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Knight Frank, a global real estate agency, was facing challenges with its website performance. Clients in some parts of the world, notably Australia and the UAE, were experiencing slower loading times when accessing their respective websites. This was undermining Knight Frank's brand, which is built upon delivering the highest quality standards. The company also faced issues with its website in Asia, particularly in China, where it was unable to deliver a fast and reliable service to users. This was making it difficult for Knight Frank to penetrate the Chinese market. The company identified that the physical distance that data had to travel was the cause of latency. In addition to this, Knight Frank was also faced with the risk of being hacked and the challenge of mitigating DDoS attacks.

The customer is an airlines company that is expanding its international route. The company needs to provide accurate information about flight routes, weather, ticketing, and accommodation for the crew members. However, its business system, JETPLAN, has periodic stutter and sometimes cannot be accessed. The company requires a solution that can improve the speed of visiting international websites effectively and without restrictions on accelerated sites and regions.

The customer is a renowned provider of credit checking services in China, serving banking and Internet-finance clients with personal credit loans, enterprise credit loans, and risk control business. They obtain original credit data by accessing the API provided by data providers, which they then process and analyze to finalize credit checking reports for their clients. However, they were facing challenges with slow API request responses and data loss during the initial credit data checking. These issues were significantly affecting the system business of the enterprise as there are specific time limits on the response time of credit checking.

The customer is a Chinese Internet finance and insurance company that uses Oracle's cloud service for its ERP business. However, there are no OracleCloud service nodes in China at present, which means users in Mainland China may encounter some problems when trying to access the OracleCloud servers that are located overseas. This includes slow access speeds, which can negatively impact the company's business operations.

The customer, a large educational institution with 16 subsidiaries and non-profit organizations, was facing challenges with their Salesforce CRM solution. The main issue was that the origin of Salesforce was located in non-mainland-China areas, which led to a poor user experience. The domain name or IP addresses of Salesforce were constantly changing, leading to unstable access to the platform. Additionally, Salesforce had to support both mobile and PC versions to cater to staff who worked out of the office.

The customer, headquartered in Munich, Germany, with seven branch offices in China, faced challenges in their daily office operations. The different branches needed to cooperate with each other via video conferencing. However, when using Skype for multi-party audio and video conferencing or sharing presentations, they encountered issues such as slow login, network dropping, and video stutter. This was because the Skype origin server was not located in China, causing latency and performance issues.

A division of the U.S. military often trains soldiers in remote locations such as the Middle East using “distance learning.” Distance learning has become a popular way to deliver online courses to military personnel, providing video training, Flash- or Java-based self-paced learning modules, and online certifications. Distance learning often leverages multimedia content, which requires expanded network capacity. For troops deployed overseas, numerous challenges were impeding the performance and usability of the training applications. The military needed a solution that would solve these problems to train soldiers more quickly and efficiently. For remote field training, network delivery was a particular challenge for military applications. Satellite networks are typically used in areas where traditional terrestrial networks cannot reach. Soldiers then use laptops to download training content, programs, or other materials via satellite connection. Satellite Internet connections, however, present several difficulties. As training modules access multimedia files that are delivered via the web, propagation delays cause high latency as message requests are sent at the speed of light to distant satellite stations and then back to the U.S. When viewing web pages, for example, soldiers were experiencing significant delays. High rates of latency were also causing training applications to time out or disconnect, which was frustrating to soldiers and severely impacting training productivity. Network degradation due to loss was an additional concern. Both high latency and loss were severely impacting the quality and delivery speed of the training content.

AMX, a company that simplifies the way people interact with technology, was facing challenges with its SharePoint and Microsoft Dynamics CRM deployment. The company has regional offices throughout the United States and locations in 86 countries. The effectiveness of these tools was dependent on the strength of its underlying network. Worker productivity was constrained as SharePoint documents took a significant amount of time to download from worldwide offices. In addition, CRM users also experienced significant delays when uploading or downloading attachments or printing reports. These network performance challenges created uncertainty and employee dissatisfaction, which substantially reduced the productivity and effectiveness of the company’s workforce.

