Gap Inc. Direct, Utilizes Red Hat & PowerBroker Identity Services “AD Bridge”
Customer Company Size
Large Corporate
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux
- PowerBroker Identity Services “AD Bridge”
Tech Stack
- Linux
- Microsoft Active Directory
- Unix
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Cost Savings
- Productivity Improvements
Technology Category
- Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) - Cloud Computing
Applicable Industries
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Discrete Manufacturing
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Inventory Management
- Cybersecurity
Services
- System Integration
- Cloud Planning, Design & Implementation Services
About The Customer
The Gap, Inc. is a specialty retailing firm that operates more than 3,100 retail and outlet stores within the United States and internationally. Founded in 1969, the Gap sells casual apparel, accessories and personal care products for men, women, and children under the Gap, Old Navy, Banana Republic, Piperlime, and Athleta brands. Through its Gap Inc. Direct line of business, it also offers its products through gap.com, bananarepublic.com, oldnavy.com, piperlime.com, and recently launched athleta.com web properties. Headquartered in San Francisco, the Gap currently employs more than 150,000 workers around the world, and generated $14.5 billion in revenues in 2008; online sales through Gap Inc. Direct web sites accounted for approximately seven percent, or $1 billion.
The Challenge
In late 2003, Gap Inc. Direct needed to revamp its entire end-to-end business technology platform — from the customer-facing front-end system, to the back-end order management application, to the business tools that supported the company’s long-term growth strategy. Previously, Gap Direct’s e-commerce platform was largely built on Microsoft Windows. The need for new features — as well as concerns about the platform’s ability to scale given the retailer’s ambitious growth plans drove Gap Inc. Direct to evaluate alternative solutions to the Microsoft platform. Gap Inc. Direct uses Microsoft’s Active Directory (AD) for administrative tools to grant and control end-user permission, but AD by itself doesn’t support Linux or Unix, this resulted in the need for several systems administrators and analysts to analyze all of the logs of hundreds of servers every time an audit needed to be performed — a task that took IT employees away from their day-to-day responsibilities.
The Solution
GID needed an identity management solution that would communicate between Active Directory and Red Hat Enterprise Linux to automate the control of user access and permissions. To automate more of the process and free up systems admins for more valuable work, as well as make user access permissions in this mixed operating environment simpler, Arcuri deployed an identity management tool from BeyondTrust. PBIS, built with Red Hat technologies, enables enterprises to securely authenticate users in mixed operating systems environments that include Linux, Unix, Macintosh, and Windows systems, with Microsoft Active Directory, and includes world-class migration, group policy, audit, and reporting modules. The Gap Inc. Direct has set up group profiles for several different kinds of employees, so administrators don’t have to configure profiles individually. PBIS also produces reports by user, by date, and by server.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
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