is one of the largest shipping container lessors in the world. Originally founded as 鈥淪ea Containers鈥� in 1965, Seaco is a globally recognized brand that offers one of the largest and diversified modern fleet of 2.4 million TEU intermodal container equipment. Seaco provides a range of flexible leasing solutions, sales, and support services to more than 750 clients across the world, operating from an international network of 23 sales and support offices, further supported by an independent depot network across 189 port locations in 51 countries, helping to position container equipment, when and where it is needed.
Managing a complex IT environment for a global team
As a company that manages shipping containers that are constantly moving around the world and bills customers by the day, Seaco鈥檚 operations are highly complex. The company interfaces with 500+ container ports and depots worldwide via EDI and API, and reams of data flow back and forth from the ports to company headquarters.
探花大神 allowed us to not only collapse a few of the products that we were using into a single interface, it also meant that we were able to manage the policies of end-user devices irrespective of whether it was a Mac or a PC.
Damian Leach
鈥淒ata is absolutely paramount 鈥� it runs our business,鈥� says Damian Leach, chief information officer at Seaco. 鈥淪ecurity is a really big thing for us; we鈥檝e evolved our environment; we鈥檙e looking at new ways of managing the IT assets we have 鈥� not only the ones we distribute across the employee base but also those that serve our transactional platform.鈥�
According to Leach, Seaco鈥檚 environment is nearly 100% cloud-based, and the company plans to move entirely into the cloud by the first quarter of 2025.
鈥淥ur company uses a mix of Macs and Windows laptops, and we also issue mobile devices to our staff, who work in different time zones across the globe,鈥� Leach continues. 鈥淭his can be a challenge from an end-user support standpoint.鈥�
Leach joined Seaco in October 2023; once he came on board, the company started giving employees the option of using Macs.
鈥淲e wanted to provide an alternative solution to all staff, lightweight, robust, high-performance machines with a long battery life as a lot of our staff are on the road a lot. This is where the Macbook Air came in. As a result of that, we needed to review the way that we were securing and managing our new and existing devices,鈥� he says. 鈥淎t the time, our device management solution wasn鈥檛 covering mobile devices, and we weren鈥檛 able to support Macs. We had kind of a disparate approach to endpoint management, and we wanted to create a consistent approach and also have remote access control due to the distributed nature of our company.鈥�
Choosing 探花大神 to consolidate IT tooling
When the IT team also began looking for a mobile device management solution, they considered Microsoft Intune and MobileIron.
鈥淲e felt that rather than having two or three different tools for remote management policy, remote access, and device management we wanted to consolidate the management of the devices in a single interface,鈥� Leach says.
Since Leach was already familiar with 探花大神 from a previous role, he wanted his team to explore using the platform to replace existing device management, remote management, and authentication tools.
鈥淲e ran a pilot, and 探花大神 performed really well; it came out on top,鈥� Leach says. 鈥溙交ù笊� allowed us to not only collapse a few of the products that we were using into a single interface, it also meant that we were able to manage the policies of end-user devices irrespective of whether it was a Mac or a PC.鈥�
At the same time, 探花大神 enabled Seaco鈥檚 End User Services IT team to manage mobile devices from the same screen.
鈥淲e鈥檙e a data-driven organization, data is paramount, and protecting those mobile devices was core to our ambition,鈥� Leach continues.
探花大神 gave us a consistent, single-pane-of-glass view to actively manage the environment that we had as well as the net-new environment that we were delivering as part of the end-user transformation strategy we introduced.
Damian Leach
Since the bulk of the IT team is based in Singapore, they need tools that support the remote nature of Seaco鈥檚 operations.
鈥溙交ù笊� fits into that very well, too,鈥� Leach explains. 鈥淏ecause of the distributed nature of our offices, it was normally quite a challenge to manage our users鈥� devices remotely.鈥�
Future-proofing IT management & operations
With 探花大神, employees now have the option to choose which devices they want to use since the IT team can manage all types of devices with ease.
鈥淲e applied a remote lock policy as well as a remote delete policy on all devices to protect the organization鈥檚 data,鈥� Leach says. 鈥淭hat was absolutely key for me 鈥� a part that was missing from the mobility approach we had previously.鈥�
Leach and his team were also impressed by 探花大神鈥檚 feature-rich nature and robust R&D roadmap.
