Google Solutions Marketplace Customer Success Stories Blog

ISR and Unicharm

2009-10-22T14:37:00.001-07:00

International Systems Research (ISR) was one of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide. ISR’s CloudGate SSO service currently delivers secure single sign-on software and services with advanced capabilities including two-factor authentication and security policy management to thousands of end users.

Unicharm Corporation, established in 1961, has its head office in Tokyo, Japan and is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of household consumer products. The company has almost 7,000 employees worldwide, and annual sales of 3.9 billion dollars. Unicharm’s products include baby and child care products, feminine care products, health care products, cosmetic products, household products, industrial materials, food-packaging materials and more.

Challenge

With the rapid growth of its global business, Unicharm was looking to unify various inconsistent company systems, reduce the cost of system expansion and reduce the workload related to e-mail management. For this purpose, Unicharm entrusted ISR to provide a solution to deploy Google Apps for 3,500 users.

Solution

First, ISR helped Unicharm determine the specifications for a highly secure system that could be easily managed and that would meet their requirements. These requirements included account management, security policy, and address book for the entire system. It was decided to,

Unify the domain and mail system for the entire company.
Implement a shared Address book.
Restrict external access for increased security.

Establish a security policy that determines password strength and password expiration for users.

Generate a log to record who accesses the system, when, and where.

Based on these requirements, ISR provided a solution comprising Google Apps Premier Edition, CloudGate SSO and CloudGate Address Book.

ISR set up Google Apps Premier Edition accounts for Unicharm’s users and deployed the CloudGate single sign-on system with customized functions. A special version of the CloudGate Address Book was developed to fulfill the shared address book requirement with LDAP integration so that employee address book information would be updated automatically and seamlessly.

Results

Thanks to the ISR solution, today more than 3,500 Unicharm users can access all of their web applications securely and reliably. Administration costs are significantly lower, and expansion of the system for new business units can now be made easily and effortlessly.

Clear Sight Compliance and The Zonta Club of Cincinnati

2009-10-15T15:45:00.001-07:00

Clear Sight Compliance offers platform agnostic consulting and services to establish, enhance, support and monitor corporate compliance programs. Clear Sight Compliance team members have skills in document management, database, business analytics and business intelligence aligning with select partners that offer compliance oriented solutions.

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati has been in existence since 1935 with just under 50 members and supports local causes as well as those from Zonta International. As a service organization, a key challenge is raising funds needed to support their local causes and strive to build a stronger community by improving women's literacy, financial independence, and health.

Challenge

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati needed a way to improve communication within it's board, foster committee collaboration, and relay important information to club members and Zonta International affiliated groups. Relying on personal and work email accounts proved burdensome for the leaders, hindered collaboration and slowed down communications. Laura Delaney, the club webmaster, was also overburdened with a continuous stream of new press releases, calendar updates, and other fresh content that required publishing.

Solution

Enters Clear Sight Compliance (CSC). CSC was engaged by the Zonta Club of Cincinnati and immediately conducted an initial cost study and functional needs comparison which favored the adoption of Google Apps. After seeing a demonstration of the platform, the Zonta Cincinnati webmaster immediately presented the Board of Directors with a summary and a recommendation to engage CSC to move forward with the implementation of the Google Apps. Clear Sight Compliance was quickly able to distribute and federate content creation for the public website and provide the board, subcommittees, and members with powerful collaboration tools to enhance operations, transparency, and efficiencies.

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati had been paying an annual fee for a static website with all content updates resting on the webmaster's shoulders. There was no means by which the board of members could collaborate directly, nor a shared calendar funtion which was important for keeping this disparate group and their schedules coordinated. CSC conducted a cost and function point review to assess appropriateness and ROI.

After project approval, Clear Sight provided implementation services for the 50 member organization, along with web design expertise, integration between Google Apps components and its public web site followed by training services for select "power users". Leading "by example," is President Ellen Spaeth's philosophy with other members to be trained next.

Results

The Zonta Club of Cincinnati was able to provide each member a zonta-cinti.org email, shared calendaring, online chat, an ability to create and collaborate on documents, and more. There is a master events calendar the president is maintaining that is reflected on the public website with much richer detail as a result of Google's standard calendar functionality. The club marketing director is able to create draft press releases, then solicit input and pictures from team members without the confusing exchange of multiple emails with attachments. In addition, the press release housed on Google Docs is distributed to the list of normal press community as before, then quickly available on the public website with the simple creation of a URL link.

Essentially, Zonta Club of Cincinnati was able to dramatically increase its ability to collaborate, communicate, and coordinate its fund raising and project efforts at one-quarter the cost it was costing for a static website alone..... a big win for any nonprofit!

“Our members needed a better means by which to share ideas, collaborate on projects, and share information,” stated Zonta Club of Cincinnati president Ellen Spaeth. “I was ecstatic about an option [Google Apps] that lets us both revamp our public web site AND and improve collaboration for members."

TriCipher and eModeration

2009-09-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

eModeration was founded in 2002, and is a leading international provider of outsourced multilingual community management and user generated content moderation services for US Fortune 500 and top UK based content providers. It works with agencies and clients to protect brands and users from the risks associated with user generated content, and its community management team helps brands to build happy and thriving social media communities. eModeration also moderates and manages children’s virtual worlds and MMOGs.

Challenge

eModeration is a modern, virtual organization, with offices in London, New York and Los Angeles, and expert moderators around the globe. Its entire business is conducted on the web, from moderating its clients' social media sites to collaborating and managing projects. The company uses Google Apps for mail, documents and calendars, and applications like QuickBase and Basecamp for data collection and project management.

With every employee relying on dozens of accounts, the problem of managing account access is significant. For eModeration, the challenge was two-fold:

Passwords for its own applications: eModeration needed to access shared business applications like Google Apps and Basecamp.
Accounts on its clients' sites: eModeration also gives its moderators access to accounts on the clients' social media sites, and must protect those logins carefully.

Solution

myOneLogin provides secure single sign-on to eModeration's various web applications, with tight integration to Google Apps Premier Edition. Using myOneLogin, eModeration can distribute online applications to employees and consultants based on their project needs, without having to distribute the actual accounts and passwords.

eModeration often needs employees to share access to specific accounts. For example, a Google Apps account may be linked to a specific project or client rather than an individual user. Using myOneLogin, eModeration's users can have more than one Gmail account available on their myOneLogin page, and gain easy, single-click login without hunting down the right password.

Results

myOneLogin offers secure single sign-on to the company's web applications, including Google Apps. All accounts are protected by multi-factor authentication.

In addition, eModeration is using myOneLogin to access customer website accounts for moderation. The moderator for the project does not need to know the password to access the customer site. myOneLogin adds another layer of security to eModeration's trusted services.

