The Microsoft Office System
Customer Solution Case Study
Chemicals Manufacturer Replaces Open Source
Solution, Cuts Desktop Issues, Boosts Productivity
Overview
Country or Region: India
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Based in Mumbai, India, Galaxy
Surfactants is a leading manufacturer of
specialty chemicals for personal care
products. It has approximately 400
employees, 200 desktops, and 20 portable
computers.
Business Situation
Galaxy Surfactants’ heterogeneous
desktop environment and decentralized
Linux-based messaging system lacked the
security and collaborative functionality the
company required.
Solution
Galaxy Surfactants chose a Microsoft®
communication and collaboration solution.
It deployed Microsoft Exchange Server
2003 and moved the desktop to Microsoft
Office Editions 2003.
Benefits
 Increased employee productivity
 Reduced time to create collaborative
documents 50%
 Provided connectivity for remote workers
 Reduced time spent troubleshooting
desktops 55%
 Improved security
“We chose Linux-based StarOffice for low upfront
cost. The resulting high maintenance and low staff
productivity made it an expensive solution. We turned
to Microsoft as an affordable, reliable replacement.”
Uday Kamat, Executive Director, Finance, Galaxy Surfactants
Galaxy Surfactants is one of India’s leading manufacturers of
specialty chemicals. However, its desktop and messaging platforms
did not support the information needs of its employees, who
struggled to collaborate and communicate using personal
computers that ran different operating systems and a decentralized
messaging platform based on Linux. Desktops running a Linuxbased desktop productivity suite were taking up to 65 percent of
the IT department’s time, and the company’s e-mail solution left
Galaxy Surfactants vulnerable to viruses. Galaxy Surfactants chose
a collaboration solution based on the Microsoft® Office Editions
2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. Employees are
creating collaborative documents 50 percent more quickly, and for
the first time, remote workers have access to their e-mail messages
while away from the office.
“Using familiar, intuitive
programs like Microsoft
Office Word 2003, staff
members are creating
collaborative
documents, such as
presentations, 50
percent more quickly
than with StarOffice.”
G. Subramaniam, Head IT and Communication
Management, Galaxy Surfactants
Situation
In 1980, Galaxy Surfactants opened for
business in Tarapur, a small industrial town
located 100 kilometers from Mumbai, in
western India. Beginning with two products
and three customers, the company has grown
to become a leading manufacturer of
specialty chemicals for personal-care and
home-cleaning products. Today Galaxy
Surfactants has three manufacturing plants
in the state of Maharashtra and three
regional sales offices in India. To connect
these branches, Galaxy Surfactants uses a
leased-line network. It also has an
international office in Bangkok, Thailand, and
one in the United States, in New York. The
company is a major supplier to UniLever,
Procter & Gamble, and Colgate Palmolive.
Until recently, Galaxy Surfactants had a
heterogeneous desktop environment that did
not support the communication and
collaboration needs of a rapidly growing
company. Half of its 400 employees are
information workers, and those employees
were using two different desktop
environments—either the Microsoft®
Windows® 98 operating system running
Microsoft Office 97, or the StarOffice
productivity suite running on the Linux
operating system.
That split greatly complicated file sharing at
Galaxy Surfactants. Across the company,
employees saved the same document in
different formats. It was difficult to determine
whether a colleague would be able to open or
print a draft without experiencing formatting
problems or compatibility issues. With no
central document repository, employees
stored their files on local computers, making
it virtually impossible to control versioning
and work efficiently as a team. Each
employee ended up developing his or her
own document formats and methods of
generating, storing, and delivering content.
The resulting inconsistent workflow delayed
the production of business documentation.
Similar issues with the company’s messaging
platform also reduced employee productivity,
hindered security efforts, and created more
work for Galaxy Surfactants’s small IT staff of
six employees, who were then operating at
the head office and at factories. To provide
basic communication infrastructure for its
employees, the company had been using
sendmail, a Linux-based e-mail solution. Endusers were using Microsoft Outlook Express
and messages were getting downloaded to
their local desktops as there was no central
store of mail data. The sendmail solution
does not offer remote access over the
Internet. This meant that employees were
bound to their desktops to access e-mail,
making it extremely difficult for the 10
percent of Galaxy Surfactants’s information
workers that work remotely to stay connected
with coworkers and access information and
documentation from the head office.
Because Galaxy Surfactants did not have a
centralized directory service, the company’s
IT department had to administer accounts for
the messaging application (sendmail) and the
operating system (Linux) separately. User
policies were set at the physical location for
each personal computer and there was no
standardization of policies among different
offices. Changing user policies and
passwords was a manual process, which not
only affected IT productivity, but also
contributed to downtime for the company’s
information workers.
