BindView Helps Gwinnett County Public Schools Increase IT Security and Manage Windows Migration

Business Wire, March 2, 2004

Business Editors/Education Writers/High-Tech Writers

HOUSTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 2, 2004

BindView Directory Administration & Migration Solutions Centralize

and Automate Active Directory Operations for More than 10,000

School District Users

Helping to centralize and automate its operations for Windows 2000 and Active Directory, BindView Corp. (Nasdaq:BVEW) announced today that Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) -- the State of Georgia's largest school district -- has implemented the company's Directory Administration & Migration solutions to enhance the manageability and security of its IT infrastructure.

IBM Professional Services contracted with GCPS to design and build-out the new centralized IT environment, selecting BindView solutions to centrally manage its Active Directory (AD) operation. The project was successfully completed in a 60-day timeframe.

"We have historically used a decentralized management approach, allowing each school to implement its own standards and hardware additions," said Rick Overton, director of Telecommunications & Network Operations with GCPS. "With our rapid growth and the need to continually add new users and applications, moving to a centralized infrastructure was a critical next step in securing our environment and managing the costs associated with our predicted growth trajectory."

GCPS is one of the fastest growing school systems in the country, with more than 96 schools and 22,000 teachers, administrators and staff serving a student population projected to reach nearly 150,000 by 2006. Its large, highly distributed computer network and $1 billion dollar operating budget rival that of many large corporations.

To meet rising and future demand, GCPS conducted an in-depth evaluation of its IT systems, targeting service-level optimization for its growing student population, the eight new schools opened in 2003, along with ten additional schools planned for 2004. Among its goals, the system wanted to lower its IT management costs and centrally manage -- and secure -- its environment. To meet these goals, GCPS knew fundamental changes were necessary.

"BindView's ability to integrate with Active Directory and provide roles-based, limited access helped us meet our centralized management goals," noted Overton. "Based on the success of this initial implementation, we plan to use BindView as an enterprise-wide tool to automate and centralize all of our Active Directory operations."

During the transition, GCPS and IBM developed benchmarks and best practices for bringing new schools on line and retrofitting older schools. GCPS standardized on Microsoft Windows 2000 and selected the BindView Directory Administration & Migration suite to centrally manage its AD operations. BindView provided GCPS with the ability to manage global AD delegation through its roles-based system, increasing the overall security of the infrastructure. In addition, BindView's solution provided GCPS with a dynamic, easy-to-use portal that allows administrators to view and perform only the tasks assigned in the specific areas they manage.

BindView's provisioning capabilities provided additional value. Templates and rules were created, reducing required manual entries and securely enforcing naming conventions. BindView provisioning, applied to the organizational units at each school, provided application and resource access in a matter of minutes.

GCPS plans to migrate all of its remaining schools from Novell to Windows 2000 using BindView migration solutions. This initial implementation serves as a benchmark for the larger Active Directory roll out that will affect more than 150,000 users.

"The challenges faced by Gwinnett County Public Schools mirror those we see throughout our public- and private-sector client base," said David Flame, BindView's vice president of Americas Sales & Field Operations. "BindView's Directory Administration & Migration solutions provide a comprehensive, integrated approach to automating and managing AD operations that customers like Gwinnett County Public Schools need to optimize their enterprise directories, enhance the security of their IT infrastructures and ensure a verifiable return on their enterprise directory and management investments."

About BindView Directory Administration & Migration

With BindView Directory Administration & Migration solutions, time consuming or complex tasks -- such as creating user profiles -- can be completely automated, executed, approved and audited to significantly reduce administrative workload while ensuring data consistency and security. Additionally, BindView's migration solutions provide a one-stop source for migrating to Windows 2000/2003 from multiple platforms, and reduce the time, cost and risks associated with the transition.

About BindView

BindView Corporation is a leading provider of proactive business policy, IT security and directory management software worldwide. BindView solutions and services enable customers to centralize and automate policy compliance, vulnerability assessment, directory administration and migration across the entire organization. With BindView insight at work(TM), customers benefit from reduced risk and improved operational efficiencies with a verifiable return on investment. More than 20 million licenses have shipped to 5,000 companies worldwide, spanning all major business segments and the public sector. Contact BindView via e-mail at info@bindview.com or visit BindView's World Wide Web Site at http://www.bindview.com. BindView can also be reached at 800-749-8439 or at 713-561-4000.