"We take security and privacy very seriously, and work hard to earn and maintain our customers' trust," said Tamara Littleton, founder and CEO of eModeration and member of the Home Office Internet Taskforce for Child Protection on the Internet. "With its strong authentication and centralized control, myOneLogin adds a layer of security to our services, as well as our daily operations. It helps us maintain our trusted relationships with our clients."

Cloud Sherpas and Richline Group

2009-09-14T17:48:00.000-07:00

Cloud Sherpas is a cloud computing systems integrator and application developer. As a Google Apps Authorized Reseller, Cloud Sherpas helps organizations leverage Google Apps and Google App Engine to dramatically reduce IT expenses. The company delivers deployment, change management, support and development services to commercial, enterprise and educational institutions seeking to adopt cloud computing.

Richline Group, Inc. is the USA’s foremost Fine Jewelry Manufacturer and the largest importer of Gold Jewelry. A wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc.,the Richline Group was formed in 2007, consisting of the combined operations of Bel-Oro International and Aurafin LLC. Headquartered in New York, the company has globally expanded and acquired other major brands and retailers into its portfolio.

Challenge
As the company thrived, Richline Group acquired a number of smaller businesses in order to grow its customer base and generate more revenue. With the positive growth, however, emerged a bottom-line dilemma. Some of the larger acquisitions ran on rather sizeable IT infrastructures, and Richline Group eventually found itself using four major servers in three different states: New York, Florida, and Rhode Island. Thus, Richline Group began to experience setbacks in both operational efficiency and costs.

The most obvious hindrance was the existence of four different server infrastructures, especially since each server had belonged to once-autonomous companies. Not surprisingly, each server had had its own unique settings, directory tree structures, etc. As a result, one of Richline's biggest problems was that its employees found it increasingly difficult to communicate with each other. Secondly, Richline Group wanted to cut costs, but building a new, larger network infrastructure to connect all four systems was estimated to be an even costlier undertaking.

Solution
Richline Group and Cloud Sherpas decided to consolidate Richline's 750 Outlook users from four different Microsoft Exchange servers to one, simplified solution via Google Apps in order to reduce costs and streamline management. The project required extensive planning, management, and coordination from both Cloud Sherpas and Richline Group management to align all the people responsible for managing the separate infrastructures. Cloud Sherpas also implemented some of Google's provided tools, such as the Google Apps Directory Sync, to successfully collapse the four separate entities into one cohesive, more efficient unit.

Results
As a manufacturer and distributor of precious metal jewelry products that are sold at thousands of outlets across the world, Richline Group knew better than anyone that its core business was not in the maintenance of a progressively complex IT system. After all, the top-line growth from successful acquisitions needs to be supplemented by decreased costs and increased efficiencies which was accomplished with the implementation of Google Apps. Martin Leidich, Network Manager of Richline Group, put it best when he said, "In collapsing four independent IT infrastructures into one reliable source with Google Apps, Cloud Sherpas allowed us to better allocate our human capital, cut major costs, and focus on growing our business."

OffiSync and Correlsense

2009-08-27T08:05:00.000-07:00

Customer

Correlsense is the leader in IT Reliability software. The Company has developed the first IT Reliability platform, SharePath, enabling enterprises to automatically generate a central, real-time repository of detailed, contextual knowledge regarding their applications and infrastructure. Using patent-pending technology for tracking and correlating all transactions throughout the datacenter, SharePath is essential in achieving a Reliable IT environment. SharePath’s Reliability Management Database (RMDB) is a key enabler for strategic IT initiatives including Application Performance Management, Capacity Planning, Change Management, Charge backs, Security, and Auditing. Using SharePath, latencies and bottlenecks are quickly located and resolved, reducing downtime and increasing productivity.

Partner

OffiSync marries the traditional "Microsoft Desktop" with Google's cloud to improve the way information workers 1) store, organize and retrieve their work, 2) use web content in documents and presentations, and 3) collaborate with others in real time, all in a streamlined and simplified way. OfficSync's customers are those looking to use Google Apps as their communication and collaboration platform yet are not willing to give up Office on the desktop.

Challenge

As an innovative, agile startup, Correlsense was looking for a way to easily share information with partners and employees. Correlsense wanted to improve the way employees manage their information and collaborate to achieve better productivity across the board, and found Google Apps and Google Docs to be the best platform for their needs:

Delivered in SaaS with no need to maintain servers
Ability to access content from any computer through a web browser
Powerful collaborative capabilities

In order to get the collaborative advantages of Google Apps, users need to start using Google Docs as their productivity suite. Unfortunately, many of Correlsense users were not ready to give up their Microsoft Office on the desktop and standardize on Google Docs, making the adoption of Google Apps in the organization a challenge.

Solution

Correlsense found OffiSync on the Google Solutions Marketplace. OffiSync is a Microsoft Office add-on that adds a new toolbar to Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint (2003, 2007 and 2010) enabling users to save and organize their documents on Google Apps, access their content from any computer, collaborate with others and use Google Search to find documents and web content in seconds.

Results

By using OffiSync, Correlsense has enabled their users to keep using Microsoft Office on their desktops while benefiting from the Google Apps platform to store, organize and access documents. This has streamlined collaboration between Correlsense employees and customers and enabled a mixed environment where some employees use Google Docs as their primary productivity suite while others use Microsoft Office.

"OffiSync has 'supercharged' Microsoft Office with some powerful Google cloud computing capabilities," notes Nir Livni, Director of Product Management at Correlsense. "Our users have new ways to manage their content, access it from any computer, collaborate and more without giving up their applications of choice."

Learn more about OffiSync: http://www.offisync.com

SADA Systems and Wagner College

2009-08-21T17:39:00.000-07:00

One of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide and initial contributor to the Google Apps Open Source provisioning tool kit, SADA Systems, Inc. has developed an proven track record in successful implementations of Google Apps solutions for the higher education market. SADA works closely its clients to create custom, leading edge solutions that strategically meet their business and institutional objectives.

Located in Staten Island, New York, Wagner College has distinguished itself for over 100 years. Founded in 1883 as a Proseminary for Lutheran ministers, Wagner College has grown into a national leader in Liberal Arts education. Today over 2,000 students in over 30 academic programs and four graduate departments attend Wagner.

Challenges

When the project with Wagner College started, SADA worked closely with the client to develop a set of requirements. At the beginning, the client had not yet configured a Google Apps Education Edition account, so the first order of business was to assist with the configuration of their account and setting up Google Apps on their domain. In the discovery process for the project SADA and the client worked together to determine the following:

The set up of the Google Apps account would require configuring it to work with a pre-existing domain.
The client required a dual delivery configuration during the transition period.
Project coordination required the creation of a Google Site to manage all details.

