With the deployment of a new SSL VPN solution, Moser Baer now has faster, secure-remote and internal access to all critical business applications, thus having a direct impact on its business growth. -----         Maneka Tanwani.

“Moser Baer’s earlier Linux-based VPN solution caused continuous disconnections, could not provide secure granular Web access and was not able to deliver in terms of bandwidth optimisation. This was especially a challenge during month-end when maximum number of users logged into the network to generate invoices. The solution used was slow on performance, increased overhead costs and was causing delays in accessing applications, which hampered decision-making processes. This was proving detrimental and acting as a bottleneck to Moser Baer’s ambitious expansion plans.

“Established in 1983 as a single business entity, Moser Baer has come a long way since then. In the last fiscal year, its net turnover amounted to Rs 208.70 million. It has 18 percent global market share in the optical media industry. This is undoubtedly a big achievement for a small company founded in New Delhi as a time recorder unit.

“Even two years back, we were a single business entity. Since then, we have aggressively grown into multiple business areas like solar energy, IT peripherals, etc. This meant that to continue leading this space, we had to build an environment that supported this growth. Earlier the need for supporting remote employees was limited but now it was critical for our mobile forces to remotely access company sensitive data,” says Muthu Kumar, VP-IT, Moser Baer.

The key challenges that the company was facing with the earlier VPN were granting granular Web access to sensitive corporate applications and keeping the set-up secure so that customers could log in to check stock, place orders etc. securely on real time basis; providing ubiquitous, undisrupted and authenticated connectivity and ensuring compliant access to its Ramco ERP for employees, distributors, world partners and C&F agents to synchronise logistics, marketing, and accounting.

It was also very costly as remote offices needed dedicated links and bandwidth cost was high to log into the network. A lot of investment for local firewalls, router, switches, etc. was also required. Moser Baer wanted to cut those costs and ensure that various stakeholders could directly connect to the network. “These repeated disconnections were also expensive in terms of increasing the overhead costs for managing the issues and complaints of the remote users. For example, if a remote user gets disconnected from the VPN frequently, he will pick up the phone and talk to the IT support team. The team would then have to spend time to ensure that he gets connected again,” explains Kumar.

He further says that business operations like day-to-day transactions, invoicing, stock availability at any given point of time etc.—which are mission-critical business operations—were getting affected.

And lastly, one of the most important challenges was customer dissatisfaction. “End users were complaining a lot because of constant disruptions in our VPN system. For example, if we had 100 customer service calls a day, 70 percent were related to VPN connectivity. At least during the 25th to 7th of every month, we did not want breakage, non availability and performance issues hampering our network. We started to look for other options to serve our customers better,” says Mahabir Bansal, GM-IT, Moser Baer.

TMoser Baer wanted to have up-to-date, fast business communication through a network security solution that allowed safe and fast access to all its office and business applications for sales orders, logistics and accounting transactions.

The main criteria for evaluation were security, providing granular access to the employee, control on the access and being able to differentiate between internal access and remote access. “Security and bandwidth optimisation were of paramount importance to us,” says Kumar.

The IT team evaluated a range of SSL VPNs, short-listing three solution offerings, one from Aventail, NeoAccel and another Linux-based solution. “Any system we select is based on two factors: the technology, and also the company behind it. NeoAccel’s SSL VPN solution proved to be the best fit for our company and was backed by efficient support services,” shares Bansal.

Moser Baer spent three months to demonstrate the proof of concept. Once everything was clear, the actual deployment took 15 days. “Though the implementation of the solution took 15 days, we had to wait another couple of weeks as the success came to light only when we tested it on a live environment during our month-end load. So the entire initiative took approximately four months,” says Das.

The deployment cost for Moser Baer for this SSL VPN solution was a little less than Rs 15 lakh. Moser Baer expects to reap the RoI in two and a half years.

“The best business benefit is that we are able to do the timely invoicing of our materials. For example, stock was always available with us but just because people were not able to connect to our applications, they were not able to generate invoices. This equalled to loss of business opportunities, revenue and (erosion of) profitability to the company. The reason we went for this solution was that it eradicated this critical problem,” explained Kumar.

The solution has also helped connect 30-40 locations directly to the central location. Ergo, all of the stakeholders are online—real time. Earlier, generating invoices would take five minutes. With this deployment it can be done in one or two minutes. It has also ensured hassle-free connectivity and increase in the speed of deployment by 40 percent to cater faster to customer needs.

The organisation provided end point security for scanning a remote computer for viruses and malware before allowing it access to the network. Granular access control allows specific user-based access to applications, which is a much stronger form of protection compared to a full-access IPsec client. The solution checks whether the anti-virus, firewall etc. are updated before allowing entry into the network. The company has seen more than 50 percent decrease in security attacks.

This solution has helped Moser Baer gain a bird’s-eye view of its network and servers. “At first we were hesitant to provide distributors and partners access to our enterprise network because we did not have control over the software installed on those systems. But now we can control access, monitor and log who connected to our network, at what time and what application was used,” said Bansal.

Sameer Das, Manager - IT says that the solution has given them high redundancy availability. “We have a huge network of 2000 desktops and 100 servers and the solution provides routing facility wherein a user can log into the central network and then request to be routed to any other network within our six plants.”

The IT team is in the transition of moving towards building a environment that supports enterprise mobility. It wants to enable employees to be able to work from anywhere, anytime. “We will continue to give wider access to our environment from outside. Now we offer only a few applications, but will open more of them to remote users. This will help us increase the productivity of employees and in our cost-cutting efforts,” says Kumar.

Moser Baer has been using Ramco’s ERP for six years now and is currently in the process of migrating to SAP for one of its photovoltaic business units, Moser Baer Photovoltaic. The reason for the move stated is that the company is expanding exponentially and its expectations and business growth won’t be met by Ramco.

It is also looking at virtualisation to reduce server requirement. But the IT team is facing a challenge as its database-intensive applications are not performing as per expectations under virtualisation. The company is in talks with virtualisation partners like VMware, Microsoft etc. to help it tackle this problem.

While going to press, there were reports that the company plans to tie up funds of $1 billion dollars for its photovoltaic cell plant coming up in Chennai. The plant will have a total capacity of 500 mega watts for thin film cells.