“The IT team spent more than half its time
troubleshooting desktops running the Linux
operating system for basic issues. This
reduced the time available for strategic
application development,” says G.
Subramaniam, Head IT and Communication
Management at Galaxy Surfactants. “We had
security issues as well. Because e-mail was
directly transferred to employees’ mailboxes,
viruses could easily travel through the Linux
server and hit individual personal computers.
Third-party vendors did not offer anti-virus
solutions for Linux and there was no way of
automatically downloading an anti-virus
solution to protect the network and desktops.
We also had no central tools or standard
procedure for managing antivirus updates.”
Solution
“With Linux, the IT team
spent 65 percent of its
time troubleshooting
basic issues. With our
more reliable, userfriendly desktops
running Windows XP
Professional and the
Office 2003 Editions,
that figure is down to an
estimated 10 percent.”
Yogesh Kalra, Senior Manager, Commercial,
International Division, Galaxy Surfactants
Galaxy Surfactants worked with long-time
technology partner Magnamious to deploy a
standardized communication and
collaboration solution for the desktop, based
on the Microsoft Windows XP Professional
operating system and Microsoft Office
Standard Edition 2003 or Office Professional
Edition 2003.
Magnamious also recommended deploying
Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 on the
Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating
system. Working together, Exchange Server
2003 and Microsoft Office Professional
Enterprise Edition 2003 provide enhanced
communication capabilities for remote
workers. Galaxy Surfactants enabled Cached
Exchange Mode for mobile employees using
portable computers. In Cached Exchange
Mode, the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003
messaging and collaboration client works
from a local copy of an employee’s Exchange
Server 2003 mailbox and the Offline Address
Book.
Magnamious worked with Galaxy Surfactants
to deploy the Active Directory® service, a
Windows Server component that provides a
central repository for information about a
Windows Server–based infrastructure. The
company also uses the IntelliMirror
management technologies within Windows
Server 2003, and a key feature of those
technologies, Group Policy, which provides a
policy-based mechanism for managing user
settings. Finally, Galaxy Surfactants deployed
Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration
(ISA) Server 2000. Exchange Server, Windows
Server, and ISA Server are all part of Windows
Server System™ integrated server software.
“IT administrators are using Active Directory,
Group Policy, IntelliMirror, scheduled
automated [Microsoft Windows] NT® backup,
patch management, and security auditing
tools to manage all the sites in consistent
manner,” says Deepak Jhaveri, Director,
Magnamious.
Magnamious used the Virtual Private Network
(VPN) functionality within ISA Server 2000 to
solve a connectivity issue for Galaxy
Surfactants. ISA Server works with Reliance
Mobile Network, Galaxy’s local cellular
service provider, to create a backup
connectivity solution. “Microsoft software can
be integrated with other solution providers
more easily than Linux can,” says G.
Subramaniam. “Today, we have a solution
that helps ensure there is absolutely no
business loss due to connectivity issues.
“We are a growing, midsized company that
has limited IT resources, and our decision
had to be justified in monetary terms,”
Subramaniam continues. “We needed a costeffective, tightly integrated solution that
would be easy to maintain, especially in the
area of security. We felt comfortable relying
on Microsoft software and a long-time
Microsoft partner that understood our
business needs.”
Benefits
With Windows Server System, Galaxy
Surfactants is enjoying an unprecedented
level of cohesiveness across the organization.
With a collaboration and communication
solution in place that costs less to maintain
and delivers productivity-enhancing tools for
the desktop, Galaxy Surfactants is saving
money while growing its business.
“IT administrators are
using Active Directory,
Group Policy,
IntelliMirror, scheduled
automated NT backup,
patch management and
security auditing tools to
manage all the sites in
consistent manner.”
Deepak Jhaveri, Director, Magnamious
“We are experiencing benefits across the
board,” says Yogesh Kalra, Senior Manager,
Commercial, International Division at Galaxy
Surfactants. “From increased employee and
team productivity to better, centralized IT
management tools and improved security,
there isn’t one area of our business that’s not
more efficient than before. That puts us in an
excellent position to take advantage of new
business opportunities.”
Increasing Employee Productivity
Since all employees began working with the
same desktop operating system and the
Office 2003 Editions, they can easily share
files and communicate with their colleagues.
In contrast, StarOffice presented a much
steeper learning curve and employees
struggled with serious compatibility issues.
“Employees no longer worry about whether a
document will open in another format, or if a
certain type of graphic will show up,” says G.
