Chart Industries transforms on-premise infrastructure, converts to scalable, integrated cloud enterprise solution

With over 5,000 users, Chart Industries operates over 40 sites globally for the design and manufacturing of highly engineered cryogenic systems and solutions for the liquid gas supply chain. From liquified natural gas to medical applications to carbonation for beverages, Chart solutions are critical to industry and consumers throughout the globe.

Challenges
When he joined Chart several years ago, enterprise infrastructure manager Nate Hauenstein found a chaotic infrastructure environment — antiquated hardware and services, unreliable email, and constant firefighting to fix what was broken. The company determined to bring down the high level of capital expenditures and transition to a service model based on key service level agreements (SLA), with cloud services being a core component.

There was little flexibility to increase headcount when technology increases or changes or requires additional input. “We had to maintain a very cost-effective model from the personnel side. An automated system was absolutely critical to my team. I pick applications based on how they add value, but also on how much overhead is required to manage them,” says Hauenstein.

“We examined Chart’s position, the investments required to achieve the level of service that we want to supply our customers. We were managing an on-premise messaging infrastructure that was very unstable and unforgiving. We focused on key providers for our Office 365 transition, and decided to leap from on-prem to hosted Office 365. The initial focus was around messaging stability and infrastructure, because every user walks in every day, they launch email, they launch Outlook and Skype, they expect them to work, they expect to perform at a high level,” explains Hauenstein

Chart considered both requirements and its wish list, including compatibility with key solutions driving the business forward, such as Office 365, Salesforce, Box, some of those other key tools that are out there, as well as having a large application catalog available.

“We looked at how to reduce administrative cost, and leverage our existing investments -- we had an enterprise license for Office 365 already-- but we weren't utilizing them well. The third item was time savings. So how fast I can take and stand up a new cloud service,” says Hauenstein.

“We took a team approach toward requirements and evaluating the solution, involving senior architects, directors, the CIO, and our security team. We wanted a future-proofed solution and partner where it didn’t matter which application was being published, or where we were; we’d be able to collectively be flexible and manage that solution,” states Hauenstein.

Solution
Chart evaluated whether to stay on-premise or migrate to Office 365, and did an analysis of multiple solutions, including Microsoft ADFS. “OneLogin beat out all the other competitors in that decision analysis, from the SLA, to the cost, to the portal. Just the whole experience,” says Hauenstein.

Evaluating SSO cloud vendors, Chart quickly narrowed its scope through forced rankings, and Gartner analysis to weed out others. “We can't do a proof of concept with everybody. So we picked what we considered the best of the best. We owned one solution, and were looking for an external one to evaluate, and we selected OneLogin,” says Hauenstein.

HIGH AVAILABILITY
Research from Gartner indicated that network downtime can cost enterprises as much as $5,600 per minute of outage. Chart is a global company with 24x7 operations, so it had to have a highly available solution. It has multiple servers throughout the world synchronizing to OneLogin and providing that authentication mechanism.

“Recently we completely shut down our global data center, packed it up and shipped it four hours down the road, then brought it back online, with zero interruption to any of our cloud services. If we had chosen ADFS with on-prem hosting, even with hybrid connectivity, it would've been down, along with email and every other app that weekend. Email continued to flow, Skype, Salesforce, SuccessFactors, all services worked, because we were able to build out this high-availability SSO architected solution,” explains Hauenstein.

PROFESSIONAL SERVICES
“When we implement a business application, I always go with OneLogin Professional Services because there is no substitute for communicating with the customer and the vendor, and assist them through this transition. It is absolutely priceless for us,” says Hauenstein.

“Being able to ramp up an application like Chrome River, where you have a group excited about getting data, it was invaluable to have OneLogin’s Professional Services team on the call with the vendor; in less than one hour, we were up and running with over 500 employees using the app. And we moved on to our next project. That would've never happened using Microsoft ADFS or any of the other products out there,” explains Hauenstein.

AD-DRIVEN IDENTITY & PROVISIONING
Chart has dozens of Salesforce user types, and utilizes the OneLogin auto-provisioning feature for those users with Active Directory (AD), simply passing that information through to OneLogin. IT admins add them to the relevant AD security group, it syncs automatically with OneLogin, then they get provisioned and have access to Salesforce based on those roles.

“It's an absolutely seamless process, and it's the same if we want to decrease the roles. The automation frees up higher-level IT admins to do more beneficial, value-added work,” says Hauenstein. Chart added AD monitors and alerts, so the business owner gets an email when someone is added or removed from a particular security group.

Results
“With OneLogin, we have a 24-hour turnaround for most solutions in your application catalog. Going rapidly from a business need to a usable product saves time -- and every second gained adds to increased productivity,” says Hauenstein.

“Chart IT measures the success of a product on the back end. ‘How much support is needed? How much does it disrupt the user?’ With OneLogin, we don’t have to do virtually anything. It's a seamless tool that works for us, and our users. That is the value. And every app we place on the OneLogin platform continues to add value,” observes Hauenstein.

ENVIRONMENTAL AND COST CONTROL
OneLogin gives Chart a level of control to select the roles and units they need, which is key to enabling them to keep their environment pristine and controlled through role-based administration.

“It also really helps control the cost of my infrastructure. And we would spend hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. As a consequence of introducing OneLogin, I was able to minimize that investment and maximize my cloud solutions. We tightened up our borders and locked down our firewalls by offloading security onto other applications on OneLogin,” says Hauenstein.

USER EXCITEMENT
The best part for Chart IT is that its clients are talking to each other and coming to them now, because they see how simple and easy it is. Now IT bypasses the infrastructure conversation to “When do you need this? OK, let's make this happen.” Instead of IT pushing back, OneLogin is a selling point for them.

“The most exciting piece that I find is that for every application we come across, your team has a solution for it. Either it's in the catalog or they create a custom configuration for us, we get it built and they publish it. For our custom applications that weren’t in your catalog, it's a matter of a one hour turnaround, and we have now a viable solution. It's having that luxury of ‘wow, I can do this and it's done that quickly?’ To me that's exciting. And we couldn't have done any of that without OneLogin,” says Hauenstein.

As a global organization, with employees in Asia/Pacific, Europe and North America, OneLogin provides the tool that works for everybody. “We talk about it like it’s ours -- OneLogin is an extension of my IT staff -- a world-class solution that adds value to the IT department,” states Hauenstein.

PERSPECTIVE
“Taking into account the global reach and the size of our company, OneLogin is able to easily meet and scale up or down to meet our business demands. The high-level results from using OneLogin include reducing administrative costs, protecting and leveraging existing investments, time savings for IT and users, high user adoption, and providing a holistic view of security,“ observes Hauenstein.

“Having the right provider, support and toolset has been vital to our success in transitioning Chart from a traditional on-prem solution to a scalable cloud provider. OneLogin is the platform for our future of cloud integration. To me it's priceless, the world-class service that's provided here. And that's exactly what we were seeking for a long-term partnership,” concludes Hauenstein.

Why OneLogin?
OneLogin brings speed and integrity to the modern enterprise with an award-winning single sign-on and identity management platform. Our portfolio of solutions secure connections across all users, all devices and every application, helping enterprises drive new levels of business integrity and operational velocity across their entire app portfolios.