Solution

After developing a clear set of requirements, SADA worked in partnership with the client to ensure the smooth transition of their existing mail solution to Google Apps. Set up of the Google Apps Education Edition account was completed through SADA's Quickstart service.

Migration of contacts made use of our custom contact migration tool.
Email migration was handled through IMAP.
Calendar information was migrated using Google Calendar Connectors.
To ensure that no messages were missed, SADA enabled dual-delivery to Google Apps and Exchange.

Result

With SADA's assistance and the implementation of best-of-breed utilities for the deployment of Google Apps, Wagner College was able to smoothly and effectively implement Google Apps for their students and faculty. This implementation of Google Apps will allow Wagner College to gradually transition away from their Exchange mail system, while continuing to provide their users with email service.

"Today we concluded the migration to Google Apps, and I wanted to express my sincere gratitude for the hard work and late hours that your engineers put in. They went above and beyond the call of duty on this project. This was a huge deal for us and I always felt that we were in good hands. I know your team lost quite a few nights and a few weekends to get this done on our schedule and I admire the personal responsibility they took to meet our needs."

- Frank Cafasso, Network Operations, Wagner College

EchoSign and Patients Know Best

2009-07-28T18:50:00.000-07:00

Company Overview
EchoSign, the leading online signature service, gets contracts signed, tracked and filed in minutes. EchoSign is the fast, easy, and secure way to get a contract signed. Every day, over 900,000 users from organizations of all sizes say “Just EchoSign It!” because e-signatures are as easy to use as written signatures, deliver greater security than faxed signatures and offer a drastically improved signing experience for your customers.

Patients Know Best (PKB) is the first company to integrate with the UK’s National Health Service (NHS) network to offer a secure service that allows patients and physicians to communicate on medical issues, and work together online. The patients outside the network control access to their data – they decide where to send their information and who to share it with. The result is an extremely successful online partnership between patients and their clinicians, allowing patients to send and receive online messages, send data to their clinicians and access medical notes from their doctors.

Challenge
PKB is using Google Docs, part of the Google Apps suite, to revolutionize the patient-clinician relationship in the UK. Since so much of their service deals with contracts and sensitive private information, it was important for PKB to instill a strong sense of trust in users – for that, they turned to EchoSign. “We need to have operational excellence and we need to be able to move fast,” says Dr Mohammed Al-Ubaydli, CEO, Patients Know Best. “We have a lot of documents, a lot of moving pieces, and employees spread across 4 different time zones so we need operational solutions that help keep us organized, let us move fast, and are inexpensive.”

Solution
Google Apps is at the center of the PKB operation, and by using EchoSign, PKB gets a wide variety of documents – including NDAs and service level agreements, as well as contracts with hospitals, suppliers, clinicians, auditing firms, and investors – signed, tracked and filed in an efficient manner. “Google Docs lets us collaborate and work quickly, and EchoSign helps us sign the contracts and mark the start of a lasting business relationship. Before, it was a three month ordeal and a versioning nightmare to draft a contract with our law firm, and then it took anadditional 1-2 weeks to track down signatures. Now we have a seamless process from beginning to end”, says Dr Mohammed Al-Ubaydli.

Results
With Google Docs, PKB routinely completes documents with multiple versions in days or weeks, and with Google Sites, they can publish that information easily. “In one week, we documented 25 information security policies with 4 people working in 4 different cities. It’s unprecedented!” exclaims Dr Mohammed Al-Ubaydli. EchoSign allows PKB to get their contracts signed and executed quickly and securely – in some cases in less than 24 hours. Says Dr Mohammed Al-Ubaydli, “The entire process is seamless. Both Google Docs and EchoSign help us work more efficiently and more effectively. This makes us look more professional and credible to everyone we work with."

Read more about PKB’s experience with Google Apps and EchoSign here.

Rippe & Kingston and Purple Trout

2009-07-22T09:11:00.000-07:00

Company Overview

In addition to offering Google Apps deployment, integration and customization services for its clients, Rippe & Kingston Systems, Inc. is an Authorized Google Apps Reseller. By purchasing Google Apps Premier Edition accounts through Rippe & Kingston clients engage with an experienced Google Apps partner. Rippe & Kingston solutions focus on delivering a competitive advantage and business flexibility. Rippe & Kingston customers demand sophisticated, global business applications and services with low cost of ownership.

Purple Trout provides state of the art search engine marketing (SEM) services including: Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Paid Search/Pay-Per-Click (PPC) campaigns, Social Media marketing, Video Search Engine Marketing, Usability Analysis, Conversion Tuning, Web Analytics, Competitive Analysis and more.

Challenge

Purple Trout enjoys the challenge of rapid growth and dispersed employees and writers across the United States. They decided to implement Google Apps Premier Edition in order to achieve significant cost savings, reduce administration overhead related to managing similar systems, and provide best-of-breed email and collaboration tools to their clients and employees. One major concern was the transition and the "potential" disruption of service even for a few minutes. Compounding the scenario was the need to change some independent contractors to employees and move their separate email accounts as well. With clients communicating primarily via email, they could not afford any issues so they turned to Rippe & Kingston for help with the migration process.

Solution

Rippe & Kingston worked with Purple Trout to migrate their domain and setup all of their employees on Google Apps. Part of the process included:

Dual delivery of email during set up process
Bulk provisioning of existing accounts
Email and Contacts migration for existing users
IMAP-based email migration for existing users
POP3 activation and forwarding-configuration so that a sub-set of users can continue to access mail the same way they are accustomed to
Creation of Nickname accounts

Results
The approach to implementing Google Apps at Purple Trout resulted in a lower than expected impact on its employees during the migration process. Rippe & Kingston established dual delivery for all email accounts so that email was delivered to current accounts as well as the new Google accounts. In addition, Google Apps Sync for Microsoft Outlook was used as a safety net since all users were using Outlook. The transition was pain free and everyone has decided independently to use the Google web interface instead of Outlook.

The Google Apps solution implemented by Rippe & Kingston will help Purple Trout save money, but that was not the driving force. "Google is clearly a far superior method of communicating, scheduling and collaborating with my employees and clients" said Steve Phillips, President of Purple Trout. He went on to say, "After one week all of my employees have turned off Microsoft Outlook even though Rippe & Kingston enabled us to continue to use it with Google should we desire. We are focused on client satisfaction and are pleased to say that Google and Rippe & Kingston share the same passion." You can truly say "Purple Trout is Hooked on Google Apps".

LTech and The College of Southern Idaho

2009-07-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

Company Overview
LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

The College of Southern Idaho, established in 1965, is a public 2-year community college located in Twin Falls, Idaho. The school has approximately 7,000 undergraduate students, and offers associate and technical certificates in over 115 subjects.

