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DAILY NEWS AND INFORMATION
FOR THE GLOBAL GRID COMMUNITY / AUGUST 25, 2003; VOL. 2 NO. 34
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Breaking News -
General:
Novell Improves The TRW Automotive
Global Network
TRW Automotive, one of the world's ten largest automotive suppliers, has
tapped Novell to help secure its corporate information and applications,
improve communication company-wide, and streamline management of the firm's
global network.
With Novell Nsure secure identity management solutions, TRW has
improved and simplified user access at over 150 sites globally. To enhance
employee productivity, TRW has standardized on Novell GroupWise for
critical, secure collaboration needs across the network. TRW has also deployed
Novell ZENworks solution to manage its diverse network resources in a
single, comprehensive way. TRW's strategic partnership with Novell is helping
the company drive its network more efficiently, improving its ability to
service its automotive clients worldwide.
With 2002 sales of $10.6 billion, TRW Automotive is an industry leader in
the
design, engineering, testing and manufacture of automotive safety systems,
including integrated vehicle control and driver assist systems and braking,
steering, suspension and occupant safety systems. TRW Automotive, which was
spun off from Northrop Grumman as part of a corporate restructuring in early
2003, needed to store and manage user identities for its 25,000 users in 150
sites. Without a central source of user information, the company had a
difficult time keeping user accounts up to date on its RADIUS servers, leading
to high administrative costs. TRW also wanted to increase the security of its
remote access for employees.
Beyond security, TRW had concerns over employee productivity. Some former
divisions of TRW had switched to a competitive e-mail solution and TRW
Automotive wanted to evaluate doing the same across the organization. The
company also considered outsourcing to reduce administrative costs for
messaging and collaboration.
TRW Automotive found Novell solutions offered a compelling way to address
its
challenges across the board. The company selected a combination of Novell
Nsure and Nterprise solutions, including Novell eDirectory, Novell
DirXML, Novell NetWare, Novell GroupWise and Novell ZENworks, to tie
together its diversified environment, improve employee collaboration and
effectively manage its resources.
"Everyone is excited about our Novell solution because it uncomplicates the
lives of our employees, developers and administrative staff," said Art Rathke,
systems engineer at TRW Automotive. "How can you put a dollar value on
that?"
Managing More with Less
In three months, TRW integrated access to its applications with Novell
eDirectory, creating a single repository for user information across its
Novell, Microsoft Windows and UNIX environments. Novell DirXML automatically
updates user information across applications, including Microsoft Active
Directory*, eliminating hours of manual data entry. TRW plans to install
DirXML to all its sites within the year.
Novell eDirectory is the backbone technology for the company's remote
access
services, providing secure authentication whether through the Internet, VPN or
the company's wireless network. The company's Web developers also use
eDirectory to provide user authentication for new Web applications, decreasing
development time for the security portion of applications by 50 percent.
TRW performed an internal study to evaluate a move from Novell GroupWise to
other options in the marketplace. The final study concluded that it would cost
significantly more to move to a competitor's system, both in server and
administrative costs. Because Novell GroupWise optimizes network traffic, each
of TRW's 150 sites can use full clients, giving users better performance and
100 percent e-mail, calendaring and scheduling functionality. In 12 years
running GroupWise, the company has never been infected with a virus via e-mail
or experienced any significant downtime.
TRW is rolling out Novell ZENworks to manage 6,500 workstations and 500
servers in its mixed Novell and Microsoft Windows environment in its 30
locations in North America. ZENworks integrates with eDirectory, allowing TRW
to assign and track assets according to user identity. "Software license
management and hardware tracking can be a full-time job unless you keep up
with it, especially in a leased environment," said Bob McInerney, manager of
North America Infrastructure at TRW Automotive. "Using ZENworks to efficiently
track our assets and recycle software licenses will give us a significant
hard-dollar savings."
"TRW Automotive is Novell's one Net vision in action," said Alan Nugent,
chief
technology officer at Novell. "Like any large organization today, TRW has put
a lot of money into building the network they have, and they need a better way
to get value from that investment. Novell Nsure and Novell Nterprise solutions
provide that value by integrating, managing and securing disparate platforms
and applications. Novell solutions make the network more reliable and safe,
two qualities that an automotive supplier like TRW can certainly
appreciate."
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