Case Studies

Avecto Privilege Guard Supports Desktop Upgrade and Future Proofs Windows 7 Roll-out

Already we are seeing positive changes as staff embrace the new desktop, which we expect will help grow the business further. Our IT team is now able to solve desktop user problems more quickly and easily and the manageability of remote users has improved substantially."

– Shop Direct Group

Shop Direct Group is the UK’s leading online and home shopping retailer, with around five million customers and annual sales of around £1.7 billion. It operates under the well known high street brands of Littlewoods, Very, Woolworths, Kays, Marshall Ward and Great Universal, whilst selling other major brands, including Sony, Nike, Levi’s, Adidas, Phillips, Kodak, Dyson, Bosch, Amanda Wakeley, Morgan and Miss Sixty.

Shop Direct Group is one of the largest online retailers in the UK with plans to double its online sales and see 70% of its sales online by year end 2010/11. To support the expected growth of its online retailing, Shop Direct Group has a highly valuable and efficient infrastructure which is the envy of other UK retailers – sourcing, warehousing, single pick and pack distribution and home delivery to customers.

It has evolved into a shining example of a 21st century business by transforming and modernising its entire business. In January 2006, Shop Direct moved into a new £31m state-of-the-art head office in Speke, South Liverpool. A breathtaking grade II listed former aircraft hanger, now known as Skyways House. This new facility provides employees with an open and exciting working environment, with all the high quality facilities a modern head office should offer.

The Challenge

The company realised that its IT infrastructure needed to be in better shape to support and sustain its optimistic plans for growth. All 10,000 Dell desktop computers within its IT estate are scheduled to be migrated to Windows Vista. The two key drivers for this infrastructure migration was the need to improve access for remote users and to improve desktop security.

Shop Direct’s IT team embarked on this major multi-year project to migrate the entire desktop estate from Windows 2000 to Windows Vista, with a longer-term plan to transition Windows 7 within the earliest possible time frame.

The business continues to rely heavily on state of the art IT infrastructure and it has invested heavily in training staff in a range of improvement techniques designed to tackle every aspect of customer care and support. As part of the investment it realised that removing admin rights from users would catapult this business shift to a more effective and efficient desktop structure.

Deployment Environment

The initial pilot involved the analysis of problem applications using Privilege Guard’s privilege monitoring capability that rapidly identified all the applications that would not run under a standard user account. Privilege Guard policies were then created and deployed using Active Directory Group Policy and applications that had required admin rights to run were tested on the new Vista platform.

By implementing a policy of least privilege, Shop Direct users are now able to logon with standard user rights without compromising their ability to perform their job junction. The overall IT infrastructure of the business is now future-proofed, Shop Direct says: "Our objective is to move to Windows 7 and knowing Privilege Guard supports the latest Windows operating system is reassuring."

As a result of removing admin rights, Shop Direct says: "Already we are seeing positive changes as staff embrace the new desktop, which we expect will help grow the business further. Our IT team is now able to solve desktop user problems more quickly and easily and the manageability of remote users has improved substantially."

The Results

• All applications work on Vista and Windows 7 without the user needing admin rights
• Improved desktop security for on-line trading transactions
• Increased employee productivity for remote users
• Reduced IT costs through improved access and reduced malware attacks