Challenge
The College of Southern Idaho needed a way to improve communication between all students and staff on campus. Tired of expensive software licenses and limited storage space, they decided to switch their email system to Google Apps Education Edition for its superior webmail interface, integrated chat and calendar, and document sharing capabilities. CSI also wanted students to have more flexibility when logging in to their system. They came to LTech with a concept that would let students choose their login name from a list of options.

Solution

After deploying Google Apps, LTech worked with CSI to determine a custom Single Sign-On solution that would meet their needs. Within two weeks, LTech developed and implemented an on-demand provisioning system that would sample each student's name and generate a list of name combinations. When a student provisions their email for the first time, they can log in with their student ID number and then choose an email address from the list of identity options.

Results

By moving to Google Apps, CSI could provide their students with increased storage space and better collaboration tools. Since Google offers free server storage and maintenance to colleges, they were able to free up time and resources to focus on other computing objectives. LTech's Single Sign-On customization work was completed just in time for the CSI summer '09 semester.

"LTech was able to provide us development expertise that we enjoyed working with. We were able to brainstorm well with them, good give and take, with solid professional recommendations from them." - Jay Sneddon, Data Services Director

LTech and BodyBuilding.com

2009-07-02T15:09:00.000-07:00

BodyBuilding.com is a Sports Nutrition E-Retailer and Online Fitness Community. The site, which has been ranked as the most visited body building site in the world, motivates people to reach their fitness goals with informational resources, forums, editorial content, and a cyberstore of high-quality sports nutrition products.

Challenge

BodyBuilding.com was using a Google Mini to crawl and index their site and provide customers with the best possible search. As the site gained popularity, the content began to expand, drawing it closer to the document limit. After adding a new BodySpace site area for visitors to track their fitness progress, the Google Mini was no longer able to handle the amount of documents on the site. BodyBuilding.com upgraded to a standard GB-1001, but needed help replicating their current search structure.

Solution

After the upgrade, LTech configured the Google Search Appliance for BodyBuilding.com based on their specific requirements. The appliance was set up to crawl and index all of their documents, reproducing their previous site search. LTech added built-in KeyMatches to promote certain pages and created collections to let users search separate parts of the index. The search and results pages were customized to match the look and feel of BodyBuilding.com.

Results

As one of the top health and fitness websites with hundreds of products and a wealth of content, BodyBuilding.com wanted to provide their visitors with highly-refined search capabilities. With search powered by Google and LTech, BodyBuilding.com users are receiving fast, accurate results with the ability to query the entire site, or limit their search to stores, product reviews, blogs, groups and more.

Grove Group and CORE Education

2009-06-26T11:13:00.000-07:00

Company Overview

Grove Group is a Google Distributor and a leading provider of SaaS solutions for more than 400,000 users worldwide. Based in the

with offices in the

USA

and Africa, Grove Group works with Google to help companies achieve operational efficiency from their IT infrastructure by integrating Google Message Security, Compliance and Collaboration services.

CORE Education is a not-for-profit educational research and development based organisation involved in the support and promotion of the use of new technologies for learning across all education and training sectors.

Challenge

When the new IT manager stepped in at CORE, email services were provided by a single Intel Linux server with a two hard drives in RAID 1. Archiving was provided by copying every mail to a duplicate account on the same server. Backup was provided by copying the mail directories to an external USB drive that was rotated daily.

There had been a number of occasions where mail services were disrupted due to lack of disk space and other server hardware problems. Spam filtering was provided by an external service that filtered the mail prior to delivery to the local server.

With a very small IT team of just two people Core-Ed wanted to remove the worry of maintaining an in-house mail server so more time could be spent supporting staff in more interesting areas of IT research and development. A more robust and scalable system was also wanted that provided proper archiving and more failover.

Solution

After researching a number of options, including a locally or remotely hosted Zimbra it was decided to move email to the Google Apps Education Edition. According to IT Manager Glen Davies from CORE Education, “A number of archiving options where investigated to support this service but Postini was decided on due to its scalability and educational pricing. CORE Education decided to use Postini through Grove Group because of the much better support provided by them.”

Result

Google Apps Education Edition was rolled out for all employees at CORE Education. Additionally, add-on services provided by Postini enhanced security and email archiving. Grove Group provided CORE Education with quick service deployment and ongoing support from dedicated account managers and around the clock support from Grove Group’s Global Network Operations Centre (GNOC). This was echoed by the IT Manager Glen Davies, - “Thanks for your help through the sales and setup process. It was great to work with a company that actually responds to my emails. I am constantly amazed by the number of IT companies that I have to chase up and harass just so I can buy their product! - so it was nice to work with a company that actually treats me like a customer.”

SADA Systems and Victoria Junior College

2009-06-26T10:51:00.000-07:00

Company Overview

One of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide, and initial contributor to the Google Apps Open Source provisioning tool kit, SADA Systems, Inc. has developed a proven track record in implementation of Google Apps solutions. SADA works with a diverse client base to create custom, leading edge solutions that strategically meet client business objectives.

Victoria Junior College (VJC) is located in Marine Vista, Singapore. VJC opened its doors to its first class of students in 1984, and was the eleventh Junior College in Singapore. Programs available at VJC include two-year programs in 'A level' courses, and four-year programs.

Challenges
This was SADA's first Google Apps for Education project located in Singapore. Victoria Junior College's location required SADA to coordinate efforts with its Indonesia based development team to ensure the completion of the project. Prior to contacting SADA the client had already deployed Google Apps Education Edition, and provisioned accounts, but they found they did not have a means for creating and managing distribution lists in Gmail.

Solution
SADA's team deployed it's Gmail List Tool which allows Google Apps account administrators to easily create "on-the-fly" Gmail distribution lists. Users are added to distribution lists by means of a check box next to the user's name. New users may also be added to a distribution list by uploading a CSV file.

Result Victoria Junior College can now create the lists it needs using SADA's Gmail List Tool and save significant time. This solution has allowed VJC's administrators to complete the task of creating necessary lists, so they can dedicate more time to critical IT projects.

"SADA's Email List Tool has certainly helped me in my work as the administrator of Google Apps in my school. The bulk upload feature is easy to use and most of the time reliable. The simple interface helps me to browse and view my email list addresses quickly. Although I have not interacted with SADA's staff face-to-face, they 'listened to me keenly' over the email, addressed my queries and solve my problems speedily."
- Josef Tan, Arts Department, Victoria Junior College

TriCipher and Awana

2009-06-09T09:43:00.000-07:00

TriCipher, Inc. provides strong authentication and identity management technologies to protect web applications and enterprise portals, the people that use them and the business processes that flow through them against fraud and identity theft. The myOneLogin service from TriCipher combines strong authentication, single sign-on and federation as an on-demand service.