BP deployed SharePoint in the Azure Cloud for content management, collaboration and enterprise networking. During the course of their SharePoint deployment, BP encountered substantial delays as a result of Wide Area Network (WAN) latency and bandwidth constraints. These network performance challenges substantially reduced the benefits of SharePoint. In one particular case, BP sought to alleviate inefficiencies resulting from a SharePoint data center in Amsterdam connecting to an office in Australia. BP was faced with a number of challenges including extremely slow response times and a loss of productivity. Worker productivity was constrained as SharePoint documents took a significant amount of time to download. These network performance challenges created uncertainty and employee dissatisfaction, which substantially reduced productivity and the effectiveness of the company’s workforce, virtually making SharePoint unusable.

The Ridgeland Police Department in Mississippi was facing several challenges with their network connections. Accessing information from the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) was taking too long to process, which was causing delays and inefficiencies in their operations. Software developed to increase productivity became useless during poor or congested network connections. Network outages were causing information to get lost, resulting in decreased productivity and an inefficient use of bandwidth. The police department relies on fast network connections to receive important information from the NCIC. This information is critical to officers in the field as it provides pertinent data on suspects. If the network is slow, due to bad reception or congestion, this information can take a long time to receive – resulting in frustration and unnecessary stress for the officers, and in some cases, putting them in potentially dangerous situations.

Imaging Associates of North Mississippi, a provider of radiology interpretation services, was facing challenges in transferring unique images across the WAN due to slow internet connections, network congestion, and intermittent network outages. These issues were causing delays in patient diagnoses and potential risks of HIPAA violations. The company was also using VPN lines to ensure patient data privacy, which added to the complexity of the situation.

Centrify, a company that delivers Zero Trust Security through the power of Next-Gen Access, needed to integrate security into their DevOps process. They wanted to evaluate vulnerability assessments before placing upgrades into production. Additionally, they needed to prepare for the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and the Service Organization Control (SOC 2) compliance audits. Centrify was searching for a product that could integrate into the organization’s CI/CD workflow – which includes the Jenkins and SaltStack toolsets – so assessments could take place prior to updates being pushed into production. They also needed a solution that provided detailed vulnerability management and reporting tools.

After upgrading their Microsoft Dynamics AX system to handle more facets of their business processes, Wilson Trailer found a need to improve their data security. The role based system in Dynamics AX gave the basic user more access than was needed, not to mention more than was safe. Jay Gonzalez, Developer at Wilson Trailer, found the native GRC tools to be clunky and unworkable. When they decided to upgrade Dynamics AX, the company focus was put on business process improvement and security was continually an afterthought. In addition to the upgrade they utilized external add-on applications, which gave special access to their database. Before long the segregation of duties (SOD) risks became an apparent issue. Wilson Trailer had full trust in their staff, but the potential for accidents and misstatements was growing. They needed a solution that could review SOD risks and mitigate conflicts within AX as well as any 3rd party add-on applications. Seeing these issues T.J. Dennis, CIO at Wilson Trailer, began looking for such a solution.

Box, an enterprise content management platform, faced a significant challenge after going public in 2015. They were required to conduct user access reviews in NetSuite, a process that proved to be time-consuming and expensive. The data generated from NetSuite was overwhelming and unusable for the business. There were thousands of permissions associated with each role, and the list was growing exponentially. One person was dedicated to reviewing every permission and role, a process that took an entire quarter. This inefficient process led Box to seek a more streamlined solution.

Arrow S3, a subsidiary of Arrow Electronics, was recently acquired by a large, public organization and needed to become SOX compliant quickly. The company was struggling with tracking data from certain areas using the standard database log within AX 2009, and identifying specific fields and activities was proving to be cumbersome. Creating all the reports that Arrow Electronics required was also a challenge with the current staff and systems in place at Arrow S3. They needed to be up and running and able to pull reports quickly and efficiently with the current staff.

