Case StudyCountrywideCountrywide SeleCtS webroot’S HoSted email SeCurity Solution

With a network of 1,300 estate agent offices providing national coverage through over 46 well-known high street brands, Countrywide is the UK’s largest estate agency and property services group. The company recognised the need to maximise the effectiveness of its email communications without compromising on the levels of protection needed to safeguard its financially sensitive and personal customer information.

buSineSS driverSCountrywide, with over 9,000 employees across five different lines of business, makes the most of its local knowledge, with it’s network of expertise, Countrywide helps more people move than any other business in the UK and is a leading provider of estate agency, lettings, mortgage services, land and new homes, franchising, auctions, surveying, conveyancing and corporate property management services.

Colin Tigg, Countrywide IT procurement manager, is charged with making sure the selected email security solution is not only robust, but also efficient.

“Over the last two years we have gone from five separate business divisions operating as single entities, to a single company offering a comprehensive range of market-leading property services,” explains Tigg. “Email plays an increasingly dominant role in company-wide communications, underpinning the delivery of these integrated services.”

The use of email is also important because it comes under the scope of industry regulations. Securing the sensitive information it may hold is vital to mitigate risk and ensure compliance, and also to maintain service excellence.

“Some parts of the group have simple email security requirements,” explains Tigg. “But others are regulated by the Financial Services Authority (FSA), which states that we must ensure the information we send is transmitted securely, reaches the intended recipient, and that there is a preserved audit trail.”

Taking this into consideration, the IT team needed to find ways to support the company’s business integration strategy by consolidating its group email security capabilities.

finding an email SeCurity Solution tHat fitSTigg worked with a Webroot partner to evaluate a number of competitive email security products. The initial introduction effectively demonstrated how Webroot‰ Email Security Service could meet Countrywide’s technology and business needs.

“The cost of the other products we evaluated, whether they were on-premise or other hosted solutions, were higher than Webroot’s costs, even when training and management were factored in,” says Tigg. “This made Webroot the most cost-effective. Software as a Service (SaaS) keeps maintenance requirements to a minimum, while still being straightforward enough to use, which also reduces training overheads.”

wHere Countrywide gained

An email security solution that reduced costs of ownership across the business.

Secure email communications; protecting its customer and employee duty of care, as well as its brand.

An average of almost 4m spam emails stopped every month.

One central, simplified management point.

Rapid and easy deployment.

The ability to easily scale with the business.

Future-proofed security protection that will be able to grow across different IT areas, as the company needs.

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Countrywide-eu-1110-1.0

Webroot Software, Inc. | NORTH AMERICA2560 55th Street

Boulder, CO 80301 USAwww.webroot.com • 866.915.3208

Webroot International Ltd. | EUROPEAlexandria House, The Sweepstakes, Ballsbridge

Dublin 4, Ireland www.webroot.com/europe • +353 (0) 1 631 9000

Webroot Services Ltd. | EMEAVenture House, Arlington Square, Downshire Way

Bracknell, Berkshire RG12 1WA, UKwww.webroot.com/europe • +44 (0) 870 141 7070

Webroot Software Pty Ltd. | APACLevel 14, Tower A, 821 Pacific Highway

CHATSWOOD NSW 2067 Australiawww.webroot.com/au • +61 (0) 2 8448 8144 • 1.800.029.234

“We found Webroot particularly attractive as it doesn’t offer just one solution,” he continues. “It has a range of other products that we could see ourselves using in future. For instance, we’re looking at its Web browsing security and filtering service.”

Once the decision was taken to deploy Webroot Email Security Service, the actual installation process only took a few days. Ivan Brooks, Countrywide Chief Information officer adds “The SaaS delivery of Webroot was an important factor in terms of speed and simplicity of implementation. And we are automatically upgraded to the latest versions so it’s future proof.

Since then, the company has deployed Webroot Email Security Service across 40 domains. In an average month the Webroot service filters about 813,000 genuine emails to some 4,000 users and blocks around 3.9 million spam emails. “I get an update on Webroot once a week,” says Tigg, “and it’s always the same – that everything is fine.”

Tigg also commended Webroot’s pre and after-sales service. “I’ve always found, when dealing with Webroot, that their service is exceptional. They keep me fully informed about their products and new services. And the account management has always been through one point of contact, who has managed the account from end to end. I was struck by how simple the whole process has been from the initial selection phase, right through to deployment. There aren’t many solutions out there that do what they promise without taking more of people’s time and effort than expected.”

Dan Szelazek, Countrywide Infrastructure Solutions Manager, also comments, “We have found Webroot easy to work with since it was deployed. Both technical and end-using staff have found Webroot very straightforward to use.”

benefitting from eConomieS of SCaleIn addition to being very pleased with the selection and deployment process, Countrywide has been able to enjoy the benefits of the more robust and cost-effective companywide email security solution.

“We would struggle to provide that scalability in-house, where we might have to buy in new infrastructure and ensure we had enough bandwidth,” explains Tigg. “With Webroot, we can now manage 1,000 new users that might come over in an acquisition and it’s an easy ‘click and go’ to just add them to the Webroot service.”

email SeCurity provideS tHe way forwardNow that Countrywide IT staff and end users have had such a positive experience with the Webroot Email Security Service deployment, this pioneering project is paving the way for wider use of the IT delivery model to promote further economies of scale, cost savings and efficiencies.

Tigg envisages that the Webroot service will help support Countrywide’s continued, strategic IT consolidation programme. “We have a project to move more users over to a Microsoft Exchange 2010 environment, which will require extra Webroot licences and harness more widely the economies of scale its service delivers across the business.”

Tigg concludes: “Webroot has saved us money and has a total solution offering, which means we can use other elements of its portfolio in future.”

We found Webroot particularly attractive as it doesn’t offer just one solution. It has a range of other products that we could see ourselves using in future. colin tigg, countrywide it procurement manager

There aren’t many solutions out there that do what they promise without taking more of people’s time and effort than expected. colin tigg, countrywide it procurement manager