Awana has been a leader in children's and youth ministry for nearly 60 years. Awana is the only organization with fully integrated evangelism and discipleship programs for ages 2 to 18 that actively involve parents, church leaders and mentors. Each week, more than a million children and youth, 250,000 volunteers and 300-plus field staff take part in Awana in over 17,000 churches in the U.S. and internationally.

Challenge
Like many nonprofits that are watching their costs, Awana decided that the most cost-effective way to manage their computing needs was to use web-based applications and software-as-a-service. According to Michael Litz, Manager of Networking and Computer Services for Awana, "We'd like to put everything in the cloud, and use other people's infrastructure rather than maintaining our own."

When Awana decided to move from in-house Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps including Gmail for mail, the issue of lost and forgotten passwords had to be addressed. Not only would Gmail represent one more account and password to manage, but password sharing was a concern. Some individuals wanted to be able to delegate the ability to check their email inbox to an assistant. Awana wanted to enable email delegation without sharing the actual accounts and passwords.

Solution
Awana found myOneLogin on the Google Solutions Marketplace. myOneLogin offers tight integration with Google Apps using SAML-based federation. By enabling the SSO option within Google Apps, Awana can ensure that users only connect to Google Apps using myOneLogin. This means that their Google Apps accounts are now protected with the strong, two-factor authentication provided by myOneLogin.

myOneLogin also solved the problem with delegated inboxes. Using myOneLogin, it is possible to give an individual access to an application without actually giving them the password.

Results

Awana included myOneLogin as part of the Google Apps rollout; to access their email, users needed to use myOneLogin. Awana also added to the portal the other applications used by the organization, including Salesforce, Citrix, Aetna, and many others. Says Litz, "Once people started using myOneLogin they saw how convenient it was for accessing all of their web applications. In this case, seeing is believing."

Today Awana's users can access all of their web applications easily, no matter where they are. Help desk calls for password resets are a thing of the past, as are calls asking how to access specific applications and URLs. Using myOneLogin and web-based applications lets Awana focus on its core mission, rather than maintaining and supporting on-premise applications.

Manymoon and Six Magazine

2009-06-03T15:25:00.000-07:00

Company Overview

Manymoon is a social productivity application that solves the information overload problem by making it simple to organize tasks, events, documents, links and projects with co-workers, customers and partners. With Manymoon you can quickly create a project, invite people and start sharing Google Docs, tasks, events and links.

Six Magazine is a magazine operated and written by Sixth Formers for a school in the United Kingdom. Six Magazine currently has a staff of 30 using Google Apps and is expanding to serve additional schools in the area.

Challenges
Before Six Magazine used Google Apps and Manymoon, article submission and editing was slow, and could only be done by one person. Further, Six Magazine could not easily delegate tasks as the email system was patchy if at all used.

Solution
Six Magazine's 30 people are now using Gmail to consolidate messaging and contacts. Communication between writers and editors has increased and become more efficient since everyone is now on the same email platform. Manymoon is used to submitting articles that are Google Docs as well as uploaded documents. Articles are attached to tasks and sent to multiple people for review. Six Magazine editors can group these articles and tasks into projects to organize the process of creating a magazine run. The staff also uses Manymoon to automatically convert their Gmail emails to tasks. This is useful to capture information floating in email and associate it with articles.

Results

Now that Six Magazine uses Manymoon, they have been able to expand their editing team since it is easier to get people up to speed. Use of Gmail has expanded through the simple integration with Manymoon. "We have also shortened our workflow from about 2 weeks, from receiving the first article, down to less than one week." - Hugh Wren, Six Magazine

Manymoon and Mil Mujeres

2009-06-03T14:57:00.000-07:00

Company Overview

Challenges
Mil Mujeres utilizes staff volunteers that are located throughout the country. As a result they were using email to coordinate everything from tasks to document reviews and projects. A large amount of time was spent searching for email attachments and important information. It was especially difficult for the Washington DC staff to work with staff in California since there was no shared repository to track work items.

Solution
Mil Mujeres currently has 11 people using Google Apps for Education (available to registered non-profits). They use Gmail across the organization for communication between staff and clients. Google Docs is used as a filing system which is especially useful for Mil Mujeres' distributed staff. Google Calendar is used for scheduling staff and client meetings. Mil Mujeres is now using Manymoon to coordinate all office work. This includes administrative tasks, such as filing taxes and corporate paperwork, as well as keeping track of client work. Using Manymoon, staff can now add Google Docs to tasks and projects and track status towards completion. The staff also uses Manymoon to add important tasks to their Google Calendar.

Results

Mil Mujeres has saved thousands of dollars a month on office space by allowing their distributed staff of volunteers to collaborate on projects no matter where they are located. Manymoon and Google Apps also make it simple to bring new staff volunteers on-board and allows them to quickly contribute.

"Being able to share websites, documents and calendars has made it incredibly easy to stay organized and increase transparency between staff. Mil Mujeres will be using Manymoon as we expand and add more volunteer staff." - Keli Lovejoy, Mil Mujeres

LTech and Huffington Post

2009-05-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

Company Overview

LTech is a leading cloud technology integrator and search solutions provider established in 2001. As an early Google Enterprise Partner, LTech has successfully completed dozens of Google Apps deployments and Google Search Appliance configurations.

The Huffington Post is a popular online news site and weblog featuring daily columns, news commentary, and public opinons. The site was launched in 2005 and has over 45 million readers today.

Challenges

After a detailed analysis of the available options for a corporate email solution, Huffington Post decided to move their entire corporate user base from Noteworthy to Google Apps Premium Edition, a more suitable service for their needs.

During their attempt to perform an in-house migration to Google Apps, the IT team experienced several obstacles that impeded the process. They also found there was a strong need to support executives' mobile devices with the new solution. They reached out to LTech for its expertise in Google Apps set up, configuration, and migration.

Solution

With the specialized knowledge and expertise in Google Apps solutions, LTech completed the Google Premium Apps set up (50 users), personalization, and migration from Noteworthy solution.

To accomplish this a test mailbox was initially set up to run a proof test. The strategy behind this was to collect all usernames, schedule a migration time, change all passwords on the dovecot server to a single item, run tests for pop users, run the bulk IMAP migration and change over the DNS.

For executives, LTech also helped The Huffington Post leverage Google Sync for Blackberry. Part of this process required assisting in the change management aspects associated with a different way of collaborating on mobile devices using IMAP for email via Blackberry Internet Services and Google Sync for Blackberry for contacts and calendar.

Results

LTech successfully completed the migration in less than four days, providing The Huffington Post with a robust and cost effective email solution. The client was extremely pleased with LTech's work, as well as Google Apps Premium Edition.