Subramaniam. “Using familiar, intuitive
programs like Microsoft Office Word 2003,
staff members are creating collaborative
documents, such as presentations, an
estimated 50 percent more quickly than with
StarOffice.”
This ability has affected productivity at every
department where staffers are working
together to develop presentations as a part of
an initiative at Galaxy Surfactants called Total
Productivity Maintenance (TPM). This
initiative consists of three pillars: zero
breakdowns, zero defects, and zero losses.
TPM is significantly changing work culture at
Galaxy Surfactants.
The integrated communication solution has
given Galaxy Surfactants’s remote workers
access to the Internet for the first time. The
company ensured secure connections to
Exchange Server 2003 by enabling Remote
Procedure Calls (RPC) over HTTP. Now remote
workers can access their e-mail messages
from any Internet-capable connection without
the overhead associated with a VPN. Using
Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 in conjunction
with Exchange Server 2003 and its integrated
component Microsoft Office Outlook Web
Access, remote workers have access to all
the familiar functionality of Outlook 2003—
sending and receiving e-mail messages,
calendaring, organizing messages, and using
the address book—irrespective of bandwidth.
Finally, Cached Exchange Mode reduces
remote workers’ dependency on continual
network connectivity.
Using the Junk E-mail Filter within Outlook
2003, employees at Galaxy Surfactants have
reduced time wasted manually clearing out
their inboxes. In conjunction with the
Intelligent Message Filter, an important tool
within Exchange Server 2003 that combats
the proliferation of junk mail, this company
has significantly reduced the influx of junk email messages. Receiving two or three junk
messages a day is now considered unusual.
Improving IT Management and Corporate
Security
The IT staff at Galaxy Surfactants is now
working more productively for two reasons:
better, centralized IT management tools, and
an improved, standardized desktop operating
system. “With Linux, the IT team spent 65
percent of its time troubleshooting basic
issues,” says Y. Kalra. “With our more
reliable, user-friendly desktops running
Windows XP Professional and the Office
2003 Editions, that figure is down to an
estimated 10 percent.”
Now IT staff members are saving time by
using Active Directory to manage the entire
implementation, including remote locations,
from the main server at headquarters in
Mumbai. Administrators are using the Group
Policy feature of Active Directory to set usage
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 4269400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 5682495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in
the United States or (905) 568-9641 in
Canada. Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access information
using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Magnamious
Systems products and services, call (91)
(022) 6115106.
For more information about Galaxy
Surfactants products and services, call
(91) (022) 2761 6666 or visit the Web site
at:
www.galaxysurfactants.com
policies and restrictions as required to
improve their control over the desktop.
“Centralized management not only reduced
the costs of maintaining our infrastructure,
but also reduced client downtime, thereby
improving our employees’ productivity,” says
G. Subramaniam. “And we feel confident that
with Exchange Server 2003, our e-mail
security issues have been addressed. As we
put in patch management based on Microsoft
Software Update Services within four hours of
a software update being released, our entire
system is automatically updated. With
sendmail, we were looking at a customized
security solution that would have cost up to
1,500 Rupees per desktop, which is
equivalent to more than U.S.$6,000 every
year for all desktops.”
Products
 Microsoft Office System
− Microsoft Office Professional
Enterprise Edition 2003
− Microsoft Office Standard Edition 2003
− Microsoft Office Outlook 2003
− Microsoft Office Word 2003
 Microsoft Windows Server System
− Microsoft Windows Server 2003
− Microsoft Exchange Server 2003
− Microsoft Internet Security and
Acceleration Server 2000
 Microsoft Windows XP Professional


Microsoft, Active Directory, the Office logo, Outlook, SharePoint,
Windows, Windows NT, Windows Server, and Windows Server
System are either registered trademarks or trademarks of
Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective
owners.
Document published June 2005
Microsoft Office is the business world's
chosen environment for information work
that provides the software, servers, and
services that help you succeed by
transforming information into impact.
For more information about the Microsoft
Office System, go to:
www.office.microsoft.com/en-ca/default.aspx
“We chose Linux-based StarOffice for low
upfront cost. The resulting high maintenance
and low staff productivity made it an
expensive solution,” concludes Uday Kamat,
Executive Director, Finance, Galaxy
Surfactants. “We turned to Microsoft as an
affordable, reliable replacement.”
Software and Services
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. This case
study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
The Microsoft Office System
Technologies
− Microsoft Active Directory
− Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access
− Microsoft Outlook Express
− Windows SharePoint Services
Hardware
Servers: IBM xSeries 205, 225
Desktop: Pentium IV
 Laptops: Dell, HP


Partner

Magnamious Systems