Fnac Eveil et Jeux Trusts Stonesoft for High Availability and Service Continuity

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Fnac Eveil & Jeux is a product of the merger of two strong brands popular among parents, Fnac Junior and Eveil et Jeux.

Fnac Junior first developed an original store concept aimed specifically at children aged 0 to 12. At the heart of the concept: the idea of offering toys, books, discs and films for children under one roof.
For her part, Margaret Milan, unable to find the toys that she wanted for her young children in France, decided to create her first catalogue. Like so many other start-ups in their day, the company began in a garage. From these cottage industry beginnings, the catalogue grew from 12 black & white pages and 1,000 “pioneer” customers in 1989 to 200 pages and more than a million customers today.

In 2001, it became apparent that, for both companies, the road ahead was best travelled together. This merger gave rise to the Fnac Eveil & Jeux company, which currently employs some 550 people in France.


The challenge

A Business Recovery Plan was implemented at Fnac Eveil et Jeux in two remote computer rooms connected by fibre optics. This BRP called for the redundancy of all the servers. As a preventative measure, Stéphane Dudez, Systems and Networks Engineer, decided to enhance this Business Recovery Plan and to add other criteria to it for this project, such as total service continuity, high availability and load balancing (active/active cluster). The aim of these measures was twofold: firstly, to prevent any risk of failure or downtime in either of the two computer rooms, and secondly, to ensure that all the hardware remained active and to take advantage of these additional resources to increase the performance and efficiency of the information system.

This requirement prompted Fnac Eveil et Jeux to look for two high availability firewalls for both computer rooms, thereby securing all the data flows of the company’s head office.


Deployment

fnac_photoThrough a completely traditional process, an invitation to tender was launched and three security firms were shortlisted.
In the end, the DCI integrator that had proposed Stonesoft solutions (the SW-1050 appliance) was awarded the project. Stonesoft had also agreed to lend an appliance for testing and to satisfy Fnac Eveil et Jeux’s specific configuration criteria. DCI assumed responsibility for all the phases, including architecture, deployment, follow-up and documentation.


In June 2008, the two firewalls with active/active clustering went into production in Fnac Eveil et Jeux’s two computer rooms.
The choice of partner was crucial to deployment of the Stonesoft solutions at Fnac Eveil et Jeux because of its technical expertise, knowledge of the products and familiarity with the client environment.


Benefits and outlook

Among the deciding factors in the choice of the Stonesoft solutions were the product’s cost, scalability and adaptability, its high availability, active/active clustering, ease of use and tailorability of the administration console (StoneGate Management Center). Stéphane Dudez points in particular to Stonesoft’s centralised management and log server, both of which run remotely on separate servers.
Thanks to this technical feature, all aspects of configuration can be handled independently of the appliance, which means that its performance is in no way affected. The configuration can easily be completed remotely using parameters via the server containing the “SMC” and then sent and even scheduled and enabled on the appliance.

In addition, thanks to the remote console, in the event of hardware failure, the faulty component can be hot-swapped and the configuration immediately reapplied to the new hardware. The firewall is then easily replaceable.
Another feature that made the Stonesoft solution appealing to Fnac et Eveil et Jeux was session re-start: service continuity functionality that few players in the sector offer natively (automatic session redirection in case of failure of one of the members of the cluster). This functionality prevents the user’s productivity from being affected in any way. The user is not even aware of a potential firewall failure.

In terms of relations with the manufacturer, Stéphane Dudez also expressed his appreciation of Stonesoft’s availability through every phase of the project as well as DCI’s in-depth knowledge of Stonesoft’s technologies and solutions. Stéphane Dudez admits that, early on in the project, Fnac Eveil et Jeux was leaning toward major players in the sector who, as it turns out, were unable to effectively meet the company’s technical requirements and also seemed less available.
According to Stéphane Dudez, the Stonesoft solutions therefore provide a great deal of flexibility.

Today, Fnac Eveil et Jeux’s two computer rooms are secured and the Business Recovery Plan is fully implemented and observed.
Fnac Eveil et Jeux is now protected against the risk of loss or business interruption.

Stéphane Dudez: Systems and Networks Engineer
We were convinced not only by the technical capabilities of the Stonesoft solutions, namely service continuity and high availability, but also by the company’s presence, flexibility and capacity to satisfy Fnac Eveil et Jeux’s specific requirements.



About Stonesoft

Stonesoft Corporation (NASDAQ OMX: SFT1V) is an innovative provider of integrated network security solutions to secure the information flow of distributed organizations. Stonesoft customers include enterprises with growing business needs requiring advanced network security and always-on business connectivity.

StoneGate™ Secure Connectivity Solution unifies firewall, VPN, IPS and SSL VPN blending network security, end-to-end availability and award-winning load balancing into a centrally managed system. The key benefits of StoneGate Secure Connectivity Solution include low TCO, excellent price-performance ratio and high ROI. The StoneGate Virtual Security Solutions protect the network and ensure business continuity in both virtual and physical network environments.

StoneGate Management Center provides unified management for StoneGate Firewall with VPN, IPS and SSL VPN. StoneGate Firewall and IPS work together to provide intelligent defense throughout the enterprise network while StoneGate SSL VPN provides enhanced security for mobile and remote use.

Founded in 1990, Stonesoft Corporation is a global company with corporate headquarters in Helsinki, Finland and Americas headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. For more information, visit www.stonesoft.com and http://stoneblog.stonesoft.com.