“You guys did a super job for us. LTech's people are creative, bright, knowledgeable and extremely helpful. They are a delight to work with. I would recommend you to anyone looking for a Google Technology partner.”- Paul Berry, Chief Technology Officer, Huffington Post.

Yokozuna and Mailbox.hu

2009-05-13T08:15:00.001-07:00

YOKOZUNA CO. is a developer of single sign-on (SSO) and portal systems, based in Hungary.

Mailbox.hu is one of Hungary's oldest e-mail providers, providing email services since 2000.

Challenge

Mailbox.hu was looking for a more cost effective e-mail server solution with higher availability and stability that would provide users with a modern user interface and broad functionality. Their prior system had significant server, software and maintenance needs, and was based on in-house development. Mailbox.hu decided to use Yokozuna’s solution where mail, contact data and user databases were migrated into Google Apps Partner Edition.

Solution

Yokozuna devised a new system using Google Apps SSO and Provisioning Toolkit packages. This enabled users to log in with their current mailbox.hu accounts. Yokozuna integrated the design of Mailbox.hu, and the login procedure and the registration database through the SSO (single sign-on) and provisioning API's. Nearly 70,000 mailboxes were migrated including contact lists and complete correspondence and there were no system shutdowns.

Yokozuna provides 24/7 physical maintenance for the front-end (firewall, database, webserver, subsystem, etc.) and provides business hours support 7 days a week for end users through email and blogs. Customer service receives constant technical support and extended help to aid the introduction of the new system. Since Mailbox.hu's service is free of charge to end users there is a constant focus on potential spam and abuse. Yokozuna maintenance addresses these issues with the help of the regular reports from Google's spam/abuse control engineering team, Yokozuna developed a back-end script tool to manage this list more efficiently.

Results

Mailbox.hu now has a stable e-mail system which by April 2009 has resulted in user growth from 70,000 to 250,000 users. Mailbox.hu reports a considerable decrease in operating hardware and software infrastructure, which in turn resulted in the drastic reduction of operating costs.

Yokozuna and Postino

2009-05-12T17:19:00.001-07:00

YOKOZUNA CO. is a developer of high availability SSO and portal systems. We deal with the research and development of high technology applications.

Postino operates a free multilingual user interface mailing system in a number of countries.

Challenges

The aim of Postino.net was to establish a unified login interface containing all its systems and reduce software development, hardware investments and costs at the same time. They were also looking for an e-mail server background that would be capable of operating in different languages.

Solution

Postino.net chose Yokozuna’s solution that unified the user interface and harmonised the server background, while migrating correspondence information and the users’ database into the Google Apps Partner Edition programme.

Yokozuna devised a new system on the basis of the Google Apps SSO and Provisioning Toolkit packages. It is more than a simple Google Apps integration because it provides unique design and data registration, and a direct marketing tool integration. E-mail service to 7 countries is done with the use of a common frontend. Mailboxes, e-mails and contact information were transferred into the Google Apps system.

Results

"The Yokozuna solution made it possible to decrease the number of hardware and software in operation as well as the simplification of administration and customer support with a single sign on system." - Eszter Mogyorósi, owner of Postino.

TriCipher and Spence-Chapin Services

2009-05-12T13:51:00.000-07:00

TriCipher, Inc. provides strong authentication technologies on demand or on premise to protect web applications and enterprise portals, the people that use them and the business processes that flow through them against fraud and identity theft. The myOneLogin service from TriCipher combines strong authentication, single sign-on and federation as an on-demand service.

Spence-Chapin is an accredited, nonprofit agency offering adoption services, whose origins go back to 1908. Since that time, the agency has placed over 18,000 children with families. Based in New York City, Spence-Chapin has branch offices in Long Island and New Jersey, as well as a thrift shop in Manhattan.

Challenge

Like many businesses, Spence-Chapin used a blend of in-house applications and web-based applications, including Google Apps and Salesforce. As the agency expanded its commitment to web applications, it took a careful look at how it managed access to those web-based applications. Says Jamie Mumin, Manager of Information Technology for Spence-Chapin, “We were worried about protecting access to our client and fundraising information. We wanted to add strong authentication to reduce concerns about moving data to the web.”

Spence-Chapin tried using an SSL VPN using tokens for strong authentication. But the token strategy was difficult to implement in this environment. According to Mumin, “We quickly realized that distributing the tokens and training people to use them was not going to work for us. So we started looking for alternatives that would support Salesforce and Google Apps."

Solution

Spence-Chapin now uses myOneLogin to give its diverse user community strong authentication to Google Apps, Salesforce, and its other web-based applications. myOneLogin delivers multi-factor authentication without the cost and complexity of tokens.

Spence-Chapin’s users range from program coordinators who visit overseas countries to the social workers working with families locally. All are focused on the children, not the technology. Spence-Chapin deployed the myOneLogin solution to its entire user community in a day. According to Mumin, “The fact that it is web-based is a tremendous help – people are familiar with the web, and they find myOneLogin easy to use.”

Result

Spence-Chapin’s users now connect to their web-based applications using myOneLogin. This helps the agency protect the access to applications with strong authentication. The users find it easy and reliable, and have been adding applications to their myOneLogin portal.

Says Mumin, “myOneLogin has saved us thousands of dollars that we don’t have to spend deploying tokens. It’s easy to use and it works 100% of the time. If we were using another strong authentication method, we would be handling more technical support calls.”

SADA Systems and Louisiana State University

2009-05-08T16:38:00.000-07:00

One of the first 10 Google Apps for Enterprise partners worldwide and initial contributor to the Google Apps Open Source provisioning tool kit, SADA Systems, Inc. has a proven track record in the implementation of Google Apps solutions. SADA works with a diverse client base to create custom, leading edge solutions that strategically meet client business objectives.

Founded in 1860, Louisiana State University, or LSU, is a public, co-educational university located in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and is the main campus of the Louisiana State University System. Enrollment is approximately 32,000 students and the staff stands at over 2,000 members including 1,300 full-time faculty members.

Challenges

Previously LSU had conducted a pilot deployment of Google Apps on a test domain. While LSU's IT staff had completed a significant portion of the deployment process, they determined that engaging a Google Apps Enterprise Partner such as SADA would more easily and effectively accomplish the provisioning and data migration component of the project. LSU's implementation encompassed 35,000 to 40,000 users in two phased deployments. The first phase migrated about 38,000 while the second deployment involved 2,200 VIP and other select users, divided into smaller groups and rolled out per a schedule provided by the client.

The successful deployment of Google Apps at LSU required SADA to do the following:

Work with the client's combined identity management environment including both a Lotus Domino Directory and Microsoft Active Directory.
Provision accounts for all users as detailed in the scope of the deployment.
Access the client's existing email configuration which consisted of a hosted Outblaze/Qmail server.
Migrate email data to Google Apps from the client's Outblaze/Qmail configuration. This applied only to the second group of users in the provisioning plan.

