Increase competitiveness and employee productivity while reducing IT costs and support headaches

BlueSteel Projects

Securely integrate all company locations to Corporate Infrastructure

Business Problem

The client wanted to be able hire the best employees regardless of physical location and have all offices function as if they were at headquarters. They needed a solution that provided every employee access to voice, data, and development tools 24/7 so they could leverage the best talent without losing productivity. It was important that their customers interacted with the corporate location and were shielded from employees' physical locations.

Challenges

  1. Seamless connectivity between offices in Korea, Japan, California, and Texas, and connectivity for mobile employees anywhere in the world.
  2. Security for proprietary information. All employees must have access to internal and customer proprietary information without violating any non-disclosure agreements.
  3. Network reliability to allow for 24/7 operation to take advantage of a 24 hour a day development cycle.
  4. Voice communications to all locations via secure VOIP to save costs. Every employee must have an extension to lower the communication barrier between sites.
  5. Restrict access to defined data, network resources, and tools by employee, contractor, customer, and physical location.
  6. Company email must not be sent over the internet because of disclosure risks. Email must have a backup and destruction policy.

BlueSteel Solution

After understanding the clients needs and concerns, BlueSteel designed and implemented a solution to address their business problem. The implementation required the client to make a small investment to their existing infrastructure to gain the benefits they needed. BlueSteel used off the shelf components to save costs and implementation time.

  1. Seamless connectivity was accomplished with a hardware solution for the physical offices and software solution for mobile computers. Both the hardware and software solutions used the same level of secure VPN connectivity to the corporate network. The hardware solution allowed for employees in any location to access information from any machine on the network, provided they had permission. All VPN connections were controlled at the corporate office so access could be denied at any time.
  2. Security and access restriction for proprietary information required the network to be secured with authentication services after the network traffic was secured via encrypted VPNs. A LDAP server was used to control access to the network and rights and access privileges to data. LDAP provided a cost savings in software licensing and implementation time over Microsoft’s Active Directory.
  3. Voice services were accomplished by installing a VOIP Asterisk PBX. Every employee had their own 3 digit extension to make it easy to communicate with anyone in the company, regardless of physical location. Mobile employees were provided software phones on their computers and could make calls anytime they were connected to the network. A single PBX for all locations provided customers with a single phone number to call to reach any employee.
  4. Email was secured by providing an internal mail server for internal email traffic. The email system was designed to route all internal traffic over the encrypted network and all other mail via the internet. By not outsourcing their mail to external services like Google or Yahoo!, the security of internal communication was maintained. Policies for internal mail backups and email destruction were also established to limit company liability.

Client Value

  • Cost Savings were achieved over using traditional IT solutions. BlueSteel was able to select the right solution components from multiple technology sources and integrate these solutions for the client. The entire solution cost less than a traditional PBX system installation.
  • Corporate Identity was seamless to their customers. The client was able to establish a central corporate image and take advantage of talent anywhere in the world.
  • Increased productivity was achieved by providing secure access to all employees 24/7. Employees can now solve problems in real-time without being in the office.