To build confidence in 22,000 girls, access to data from anywhere was critical

Empowering Girls Across the Country

The Girl Scouts is the largest girl-serving organization with a Girl Scout chapter in every U.S. zip code. Girl Scout activities give girls a chance to discover, connect and take action with other girls in their communities. The Girl Scouts of West Central Florida serves nearly 22,000 girls in grades K-12 and nearly 11,000 adult members across various counties. They have around 70 employees that work out of the central office and on the road.

Opportunity: Enable remote access to files

Employees needed fast local access when in the office, and easy remote access when offsite visiting different districts and chapters. About 15-20 employees needed to access files out of the office on any given day, and they needed a simple way to do so.

Challenge: Provide easy access to files and securely back up files

Prior to deploying Egnyte, employees had to login to Citrix web portal to access files remotely. If they were unable to access the files via Citrix, they had to rely on USB thumb drives and email to access the files. This proved unreliable, as the Citrix system would often not be accessible and employees often found themselves without their files when they needed them. It had become evident that it was business critical for employees to have anytime access to their files. In addition to access, a core requirement in a solution was providing an easy and secure method of backup for employees’ documents. Prior to Egnyte, a file server was in place that lacked the ability to be backed up remotely. They had to hire someone to manage manual backups of the file server, which was time consuming, and made it difficult to access files remotely. Michael Sapp, Chief Financial Officer of the Girl Scouts of West Central Florida reached out to Jim Watt at Dynamic Solutions Group for help in finding a more viable solution.

Solution: Hybrid Cloud File Server

Dynamic Solutions Group had implemented Egnyte with other customers and knew it would address the requirements of this project perfectly. Jim suggested an Egnyte hybrid deployment on a Netgear ReadyNAS, to the Girl Scouts as a solution. This would enable employees to have fast, reliable access to all of their files at anytime and from anywhere. The Director of IT tested Egnyte and set up 2 users to test as well. The ease of use and security inherent with Egnyte seemed to offer a perfect solution for their needs. Michael quickly decided to roll it out to all employees. Michael now enjoys peace of mind knowing that files are securely backed up and accessible by employees when and where they need them. As a bonus, he is now able to see an audit trail of all files that have been accessed and edited.