DITTON PARK, England and ISLANDIA, N.Y., July 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CA, Inc. (Nasdaq: CA) today announced that BT has saved more than 4.5 million pounds sterling per annum since 2004 using CA SiteMinder. BT's use of CA SiteMinder has resulted in a decrease in IT administration, application development, password reset requests and support of auditing and compliance. BT has centralized its user authentication and authorization to key external and internal Web applications using CA SiteMinder to perform 36 million transactions per day.
BT provides networked IT, telecommunications and broadband services and its operations spread across 170 countries. In the UK alone, the company serves more than 18 million customers with 28 million exchange lines and 11.2 million broadband connections. Customer service delivery, collaboration and the ability to provide secure access over the Web for customers and suppliers are central to BT's future growth.
BT has four portals in total, including BT.com, which all play a key role in connecting the company and its customers. More than eight million individuals regularly use the websites to access a range of self-service options from viewing bills and setting up direct debits to placing orders and managing the email accounts to which their paperless bills are sent. With BT.com and the other portals offering a gateway to personal information, it is essential that only authorized customers gain access to their own records. Robert Temple, Chief Security Architect for BT, said, "Customers expect us to get security right and don't want to worry about issues such as identity theft. Any problems with identity and information management could be very damaging to our reputation as one of the UK's most trusted brands."
Prior to using CA SiteMinder, BT staff had to remember multiple passwords. "By using CA SiteMinder we have been able to decrease the number of internal passwords by enabling simplified sign-on, which has helped to increase efficiency and reduce the volume of password resets," commented Temple. In addition, BT has eliminated the need for multiple point solutions that were previously being used for user authentication.
BT has also extended its CA SiteMinder deployment by using it in conjunction with identity federation to enable its users to access applications and data hosted by some of the company's suppliers. "Setting up federated identities was very simple using CA SiteMinder," Temple said.
