GlobalSCAPE Gives Williams Lea a Competitive Edge

GlobalSCAPE gives Williams Lea
a Competitive EdgeWilliams Lea is the leading global provider of customized corporate information
solutions. The ? rm's 10,000 employees around the world focus on making clients'
information work better and more ef? ciently.
The company's solutions offer the world's leading organizations a better way to
connect with their staff and customers. As a business process outsourcing com-
pany, Williams Lea combines expertise with the latest integrated technology to
develop solutions that transform the way organizations communicate and ex-
change printed and electronic information with the outside world. Most projects
include ful? llment, bulk mailing, distribution, and campaign support. These novel
solutions allow businesses to maintain focus on their core competencies rather
than devoting internal resources to non-strategic efforts.''
The Challenge.
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Williams Lea relies on accurate and timely exchange of information between its customers and its business partners. Security is a major concern; much of the ? les passed in and out of the com-pany contain sensitive and critical information. Another challenge is that the solution must ? t into the business process work? ow of the various systems each department uses to ful? ll customer requirements. And since Williams Lea is founded on information exchange, what if ? les get lost, corrupted, or a disaster strikes? Business would be brought to a standstill, resulting in lost rev-enue and unhappy customers.
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The company had been using a Windows FTP solution to share ? les, but found it unreliable and lacking in functionality; ? les couldn't be moved to the FTP environment directly without some hu-man intervention, it did not provide the level of security they required, nor provide adequate back up, and there were business-continuity and disaster-recovery concerns.
The company decided to conduct a search for alter-native solutions. "Our research found that GlobalS- Our research found that CAPE products were very reliable and economical," ''GlobalSCAPE products said Bola Salami, Senior Technical Architect at were very reliable and Williams Lea Holdings Plc. "Upon further review, we discovered that not only could they answer our ? le economical.
transfer needs, but they also offered a solution that could alleviate our disaster recovery concerns." The company ? rst started by deploying GlobalSCAPE'sEnhanced File Transfer (EFT) Server for Win-dows, which leverages industry standard secure protocols to exchange ? les.
The company also installed GlobalSCAPE's Gateway Proxy into the DMZ, which brings multi-layered security for data storage and retrieval, authentication, and ? rewall transversal. The DMZ Gateway acts as a communication proxy-replacing inherently insecure inbound connections to the company's network. This enables the organization and its partners, suppliers, and custom-ers to share information in a convenient and safe manner, and ensures critical information is not stored outside the ? rewall.To insure business continuity, Williams Lea uses GlobalSCAPE's Wide-Area File Services (WAFS) solution for bidirectional ? le replication and backup. The company deployed WAFS at two separate data centers that automatically share data. One is always active; the other is on standby in case of access problems or a disaster.
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Today, Williams Lea uses the GlobalSCAPE's EFT solution for strategic ? le transfer between cus-tomers and suppliers, and the WAFS solution to share and backup data between internal users and sites.
With the GlobalSCAPE EFT Server, Williams Lea is able to establish "event rules" that guide various interactions and ensure nothing falls through the cracks. For example, administrators established a rule so that if a customer tries to download a ? le and is unsuccessful, an email is automatically sent to certain individuals to alert them of the issue.
The GlobalSCAPE EFT Server is particularly useful in the production environment. They linked the software to various internal applications so that when a customer transfers ? les via FTP, the ? les are instantly picked up and delivered to an application for composition, and then forwarded to printing. With all these functions automated, the compa... [download for more]