Solution

SADA worked closely with LSU to devise a deployment plan that would meet all of the client's requirements. Below is a summary of the work completed by SADA to successfully implement Google Apps.

Accounts were provisioned making use of a CSV file provided by the client and SADA's provisioning tools. This file included each user's first name, last name, and user name.
For the second part of the provisioning process a schedule was established that allowed SADA and LSU to provision accounts in the second group into smaller groups, according to the requirements of the client.
To complete the email data migration component of the project, SADA helped the client plan, and then configure and execute an IMAP email data migration process.
Additional local email data could be migrated on a per-user basis, making use of the Google Email Uploader tool-set.

Result

With SADA's assistance and the implementation of best-of-breed utilities for the deployment of Google Apps, Louisiana State University was able to smoothly and effectively implement Google Apps for over 40,000 users in their two groups. This implementation of Google Apps will allow LSU to dismantle their hosted Outblaze/Qmail email solution, without interruption to email service for their students, faculty, and staff. Improvements to the level of administrative overhead have made it possible for the client's IT department to free up resources and focus on critical objectives.

"We are pleased with the expertise and professionalism of SADA Systems with helping our University move legacy messages from a Linux webmail system to our Google Apps domain. There were a few hiccups due to corrupted messages but our SADA consultant identified these hold ups and fixed each incident on a case by case basis. What attention to detail!

Our University has gone through other email migration projects in the past but this one by far has been the easiest with SADA on our project team."
- Janet Shih, Migration Project Leader, Louisiana State University

Ping Identity and SURFNet

2009-04-20T07:53:00.000-07:00

Ping Identity is a leading provider of federated identity management solutions, delivering secure internet single sign-on (SSO) software and services to more than 300 companies worldwide. Ping Identity helps companies address compliance concerns for Google Enterprise deployments and provides standards-based SSO support for Google Apps, Google Search Appliance and Google Security and Compliance (Postini).

SURFnet is the organization that develops, implements and maintains the national research and education network (NREN) for the Netherlands. SURFnet was established in 1986 and is a subsidiary of the SURF organization, in which Dutch universities and research centers collaborate on innovative Information and Communication Technology facilities.

Challenges

Shortly after it was established, SURFnet developed a propriety solution for internet SSO. Over time, as larger numbers of entities joined, building out the proprietary solution became too time intensive and costly. SURFnet needed standards-based internet SSO that could integrate with a variety of existing internet SSO implementations, could be deployed quickly, and could support connections to Google Apps and other web-based applications.

Solution

SURFnet chose PingFederate for its proven ability to eliminate passwords by delivering standards-based SSO that supports a wide range of protocols, its short deployment time (operation in days), and its ability to scale as SURFnet’s interface and application access requirements change and expand.

Results

The PingFederate interface was implemented in days. Cross-federation connections are now deployed in a matter of hours with virtually no management overhead. The multi-protocol gateway currently supports internet SSO connections for 30 entities with a total user population of more than 350,000.

“PingFederate has delivered tremendous value to the identity federation service provided by NREN,” said Hans Zandbelt, Manager Middleware Services, SURFnet. “This includes support for connections to Google Apps.”

Cloud Sherpas and TechCFO

2009-04-14T16:28:00.000-07:00

Cloud Sherpas is a cloud computing systems integrator and application developer that helps organizations leverage Google Apps and Google App Engine. The company delivers deployment, change management, support and development services to commercial, enterprise and educational institutions.

TechCFO is a team of seasoned Chief Financial Officers (CFOs), controllers, and accountants who work with clients to help them with strategic planning, capital strategy, fundraising, accounting, and other financial needs. TechCFO’s strategy of providing outsourced financial management services is paying off in the form of expansion – since its founding, the firm has grown rapidly, with offices across the United States.

Challenges

TechCFO's core asset is the cumulative expertise which its seasoned financial professionals offer to clients. With 14 partners – all CFOs with 15 to 20 years of experience – the firm's value revolves around their collective intellectual capital. As the firm continued to grow across the country, they needed a better way for the partners and additional staff to easily, securely exchange ideas and share knowledge.

In 2008, TechCFO began to address this need, collecting intellectual capital across the entire company. The firm published 700 key internal documents to public folders on the firm’s hosted email system, but results were disappointing. “Our hosted solution was slow, clunky, and difficult to search,” said Neal Miller, partner at TechCFO. “People had to know in advance where to look for a document. Overall, it wasn’t really functional.”

Solution

TechCFO learned about Google Apps Premier Edition at a seminar hosted by Google and Cloud Sherpas, a leading Google Apps enterprise deployment partner. One of the hands-on demonstrations showcased Google Sites, a service included with Google Apps that lets users easily search file attachments and publish free-form content, rich media and other information to a website.

“I saw that Google Sites and Google Apps were really perfect for us, especially because we could leverage Google’s search capability to help our staff efficiently find relevant information,” Miller recalls.

In addition to the knowledge base, Cloud Sherpas showed TechCFO how they could use Google Sites as a company intranet, and as a tool for partners in the firm to collaborate with clients. With new office openings targeted for early 2009, the firm enlisted Cloud Sherpas to implement Google Sites for their organization.

Cloud Sherpas guided TechCFO through the information design and deployment strategy of their new company intranet. To migrate the firm's 700+ document repository, Cloud Sherpas developed the Google Sites Bulk File Uploader, an automated tool that uploads files into Google Sites and preserves folder hierarchy with nested Google Sites file cabinet pages. And to promote adoption of the new suite of tools, Cloud Sherpas hosted a training session in Atlanta, with others participating online, and developed a short primer to help partners build their own Sites to share files with clients.

Results

Without adding hardware and complexity to the firm's IT mix, Cloud Sherpas has enabled TechCFO to collaborate online cost-effectively and securely with Google Sites. Partners across the firm are now able to quickly find the information they're looking for, and the new intranet has become an information hub central to helping the firm manage its growth.

“Cloud Sherpas did an exceptional, methodical job,” says Miller. Moving forward, TechCFO plans to roll out the other portions of Google Apps, starting with Gmail. “On a relative spend basis, what we pay in two months for our previous hosted email will cover a full year for the entire Google Apps suite,” says Miller. "That's a major benefit for us."

For more information, watch this recorded webinar featuring Cloud Sherpas and TechCFO or read the full case study.

PivotLink and DMA

2009-04-08T10:47:00.000-07:00

PivotLink is a leading provider of business intelligence solutions delivered as Software as a Service (SaaS). PivotLink Reporting and Business Analysis makes it easy for users to access their business information where they need it and to collaborate within their company and with external partners.

