Fire and Forget! GWGuardian makes CNV: The National Federation of Christian Trade Unions completely free of Spam and Viruses, without any worries!
The National Federation of Christian Trade Unions in the Netherlands is a general Christian trade union federation with a membership of over 360,000 members. The organization is completely independent of governmental or political groups and is open to everyone. The CNV has broad grassroots support throughout The Netherlands. Eleven trade unions from various industries, such as manufacturing, transportation, police, the service and public sectors, education, and healthcare, are affiliated to the CNV. The CNV unions protect employees’ rights in matters related to collective labor agreements, social security, and pensions.
The IT department has the task to make the IT infrastructure as manageable and optimized as possible for the different unions and the labor union federation.
Vincent van Leeuwen, IT architect at CNV, explains the need and choice for GWGuardian: "Before deploying GWGuardian for our 1000 employees, we were using two different anti-spam and anti-virus solutions for our internal and external environments, respectively. For the external environment we were using MessageLabs and MailSweeper for the internal. We needed a solution which could integrate with Novell GroupWise and eDirectory. Currently, we use a variety of email systems: GroupWise 5.5, GroupWise 7, Tobit, Pegasus/Sendmail, Netscape Communicator/Sendmail and Outlook 2003/Exchange 2003. We are planning a global migration to GroupWise 7. During the migration phase, we needed a solution which could support several environments, without requiring much effort for management. GWGuardian is a very affordable solution that offers us the flexibility that we find necessary. Administration is simple and actually rarely necessary. Users can release their own email and create their own black and white lists."
GWGuardian is installed at a single location where all of CNV’s email is centralized and scanned for viruses and spam. From the central location, the email gets routed to the different email systems. Eventually, the email is distributed to 23 locations and to over 1000 end users.
Van Leeuwen continues: "The heterogeneity of email systems will disappear in the next year. Everything will be standardized on GroupWise 7. At this moment half of all the users have already been migrated to the new GroupWise 7 mail system. Messaging Architects was chosen because of the GWGuardian integration with GroupWise and eDirectory, as well as the fact that it is a total security solution for spam and virus control, as well as perimeter protection of the email system. The fact that it was designed as a 'fire-and-forget solution' makes the need to manage the GWGuardian server virtually negligible.
"The GWGuardian implementation was done by TMD Informatisering with assistance from Messaging Architects during the implementation of GWGuardian clustering to ensure fault tolerance. All customization of the system was done internally."
Wim Timmer from TMD Informatisering talks about the partnership with Messaging Architects: "TMD Informatisering is a systems integrator with expertise in Novell, Microsoft and Linux. Our service offerings are very diverse and span from IT consulting and training to infrastructure support. Through partnerships such as the one with Messaging Architects, we can offer total solutions and added value to our customers. That's why, we are very happy with our cooperation with Messaging Architects."
The GWGuardian deployment was done from scratch, starting with the OS installation of Windows 2003 and MS SQL, and took TMD Informatisering two days. The custom settings and configurations addressing the client’s particular needs were implemented a week later through the collaborative efforts of the Messaging Architects and TMD Informatisering engineers.
The feedback on GWGuardian’s success has been very positive. Van Leeuwen explains: "GWGuardian is a cost-effective solution that ensures that spam is eliminated as quickly as possible. We feel secure about our email traffic, as both incoming and outbound email is scanned for viruses and other threats. The ease of management of GWGuardian is also great: there’s virtually no maintenance of the system, very little support to end users is required and helpdesk calls regarding spam and viruses have practically disappeared. Our end users are very satisfied as well: they no longer receive spam or viruses in their mailboxes; only legitimate relevant email gets through. The fact that end users are also able to set up their own black and white lists and release their quarantined emails themselves saves the helpdesk a lot of valuable time and overhead."
Van Leeuwen concludes: "We’re excited about the new features in the upcoming new release of GWGuardian, such as improved reporting and real-time server monitoring, as well as GroupWise WebAccess scanning. I visited Messaging Architects at BrainShare 2006 in Salt Lake City and am excited to hear that GWGuardian on Linux will be available later this year. We will definitely be happy to take advantage of this extra benefit in the future!"