SBA Communications, a leading independent owner and operator of wireless towers and facilities in the U.S., was facing significant regulatory and financial burdens due to SOX compliance requirements. As a publicly-traded company, SBA was required to prove control over their financial statements through documentation and testing. This was imposing heavy costs on the organization. The company was struggling with managing Segregation of Duties (SoD) conflicts, maintaining data integrity and audit trail, and managing identity and access. The manual process of downloading monthly security reports and reconciling them was time-consuming and inefficient. Moreover, to comply with SOX, SBA needed to limit system administrator access and ensure that all Microsoft Dynamics GP users were adhering to tighter password policy controls.

Opower, a global leader in cloud-based software for the utility industry, was experiencing rapid growth. They needed a Segregation of Duties (SoD) analysis to ensure appropriate user access inside their Intacct ERP system. The organization was using spreadsheets of incompatible functions to manually review their SoD analysis and relying on their employees to know exactly what they could and could not do within Intacct. This process was time-consuming and unreliable. Opower became concerned about their risk and the accuracy of these reviews and knew they needed a better process.

Flow International Corporation, a world leader in the development and manufacturing of ultrahigh-pressure (UHP) waterjet technology and a leading provider of robotics and assembly equipment, was facing challenges in complying with Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) Section 404 requirements. As a publicly-traded company in the United States, Flow International is required to publish information in their annual reports concerning the scope and adequacy of the internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting. Documenting and testing financial controls had proven difficult in the past and they were looking for a better performing solution that would work easily with their new ERP solution, Microsoft Dynamics® AX. The company needed a solution that could simplify their SOX compliance efforts while maintaining strict security standards, ultimately saving time and audit costs.

Hamamatsu, a company that researches light and develops new products, was facing a challenge with their segregation of duties (SoD) management in their ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics AX. The system did not provide an easy way to manage roles, users, privileges, and duties, which resulted in the IT Business Analyst, Amy Padovani, having to handle all SoD management manually. This manual process of analyzing segregation of duties and locating where there are conflicts took weeks to execute. Hamamatsu needed an automated way to report and correct critical access areas.

The customer, a global market leader in the production of fresh berries, faced challenges with their complex global structure. They needed a tool that would simplify the process of adding users and handling segregation of duties to eliminate security concerns and ensure clean audits. The company had 86 entities, including a research arm and multiple entities in Europe, the U.S., Mexico, and Chile—each with unique processes. They moved European operations to Microsoft Dynamics AX on-premises in 2015, with the Americas following in 2016. However, problems arose when it came time for the upcoming audit. Auditors pointed out several issues: There was no way for the company to provide auditors with the information they needed, Segregation of Duties (SoD) were handled manually and therefore were not being sufficiently enforced, and there were several weak or undefined processes, and with the many entities, there were security risks around how the users were being managed.

The customer, a rapidly growing real estate management company, was relying on the standard security roles delivered with the application ‘out of the box’ which inherently contained critical and high-risk segregation of duties (SoD) conflicts. Due to the amount of revenue under management for a large public real estate investment trust (REIT), they soon needed to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and external audit requirements, including controls over security access in D365FO. They needed to quickly find a solution that would integrate well within their D365FO environment and provide detailed audit reporting, SoD visibility, and scalable task-based roles for future growth.

Smith+Nephew, a leading medical technology company, was facing challenges with their aging GRC tool for SAP which needed to be upgraded or replaced in 2019. The existing SAP tool required manual work, making the management of user access within systems a laborious process. The team had to use Excel spreadsheets to check which roles had access, determine whether conflicts existed among them, create SOD reports, and decide how these conflicts should be mitigated. This manual process was time-consuming and inefficient, prompting the need for a more streamlined and automated solution.

