LTech and Huffington Post

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

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

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

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

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