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Workshare Protect Server - Case Studies

Workshare Protect Server Provides McMillan
Automated Metadata Removal

Founded in 1903, McMillan is one of Canada's top business law firms, serving clients, public and private, in major sectors of the economy. The firm's reputation and particular strengths are in antitrust/competition, banking and finance, corporate restructuring, commercial real estate, tax, mergers and acquisitions, oil and gas, private equity and business litigation.

Known as "America's Canadian law firm," McMillan is committed to serving the Canadian legal needs of American business, and has a deep understanding of the differences between Canadian and American law and business that affect Canadian-based and cross-border transactions. With more than 550 employees and offices in Calgary, Toronto and Montréal, the firm provides high-quality legal expertise to clients in Canada, the United States and around the world.

Searching for a Server-based Metadata Removal Solution
"As a law firm, document security is of upmost importance to us," said McMillan IT director Chris Duncan. "Metadata removal is also a growing concern among our clients, and we wanted to address that concern proactively." The problem Duncan's IT team ran into was finding a metadata scrubbing tool that works without user intervention.

"Firm members don't want the burden of scrubbing their files before sending them out, so they find ways to bypass desktop security systems. We wanted to roll out a product that would be used consistently to ensure every file leaves the firm clean."

Although McMillan has been a Workshare customer since 2002, and had implemented the company's flagship Workshare Professional product with great success, Duncan realized his firm needed a server-based solution and Workshare did not yet offer one. He began searching the market for a security product that would (1) operate in the background, (2) scrub all documents sent outside the firm by any means, including mobile devices and webmail, and (3) not rely on intervention from the firm's 500+ users. After looking at a number of them, he thought he had found the answer.

Competitive Solution Fails to Deliver
In November 2008, McMillan implemented a try-and-buy version of the only known server-based product available at the time. The solution was supposed to integrate with the firm's webmail server and spam filter. It didn't happen.

"The product used its own SMTP server, based on its own standards instead of Internet standards so it wasn't compliant with our mail server or spam filter," recalled Ryan Shaw, technical support analyst at McMillan. "Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't." McMillan asked the vendor's development team to rewrite the software to make the product compatible with McMillan's webmail environment.

"We weren't trying to do anything special or non-standard; we were just trying to make the product function in an industry-standard environment," explained Duncan. "The product didn't even work with our Exchange server."

Exacerbating the situation was the time lag in technical support. The vendor's tech team is in a different time zone from McMillan, and only provides support on their time. As a result, Shaw spent many frustrating hours waiting for product fixes and changes.

"The vendor that provided our first solution just wasn't motivated to work with us on developing a product that would meet our needs," he said. " And they didn't seem to care whether or not they kept our business."

After more than a year of wrangling, Duncan and his team were ready to move on. But they were no longer optimistic about finding an effective server-based security solution.

"There wasn't much out there," recalled Duncan. "The vendor of our try-and-buy solution told us all server-based solutions work the same way, and we could expect to encounter the same issues with any other product." Fortunately for McMillan, the vendor failed to deliver on that promise, too.

Workshare Protect Server: Automated Protection Out of the Box
In early 2010 McMillan's Workshare account manager contacted Duncan about Workshare Protect Server, a new server-based security solution for mobile and webmail users. He reluctantly heard her out. "We were fairly jaded after our prior experience, but we have always had an excellent relationship with Workshare, so we agreed to take a look at the new Workshare Protect Server product."

In February 2010, McMillan began testing the solution. From the get-go, the experience of working with Workshare's implementation team was like night and day for Duncan and Shaw.

"The Workshare team actually listened to us and was very receptive to our ideas about how to make the product work for us," said Shaw. "Before they even delivered our trial version, they had already incorporated a number of our recommended changes, and come up with workarounds for the rest. It was obvious they wanted our business and had put a lot of R&D time into the product to ensure it met our needs."

One of those needs was the ability to select which metadata to scrub from documents. Because McMillan's clients use the Track Changes tool in Word, Duncan wanted to preserve that metadata. The firm also needed to retain some other custom properties, such as the identification numbers used to file documents in the firm's database.

"Workshare enabled us to configure the filter ourselves, so we could choose which metadata to clean," said Duncan. "Previously we had to wait hours for our vendor's tech support team to do it on their time."

Workshare's careful listening and additional R&D efforts definitely paid off for both companies: McMillan's new Workshare Protect Server solution worked right out of the box. "We were expecting another failure," said Duncan, "but instead we got a solution that does exactly what it's supposed to do!" Minor issues were resolved quickly because Workshare provides tech support both from its UK office and its West Coast office.

"Working with Workshare's tech support staff has been a joy for me," said Shaw. "They really go the extra mile to make sure everything is running the way it's supposed to. One staff member in the UK office even got up at 3 a.m. to help us with a server issue."

Workshare: Top-Quality Products, Top-Quality Vendor
By June 2010 Duncan's team was so confident in their new server-based security solution, they decided to roll it out firm-wide. "Implementing Workshare Protect Server was one of the easiest IT projects I've had to install," said Shaw."Workshare even sent an installation specialist out to here to help us. She spent two days on site, and the deployment went off without a hitch."

Workshare Protect Server now automatically cleans all files sent outside of the firm, including files sent from firm members' webmail accounts and mobile devices such as laptops and Blackberries. Firm members don't even realize the application is running in the background, and McMillan's IT staff spends almost no time supporting it.

"We've had no problems or complaints with Workshare Protect Server at all," said Duncan. "In my experience, it's rare to find a product that works so well and meets the specific needs of our firm. The solution also allows us to make better use of our IT resources because it's completely automated and doesn't require any intervention from users."

Duncan and Shaw plan to continue working closely with Workshare on future feature enhancements, such as the ability to create multiple profiles when selecting which metadata to remove."Workshare has done a great job of keeping us in the loop on their product direction," said Shaw. "We know they're committed to making the product work for us over the long term."

"In terms of product quality and responsiveness, Workshare is one of the top vendors I've dealt with," noted Duncan. "Implementing Workshare Protect Server has been a great experience for us."