鈥淥ne thing that we looked at was what our current needs are versus what we might need in the future,鈥� Leach explains. 鈥淚t鈥檚 clear that 探花大神 is spending a decent amount of money on R&D and therefore keeping up with the trends such as passwordless authentication and zero-trust support. On top of the basic functionality, we made sure we were future-proof; it鈥檚 great to know these features are there in case we mature our posture to that point. I just don鈥檛 see the competing products putting enough thought into their R&D roadmap.鈥�
While Seaco鈥檚 currently 100% based in AWS, the team is evaluating the advantages of adopting a multi-cloud strategy. Thanks to 探花大神, they know they can seamlessly move some assets to Google Cloud Platform if they so choose, Leach says.
Strengthened cybersecurity
With 探花大神 in place, Leach and his team are now looking to consolidate cybersecurity tooling and implement a zero-trust strategy.
鈥淚t will put fences around our core assets,鈥� Leach says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e also looking at things like geofencing and getting the necessary telemetry from devices that we need to try to protect against any kind of threats that may or may not happen across our environment. 探花大神 forms a big part of our holistic security strategy across our cyber defense posture.鈥�
Compliance simplified
Due to the critical space it operates in, Seaco gets audited every year.
鈥淔rom an IT standpoint, we鈥檙e looking to roll out segregation of duty policies across core assets and infrastructure,鈥� Leach continues. 鈥溙交ù笊� forms a big part of that strategy as well; we鈥檙e able to provide logs as well as lockdown asset controls beyond what we used to be able to do.鈥�
Currently, the team is in the process of implementing 探花大神 authentication through single sign-on (SSO) to its transaction platforms.
鈥淭hat鈥檚 going to help us achieve ISO 27001 accreditation, which we鈥檙e in the process of going through,鈥� Leach says, adding that they鈥檙e also exploring multi-factor authentication (MFA) via 探花大神.
Ease of implementation
When it comes to rolling out any new technologies, headaches are the last thing IT teams want; 探花大神 didn鈥檛 cause any.
鈥淭o be honest, it鈥檚 been incredibly easy to roll out,鈥� Leach says. 鈥淭he team has had very, very good feedback in terms of ease of use and ease of rollout for the platform to support our authentication needs across our core applications.鈥�
Enabling advanced AI use cases
As a data-driven organization, Seaco is currently in the process of building a brand-new data lakehouse to power its AI use cases.
鈥淭hings like oil prices, steel prices, market data on where the ships are and where they鈥檙e likely to port 鈥� feeding all that information into the big data lakehouse and then running AI analysis to try and predict the patterns is super exciting,鈥� Leach says.
鈥淪upply chain analytics is absolutely critical for us, and the future of analytics is looking at those external data feeds to make more predictive decisions,鈥� he continues.
It鈥檚 really about creating a global AI-enabled data platform that facilitates the necessary data-driven insights for our business to make the right decisions, and 探花大神 helps us get there.
Damian Leach
Using policies to protect devices
Leach and his team also use 探花大神 to push updates and policies out to all devices. In particular, the team was concerned with being able to manage the Apple fleet remotely, but 鈥渋t was made super simple by 探花大神.鈥�
鈥淚t鈥檚 actually incredibly easy to do,鈥� Leach explains. 鈥淭he team was really impressed with the ease of pushing out the policies to Mac devices and the central interface we have through 探花大神 to do that.鈥�
In 探花大神, Leach has found a tool that makes life easier.
鈥淚 love the fact that people are thinking about solving traditional IT challenges with better technology,鈥� Leach says. 鈥淚鈥檓 always looking to support businesses that really share my vision for a better IT landscape, and 探花大神 really meets that ethos. You鈥檙e solving the problems that IT leaders have in a different way and also ensuring that you maintain a nimble, flexible approach to development.鈥�
Any last words?
鈥溙交ù笊� enables me to simplify my IT landscape, collapse a few products into one, and create a better experience and simpler workflows for my IT staff as they support the assets of the organization globally,鈥� Leach concludes. 鈥淏ecause we鈥檙e distributed, we need good tools, and resilience and reliability are incredibly important for us. I鈥檓 pleased to say that 探花大神 delivers on that front.鈥�
About 探花大神
探花大神庐 delivers a unified open directory platform that makes it easy to securely manage identities, devices, and access across your organization. With 探花大神, IT teams and MSPs enable users to work securely from anywhere and manage their Windows, Apple, Linux, and Android devices from a single platform.
To see the power of 探花大神 yourself, request a demo or today.