DMA is a national food service distribution system whose shareholders are prominent regional food service distributors. Their shareholders joined forces to provide food service operators with the pricing, distribution and technological advantages of a national organization, and the service priority of a local business.

Challenges

DMA's wanted to increase the visibility of supply chain information for their customers. DMA's customers also wanted to interact with this information alongside other data that impacts their performance like gasoline prices. DMA turned to PivotLink to address these challenges.

Solution

DMA chose PivotLink as its business intelligence solution to provide users with shared information, reports, and performance goals within a highly secure and collaborative environment. With PivotLink delivered as a cloud-based solution, DMA receives all the benefits of enterprise analysis without a hardware environment to maintain, software to install, or upgrades to manage.

DMA worked with PivotLink to develop a gadget that would make their business data available within Google Apps and iGoogle, allowing users to access PivotLink data and analytics alongside news, market trends, and other gadgets. The PivotLink Gadget allowed DMA to extend the value of PivotLink without requiring additional IT resources to setup or maintain it.

Results

DMA is realizing more benefits than anticipated. Information on sales, budget, performance, and costs are readily available and can be used to monitor and proactively adjust conditions that lead increased costs like extra deliveries and will-call pickups.

“The senior management team at DMA is a fan of Google Apps. We use it every day to gain information on what is happening locally, in our region and in our industry,” said Jim Szatkowski, vice president of Data Services at DMA. “With the PivotLink Gadget, we’re increasing information visibility by combining a complete view of our business through PivotLink with all our vital business information. We have all the information where we need it to stay at the top of our industry. It requires a very collaborative focus, but the benefits are huge without requiring an extraordinary amount of effort.”

Cast Iron Systems and the Schumacher Group

2009-04-07T21:12:00.000-07:00

Cast Iron Systems is a leading SaaS / Cloud integration company with thousands of customer integrations connecting cloud applications with the enterprise. Cast Iron for Google Apps is a ready-to-go solution that provides everything needed to integrate Google Apps with the rest of the enterprise in just days. Cast Iron has added support for the Google Secure Data Connector to let enterprises connect hundreds of on-premise and SaaS applications to Google Apps.

The Schumacher Group is the third largest and fastest growing emergency medicine practice management company in the US. They manage 2,500 physicians who care for 2.8 million patients each year in over 150 emergency rooms across 20 states.

Challenges

Over the past few years, Schumacher’s CIO Doug Menefee has been searching for a secure, efficient and cost-effective way of providing emergency room information to the thousands of providers that they manage. Providers wanted to monitor and measure their performance in the emergency room over time relative to other doctors in the same facility. They also wanted easy access to this information from anywhere at anytime. Schumacher saw offering this service as a source of competitve advantage in the emergency practice management business.

Doug looked at number of ways to solve the problem but they proved to be complex and costly. The large enterprise portals and integration products that he investigated cost millions of dollars and had low ROI. He also looked at custom coding the whole thing but realized that this would not be scalable or reliable over time.

Solution

Schumacher chose Google Apps as the portal for the providers and Cast Iron for Google Apps for the back-end integration. With support for gadgets in Google Apps, Schumacher's providers could view and interact with visualizations of their performance history right within the browser.

Cast Iron for Google Apps provided everything Schumacher needed to exchange data between the gadgets and Schumacher’s multi terabyte data warehouse that contains this provider data - complete integration functionality, including the Google Secure Data Connector and pre-configured Cast Iron connectivity to their backend systems.

The solution works in three steps:

When a doctor logs in and wants to view the data, the gadget sends request to Cast Iron via the Secure Data Connector
Cast Iron performs OAuth validation and then extracts data from the backend systems
Cast Iron transforms the data and sends it back to gadget using the Google Secure Data Connector

Results

Providers and doctors get access to emergency room data via Google gadgets from anywhere, anytime through a secure login. Providers and doctors can use gadgets to chart and compare their performance against others in their community and in the hospitals, which helps them identify and address areas for improvement. Offering this information to the providers via Google and Cast Iron is a competitive advantage for the Schumacher Group and helps differentiate them in the emergency medicine management industry.

“Cast Iron for Google Apps has enhanced the way we develop and deploy our secure provider portal, by providing a cost effective and flexible option. The solution developed by our staff using Cast Iron and Google provides valuable feedback to our clinical providers enabling us to improve the quality of healthcare provided during challenging economic times,” says Doug Menefee, CIO of the Schumacher Group.

For more information, watch this video from the Schumacher Group or visit www.castiron.com/google/demo.

TriCipher and Ferrilli Information Group

2009-03-27T11:15:00.000-07:00

TriCipher, Inc. provides strong authentication and identity management technologies to protect web applications and enterprise portals, the people that use them, and the business processes that flow through them against fraud and identity theft. The myOneLogin service from TriCipher combines strong authentication, single sign-on and federation as an on-demand service.

Ferrilli Information Group (FIG) is a consulting services organization serving both private and public four-year universities and community colleges. FIG provides tailored IT services including hardware and software selection, project management of ERP/administrative software implementation, legacy migration, strategic planning, and IT leadership management.

Challenges

After doubling in size for two years, Ferrilli Information Group was outgrowing its internal software infrastructure. Founder and CEO Robert Ferrilli decided to move to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) applications to run the company’s business and support the employees working with college and university clients around the US. The business selected a dozen online applications to replace internal systems, including Google Apps for collaboration and email.

Moving to SaaS brought unexpected complexity. Employees had 12 different accounts and passwords to manage. They called in frequently for help accessing resources. Says Ferrilli, “New employees were confused, and we had a hard time getting staff to use new applications because they were difficult to access. Instead of managing internal servers, we were fielding calls for application access.”

Solution

While exploring single sign-on solutions for Google Apps and Salesforce, Ferrilli found myOneLogin Secure Single Sign-On from TriCipher. myOneLogin creates a single web application portal, combining strong authentication and single-sign on for web applications.

FIG uses myOneLogin as a single portal for accessing its SaaS applications, including Google Apps, Salesforce, timesheet software, payroll services, and other applications. The administrator creates the accounts and sets the passwords, so individuals do not even need to know the accounts and passwords for the various business applications they use.

Results

myOneLogin gives FIG's employes a great way to communicate through a common desktop. New applications simply appear on employees’ virtual desktops, so utilization and adoption is no longer an issue. And by adding links to internal directories and project schedules to the myOneLogin desktop, the business can easily share strategic resources with its distributed employees.

Says Ferrilli, “Our users love it. I get unsolicited kudos for implementing myOneLogin."

Ferilli continues, "myOneLogin is not just about having single sign-on, it’s about providing a single portal with all of the key information and applications our users need. To the end users, it’s seamless. To me, it’s priceless.”