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The Challenge.
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 files passed in and out of the company contain sensitive and critical information. Another challenge is that the solution must fit into the business process workflow of the various systems each department uses to fulfill customer requirements. And since Williams Lea is founded on information exchange, what if files get lost, corrupted, or a disaster strikes? Business would be brought to a standstill, resulting in lost revenue and unhappy customers.
The Solution.
The company had been using a Windows FTP solution to share files, but found it unreliable and lacking in functionality; files couldn’t be moved to the FTP environment directly without some human 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 alternative solutions. “Our research found that GlobalSCAPE products were very reliable and economical,” said Bola Salami, Senior Technical Architect at Williams Lea Holdings Plc. “Upon further review, we discovered that not only could they answer our file transfer needs, but they also offered a solution that could alleviate our disaster recovery concerns.” The company first started by deploying GlobalSCAPE’sEnhanced File Transfer (EFT) Server for Windows, which leverages industry standard secure protocols to exchange files.
The company also installed GlobalSCAPE’s Gateway Proxy into the DMZ, which brings multilayered security for data storage and retrieval, authentication, and firewall 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 customers to share information in a convenient and safe manner, and ensures critical information is not stored outside the firewall.
To insure business continuity, Williams Lea uses GlobalSCAPE’s Wide-Area File Services (WAFS) solution for bidirectional file 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.
The Result.
Today, Williams Lea uses the GlobalSCAPE’s EFT solution for strategic file transfer between customers 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 file 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 files via FTP, the files are instantly picked up and delivered to an application for composition, and then forwarded to printing. With all these functions automated, the company has gained tremendous productivity benefits. “GlobalSCAPE’s software has been a huge time saver for us,” Salami said. Williams Lea administrators have been impressed with the feature-rich software. “There are loads of features available to us,” Salami said. “We can do so much with the administration GUI. It’s so much more powerful than our previous solution. Administrative tasks are a walk in the park; for instance we can easily set quotas for each user, control the amount of bandwidth used, and tie customers to certain folders.”
For security purposes, the GlobalSCAPE solution allows Williams Lea to guarantee authenticity and non-repudiation by using public key technology. “We always know for a fact who is sending us files, and we always know who we are sending them to, and if they received them. When dealing with as many critical files as we do on a daily basis, this is a tremendous benefit and competitive advantage to our company.”
The WAFS software solution is used by more than 300 users who share and back up files. “Everything is transparent to our users, always available, and always replicated in case something happens.
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