Novell Management Solutions Sizzle at Johnsonville Sausage

Global food distributor improves user management while reducing system administration time and costs with Novell identity and endpoint management solutions

Wisconsin-based Johnsonville Sausage, the number-one national brand of brats, Italian sausage, smoked-cooked links and fresh breakfast sausage links, has implemented Novell® identity and endpoint management solutions to achieve a single point of control for thousands of employee and partner digital identities and more than 600 desktop systems. By automating identity management with Novell solutions, Johnsonville Sausage has reduced user management time and costs by 80 percent.

With global operations in more than 27 countries and a variety of IT systems to support, Johnsonville Sausage needed a secure and efficient solution to manage user access for more than 1,800 employees and external brokers, as well as a centralized desktop management solution to deliver applications and deploy patches. Working with Paragon Development Systems (formerly Provident Technologies, Inc.), a Novell Platinum PartnerSM, Johnsonville Sausage implemented Novell Identity Manager and Novell Access ManagerTM to improve identity and access management as well as Novell ZENworks® Configuration Management to gain better control of their end-user desktop environment.

“Our Novell solutions paid for themselves in a matter of months,” said Dan Allensworth, infrastructure manager at Johnsonville Sausage. “Without Novell, we would have had to hire a lot more people to do basic user and systems management. We would also have had a lot of frustrated users.”

Novell Identity Manager enables Johnsonville Sausage to give users a single ID and password to access corporate applications, such as SAP* HR, financial programs, warehouse management, materials management and supply chain. In addition, the company’s external brokers now have single sign-on access to its Web-based applications, improving their ability to do business with Johnsonville Sausage.

“Novell is a leader in identity management,” said Angela Daniels, director for Novell Implementation Services at Paragon Development Systems. “We evaluated other products, but found Novell offered a superior solution with the best out-of-the-box connectors.”

Johnsonville Sausage also reduced administration time and simplified IT management with Novell ZENworks. With ZENworks, IT administrators are able to image machines in 30 minutes and use remote control features to troubleshoot workstations from a central location.

“In these challenging economic times, streamlining management, while increasing security and operational efficiency is a smart way for companies like Johnsonville Sausage to move their business priorities forward and address their compliance requirements,” says Jim Ebzery, senior vice president and general manager for Identity and Security Management at Novell. “Novell solutions provide significant cost savings by helping organizations automate user access and centrally manage desktop systems more effectively.”