Customer Case Study | Collaborating with partners and clients for access to proprietary material in Amazon S3.

Collaborating with external partners and clients in a secure way is a key issue for most companies at the moment. In the case of the company subject to our last case study, they needed fluid access to brand materials for planning, marketing, and sales purposes.

See how the Enterprise File Fabric solved the collaboration challenges of a Global Footwear Firm.

This customer is a Fortune 1000 company, one of the largest in the fashion / clothing sector. They own over a dozen well recognized brands. The company sells its products through a range of department and specialty stores across the world and operates over 1000 self-branded retail locations.

As retailers purchase inventory from the company, they need fluid access to brand materials for planning, marketing, and sales purposes. Retailers access to this data must be restricted to only the brands they contract for. The company mandates that the sharing of this proprietary material must be in a secure manner, with detailed audit trail, providing a detailed log of all access to company assets.

Moreover, the company does not want to add another technology stack to its data center nor force its clients to use cumbersome proprietary technology. They want to provide partners with an easy-to-use browser-based application.

USE CASE AND SOLUTION

The company adopted the Enterprise File Fabric™ to collaborate with partners and clients for access to proprietary sales and marketing material.

The File Fabric is deployed as an infrastructure as a service (IaaS). Storage Made Easy provided them with a dedicated server running on a global ISP. This server is used only for the company with its own domain name ie. it is not a shared cloud offering.

All data is stored on Amazon Web Services’ S3 reliable object storage data platform. The SME  team is responsible for the management of the File Fabric including installation, upgrades, updates and backups. The internal sales team is responsible for all operational aspects of the system including administration, user/group definition and data management.

The client’s team sets up a unique user ID and password for each retail client. Brand managers create shared team folders/subfolders with material to be shared. As product catalogs are updated, the brand mangers themselves manage the content of these shared folders. Permissions are established by group so that each client is assigned access to the shared folders based upon the brands the client has access to.

Retail clients connect to the File Fabric server from any location that has access to the Internet – no VPN is required. They authenticate and access the relevant data via a company-branded user interface. The clean user interface is easy to use and self-explanatory.  Clients always have easy access to the latest data.

All connections to the File Fabric server are encrypted using https. The system automatically provides detailed audit logs showing all data access include user, time and date, access tool and IP address allowing the client to audit any unusual data access.

RESULTS

The SME Enterprise File Fabric solution has proven to be an easy to use, straightforward platform for company brand managers.

• • Retail partners get access to required data at any time from anywhere around the world.
  • No IT support has been required to manage the platform infrastructure as it is managed directly by SME.
  • The customer management feels secure its proprietary data is housed in a secure manner.

 

Download case study here.

 

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