GOOGLE APPS SECURITY CASE STUDY

Heinz reduced cost by 40 percent and gained increased flexibility and administrative control using Google Message Security

BUSINESS

Company: Heinz Location: London, England Industry: Packaged Foods Users: 15,000 Challenges: Faced with a period of ongoing business transformation, Heinz needed a communications security solution that could easily handle change while keeping its 15,000 global users safe and secure from spam and viruses. Results: Heinz experienced a 40 percent cost savings over its previous solution and an increase in flexibility for both its administrators and end users since implementing Google Message Security in July 2006.

“Not only did Google deliver a better value than the previous solution, but it also provided greater power and functionality at in the portal.” David Marsh Systems Administrator

Challenge Anticipation. It’s probably the first word most people think of when they see the familiar Heinz ketchup bottle, harkening back to the popular television commercial of the late 1970s. But it’s also a word that the packaged food giant’s global IT staff thinks of each day, with a slightly different connotation. Instead of anticipating the tangy red sauce that will make their hamburger or French fries taste better, they are anticipating – and looking to thwart – the volumes of spam and hoards of viruses that could wreak havoc on Heinz’s information systems if not closely monitored and kept in check. During a period of acquisitions and divestments in 2006, the company realized that its existing email security solution fell short in keeping up with the speed of business transformation. “While it did what it said on the tin – deliver basic anti-spam and anti-virus protection – the administration tools were not the best,” says Alan Jackson, European telecoms manager at Heinz. “Changes [to the security system] were quite protracted – to add a new domain could take as long as 10 days. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but we had to move very quickly and it was slowing us down.”

“We look for a partnership – a best-fit – from suppliers. Google Message Security has provided this best-fit for us since we first implemented the service and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Google in the future.” Solution In July 2006, faced with this untenable state of affairs, Jackson and his team realized that they needed to change providers. With an eye to anticipating a business climate that promised more change, Jackson created a list of requirements upon which to evaluate a new communications security solution. “First, we wanted it to deliver minimal spam to users and no viruses into the business. We also wanted extensive content control and powerful reporting tools,” recalls Jackson. “And we wanted all of this at a reasonable price.” After evaluating several options, the Heinz team initially conducted a total-cost-ofownership study and decided that on-demand service would be more cost-effective than an in-house service. Armed with that information, the company decided to implement Google Message Security, powered by Postini. Then, working with its trusted partner, Integralis, Heinz made the switch to Google Message Security “in less than two months – and with minimal pain,” says David Marsh, a systems administrator at Heinz. “Not only did Google Message Security deliver a better value than the previous solution, but also it provided greater power and functionality at in the portal. While any transition can be difficult and a bit painful, the price differential that Google Message Security delivered made the slight element of pain worthwhile.”

GOOGLE APPS SECURITY CASE STUDY

ABOUT Google Apps Security and Compliance Google Apps security and compliance products, powered by Postini, are available to businesses and organizations who want to make their existing email infrastructures more secure, compliant, and productive. The message security products protect you from spam and messaging threats The compliance products enable you to enforce message policy and content management, archive messages with discovery services, as well as secure your web browsing and encrypt your sensitive email. As a service, there is nothing to install or maintain, so you can start small and implement additional services as your requirements grow. For more information, visit www.google.com/a/security

Benefits According to Marsh, one of the primary benefits of switching to Google Message Security is the granularity of the user-accessible message portal. “There are quite a number of configuration options in the portal, so we can configure different settings for different countries,” says Marsh. “As a global company with nearly 15,000 users around the world, that feature is key for us. Not only do we have over 100 email domains, but also we have many different languages and time zone to consider, so the ease of customizing settings for each user is critical. Plus, we can set up the email quarantine summaries to arrive at 8 a.m. regardless of the country in which the user resides – in the user’s primary language. That’s a feature that all of our users appreciate.” The ease of administration of Google Message Security is also important to Heinz. Notes Marsh, “When we initially set up the service, there was a period of time in which we had to tweak things administratively to get it working smoothly. But since we’ve been in production mode, the ongoing administrative requirements of the Google service have been minimal. Occasionally, one of the administrators needs to add addresses to either the approved or blocked senders’ lists at a global level, but that happens only a handful of times per month. The rest of the time, the service pretty much runs itself.” One of the reasons that administrative requirements are so low is due to the directory sync feature in Google Message Security. With it, Heinz can synch the users and privileges defined in the company-wide LDAP user directory with the service, so that any changes they make in the LDAP settings are automatically reflected in Google Message Security, without requiring any manual intervention. “Whenever we’ve had acquisitions or divestments at a business level, we’ve added or deleted users in our LDAP directory and Google Message Security automatically pulls this information from that, minimizing the amount of time our administrators need to make these changes manually,” says Marsh. Results Since moving to Google Message Security over two years ago, Heinz has renewed control of its email system, improved transparency for end users, and realized substantial lifecycle cost savings of 40 percent, says Jackson. Looking back over the past 18 months since the company evaluated and implemented the service, “we are very pleased with the results we’ve seen,” notes Jackson. “We look for a partnership – a best fit – from suppliers. Google Message Security has provided this best-fit for us since we first implemented the service and we look forward to continuing our partnership with Google in the future.”

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