Cupertino, CA January 21, 2003 Fast-food chain Burger King is set to implement a Web access and identity management for its e-business network as part of its initiative to offer more services to its employees over the Internet.
An $11.3 billion business, Burger King, which, along with its franchisees, operates more than 11,450 restaurants around the world, has looked to the Internet to provide a cost-effective medium for communicating with its employees.
As part of that initiative, Burger King is implementing a solution from Oblix, a developer of identity-based security solutions, to deliver enterprise Web access and identity management capabilities for its e-business network.
With initial plans to rollout Oblix's NetPoint to manage the digital identity information and access privileges of its U.S. corporate employees in early 2003, Burger King plans later to expand the deployment to include franchisees and supply chain partners worldwide.
Oblix said that NetPoint can lower the cost of building and managing an e-business environment by automating the process of making changes to user identity information and access privileges through a delegated administration and workflow system. The NetPoint solution's self-registration and delegated administration features allow a company to automate updates to user identities rather than incurring the cost of staffing help desks or call centers.
This capability also can make it easy to keep user identity information up-to-date in large and dynamic online environments so that critical information can remain secure regardless of the number of changes in users and security levels, according to the provider.
Rafael Sanchez, Burger King chief information officer, called NetPoint "a critical component" of the company's Internet business. "The product's rich authorization capabilities guarantee that our employees, franchisees and suppliers are granted the appropriate access to online information, and the scalability of Oblix NetPoint ensures that [Burger King] will be able to keep costs under control as we securely deploy an Internet infrastructure," Sanchez said.
Burger King engaged systems integrator PricewaterhouseCoopers to help build out the company's directory and identity management infrastructure. The restaurant chain is also currently standardized on Microsoft Active Directory and will link its users to its SAP R/3 suite of applications through the portal.
"An early technology adopter, Burger King Corp. had a vision to leverage the Internet to offer more services and conduct more business online with its employees, franchisees and supply chain partners," said Gordon Eubanks, president and CEO, Oblix. "By selecting Oblix NetPoint as its identity management and Web access standard, Burger King Corporation will be able to securely and cost-effectively support its vision."