The customer, a rapidly growing national manager of distinctive independent, assisted living and memory care communities throughout the USA, was relying on the standard security roles delivered with the application ‘out of the box’ which inherently contained critical and high-risk segregation of duties (SoD) conflicts. Due to the amount of revenue under management for a large public real estate investment trust (REIT), they soon needed to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) and external audit requirements, including controls over security access in D365FO. They needed to quickly find a solution that would integrate well within their D365FO environment and provide detailed audit reporting, SoD visibility, and scalable task-based roles for future growth.

GP Strategies Corporation, a global performance improvement provider, was facing issues with the Oracle seeded job roles they were using. These roles presented segregation of duties (SoD) conflict challenges and allowed extensive sensitive access to individuals who did not require it, increasing risk. As a publicly traded company, GP Strategies also had to adhere to the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) compliance requirements, which imposed heavy regulatory and financial costs as well as compliance burdens. They needed an audit and compliance solution that would integrate well with Oracle Cloud, provide detailed audit reporting, SoD visibility, and sensitive access analysis without increasing overhead and support costs.

Hearst, a global media and information services company, had implemented Oracle ERP Cloud and needed a tool to maintain high security standards. The company's business environment was complex due to its size and the number of businesses it had interests in, including recently acquired ones. This complexity brought about risks around security, making it critical for the company to ensure security was maintained at the highest level. Hearst brought in Application Security Audit Manager Ivan Ng to assess security controls to ensure they met the company’s requirements.

Zoom, a leading video-first unified communications platform, wanted to provide Single Sign On (SSO) capability to their business applications to reduce the fatigue of tracking multiple usernames and passwords for the employees to access their various accounts. The company’s services have seen explosive growth since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as a leading resource enabling people and businesses to continue working and communicating in a stay-at-home world. Zoom uses Fastpath Assure for their segregation of duties, identity management, and access certifications.

The customer, a leading provider of time management training and assessment services, was operating on older technology ERP for many years which was stable and had been doing the job adequately, thanks to the 90s mentality of, “If you need it to do something else, customize it.” But, as everyone who has worked with customized software knows, there comes a time when heavy customizations outlive their usefulness. The customer selected and was in the midst of implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Finance & Operations (D365FO), a cloud-based ERP system, which would put the company on the path to transformation, handling complex processes and those processes brought over by previous mergers. And true to the company’s culture of going beyond “good enough,” employees had very high expectations about ensuring a quality customer experience. This event spurred the search for an audit trail tool, as the company’s current solution (HelpSystems) did not have an offering for D365FO.

Stress Free Health Options (SFHO) was facing challenges with their existing communications platform. The system, which was a combination of DID numbers and SIP trunks, was complex and no longer met the demands of the staff or customers. The company needed a solution that was simpler to use, but at the same time, more robust. Additionally, the business is call driven and many of its agents work remotely. Therefore, they needed a system that could handle the national distribution of calls without affecting the customer journey.

Toronto Tees, a custom t-shirt printing business, was facing a challenge in managing their online and phone orders. The team members were also responsible for operating a brick-and-mortar store, which made it difficult for them to handle incoming calls. They designated one person, Kyle Pullin, to be the principal customer service contact. He was receiving about 100 calls per day, which were forwarded to his cell phone. However, this system was not efficient as he had to pick up the phone even when it was a personal call. The owner, Joe, was also facing staffing issues due to COVID-19, which made it difficult to have someone available 24/7 to pick up phone calls.

All Points Digital, a digital marketing agency founded by brothers Jamie and Jason Mazur, faced the challenge of effectively tracking and attributing phone calls to marketing campaigns. They found it particularly difficult to connect the results of long sales processes back to the contributing marketing initiatives. The simplistic call tracking solutions they initially used, like forwarding numbers, only told their clients whether a lead came from the website or an individual source. They needed a more robust solution that could provide detailed insights into call attribution and help them demonstrate a hard return on investment for their clients' spend on Google Ads campaigns and other types of paid initiatives.