improved customer relationship / Employee productivity and efficiency has increased with the use of wireless connectivity and authentication using RADIUS and Active Directory
Sandeep Deshmukh, Technical Manager, Persistent Systems
Persistent Systems offers outsourced software product development services and employs over 3,000 people in India. To provide access to all its employees at any location within the office premise, Persistent went in for a wireless network. The key considerations were a seamless user experience and ensuring security. To achieve this, Persistent chose to deploy Windows Server 2003 with Active Directory® directory services (AD). Microsoft Internet Authentication Service was used to provide this seamless security interfacethrough the standard RADIUS protocol, while the AD group policy ensured controlled authorization and enabled network access for domain users. Thus Persistent achieved its objectives of seamless, secure wireless connectivity. This resulted in higher employee productivity, and increased internal & external customer satisfaction
Situation
Persistent Systems is a 16-year-old company focusing exclusively on outsourced software product development. Its headquarters is in Pune where it has 2,700 employees and has another two offices in Nagpur and Goa with 400 and 125 people, respectively.
Its vast pool of mobile employees was often in meetings and conferences with clients, partners, and on-site teams. Manager’s cabins, conference and meeting rooms, reception areas and other common areas were in high-demand and a critical need on such occasions was the ability to access the local intranet and related files.
But these common facilities were limited in their ability to accommodate more than two or three wired local area network points, and the network cables added a visual clutter. Users were unable to access e-mail or access the network. Further, providing restricted access to the customers visting the office premises was very difficult, and involved a lot of manual overheads.
To provide access to all its employees at any location within the office premise, and to adopt the latest technologies, Persistent went in for a wireless network with multiple access points. The wireless solution enabled employees to access the local network and the Intranet, apart from accessing the Internet.
Solution
For Persistent, the key consideration in deploying the wireless network was to ensure a seamless user experience wherein the employees don’t have to reconfigure any of their settings or remember multiple usernames and passwords. At the same time, security considerations were of prime importance.
According to Sandeep Deshmukh, technical manager, Persistent Systems, the key challenges were: “ensuring a strong signal at all locations, enabling security to restrict any unauthorized attempts, and creating a seamless user experience.”
Keeping these considerations in mind, Persistent went for Windows Server 2003 with Active Directory® directory services (AD) and RADIUS. RADIUS allowed Persistent to control access to the wireless network, while the AD policy ensured authentication and enabled network access for domain users.
Persistent was already using AD across this distributed wired network, serving the single sign-on access control and workstation management needs for their users. The logical next step was to extend this to roaming users on wireless so that their experience remains unchanged even in the highly security sensitive environment. Microsoft Internet Authentication Service, over Microsoft Windows Server 2003 was used to provide this seamless security interface, through the RADIUS protocol.
“When the user logs on to the Active Directory domain, he gets connected to the wireless network. It is that seamless,” explains Sandeep. Behind the scenes, local RADIUS deployments at each location would step in when a user tried to access the network and verify the user’s credentials with the AD server. This authentication/authorization conversation is carried out over the free-to-air wireless medium, so it is secured via industry standard PKI, and highly-secure AES encryption.
Only users with valid AD accounts were allowed to join the network. All the configuration and access control policies deployed via AD for the wired network were easily applied to wireless users, with minimal incremental effort from the IT administration team. Thus, the user experience remains identical to that of the wired network connection, while unauthorized users are kept out of the system.
The key products and technology platforms used in the implementation were:
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 with Active Directory® directory services using RADIUS protocol as part of the Internet Authentication Service.
Advanced Encryption Standard.
Automatic key distribution with PKI.
Single sign-on with two-tier security
“We already had a good AD implementation, so the key challenge was to implement group policies for wireless access and control access to the wireless network using RADIUS. But the solution worked quite well out-of-the-box,” says Sandeep.
An internal team from Persistent worked on the implementation and Microsoft provided guidance as and when required. Persistent tested the solution for two to three months to gauge signal strength, and compatibility with different wireless access points and also ensure that the implementation was intuitive to use for managers and senior executives.
Benefits
With the implementation of Microsoft IAS and AD services, Persistent was able to achieve its objectives of providing seamless wireless connectivity for its mobile workers. This resulted in:
Increased employee satisfaction
Increase in operational efficiency
Improved customer relationship
Increased employee satisfaction
“The IAS/AD setup gives senior managers the ability to connect to the local network from any place within the office premise, without making any configuration changes at their end. This has lent to improved employee productivity, and satisfaction. Managers cannow check their e-mail, access the Internet, access MIS reports and so on,” mentions Sandeep.
In meetings and presentations, multiple employees could simultaneously connect and have access to the same resources. Not just that but “Remote users could connect to the Persistent network from any of our branch locations,” adds Sandeep.
Increase in operational efficiency
According to Sandeep, “the solution gives more advantage to the users. Employee productivity and efficiency has increased with the use of wireless connectivity and authentication using RADIUS and Active Directory,especially for mobile users comprising mostly of middle and senior management employees who need to remain connected with customers and project teams through conference calls and company meetings.”
The ease of deployment also ensured that time and cost were kept to a minimum during this implementation. The IT department no longer had to run around to get additional network access points when there were big meetings or conferences.
Improved external customer satisfaction
For a company that is a leader in next generation product development services, it was essential that Persistent itself. The solution implemented allowed the visiting customers and other external agencies to have a guest account that gave them Internet access, while restricting them access to the local network. “For prospective customers, it was useful, since they could now access the Internet from our office,” reveals Sandeep.
Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
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