Today we announced that Shea Homes, the largest privately-held homebuilder in the U.S. has deployed and is experiencing great success with OpenDNS Enterprise. J.F. Shea Co., its parent company, is also using OpenDNS Enterprise. For us, its hugely exciting that the company America trusts to build our homes and engineering marvels has trusted OpenDNS Enterprise with the task of protecting its networks and employees from malware and unsafe content.

It’s no easy task to be one of the nation’s largest and most respected homebuilders and civil contractors. Aside from a strong commitment to excellence and customer satisfaction, and building global landmarks like the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam, it also means a constant and significant amount of corporate growth. For Shea Homes and parent company J.F. Shea Co, keeping up with that rapid growth meant purchasing, deploying and managing new malware protection and content filtering appliances for its various networks every time a new office was added, or more bandwidth was needed. The company and its subsidiary were stuck in an ugly cycle of appliance management, a story that’s all too familiar for many rapidly growing organizations. But escaping the cycle was not only easy, it resulted in significant savings of both time and resources.

The J.F. Shea Co. and its divisions were early adopters of cloud-based services like OpenDNS Enterprise because the move let the companies free up significant IT budget and time, and downsize datacenters across their distributed locations. This was especially significant during the economic downturn that left the building industry particularly hard hit. Notably, J.F. Shea Co.’s cloud-based evolution was rooted in the transition to OpenDNS Enterprise. Shea Homes soon followed by adopting OpenDNS Enterprise for all of its North Carolina locations. The organizations not only leverage OpenDNS Enterprise for its unique ability to block malware and botnets at the DNS level, but also for the added protection the organizations receive by filtering malicious sites that are frequently the sources of such malware.

Using OpenDNS Enterprise afforded J.F. Shea Co. a savings of more than $25,000 and gave Shea Homes the ability to downsize its datacenters and let its IT team focus more closely on proactive maintenance. We’re excited to say that OpenDNS Enterprise does this each day for companies large and small. And we love spreading those stories, helping other SysAdmins around the world learn how OpenDNS Enterprise can do the same for them. If you have questions about OpenDNS Enterprise, or want to learn how it can help your business stay safe from malware or inappropriate content, join our webinar next Wednesday, Oct. 26.

If you’re using OpenDNS at work and want to share your success story, email Success@OpenDNS.com.

Join our free webinar, focused exclusively on our rock-solid, best-in-class malware protection this Thursday, July 14th, at 11am PT, and learn how OpenDNS can secure your network from malware and botnets once and for all.

Two weeks ago, we unveiled major improvements to our malware blocking.  In addition to blocking malicious hostnames, we now block hostnames that resolve to known malicious IP addresses. That’s a big step forward, and an industry first.

Hear from the expert: David Ulevitch, our founder and CEO, will spend a snappy thirty minutes detailing, first, the threat malware presents to organizations, and, second, how our improved malware protection can cut malware off at the knees and block command and control communication. Effectively, this renders malware harmless to your network, and secures every device, from laptops to smartphones to tablets, used by your employees. Have specific questions about how our malware protection works? This is your opportunity to get answers.

Date: Thursday, July 14

Time: 11 AM PDT to 11:30 AM PDT

Don’t miss out. Sign up now, and don’t forget to invite your colleagues.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Over the years, OpenDNS engineers have spoken far and wide about the virtues of our DNS infrastructure and our customers have enjoyed the many features we provide on top of the DNS. We’d like to connect the dots.

We’ll give an overview of the OpenDNS architecture that allows us to answer more than 21 billion DNS queries each day with zero downtime.  We’ll show where each of our features fit into this architecture and why the DNS is the best medium for providing content filtering, typo correction, stats, SmartCache, and more.

David Ulevitch, our founder and a seasoned network engineer will be covering much of the network and DNS infrastructure.  I am an engineer at OpenDNS and designed the stats system.  I’ll be talking about many of our features and how they use the DNS to their advantage.

This webinar will be more technical than usual.  It starts February 4^th at 10:00 AM Pacific time and lasts just 30 minutes.  Register now and don’t forget to tell your friends!

A month ago we gave you a sneak peek at the newest members of the OpenDNS family – OpenDNS Deluxe and OpenDNS Enterprise. Feedback since then has been phenomenal and so many of you are interested in the new, more feature-rich services.

We’re hosting a webinar next week on Wednesday, October 21 at 10 am PST to give you all of the details about what the new services will include. OpenDNS Founder David Ulevitch will host with a special guest from Nvidia, one of the first companies to deploy OpenDNS Enterprise. In the webinar we’ll:

• Go feature-by-feature over the new services.
• Give you a snapshot of the main differences between the new services and the free service you use and love today.

We know you’re busy, so like all of our webinars, we’ll keep this one to just 30 minutes.

Sign up here.

With more than 25,000 schools and school districts using OpenDNS today (including some of the U.S.’s largest districts), our service has fast become the standard among K-12 schools. Attend our 30 minute webinar this Thursday and learn why.

We’re thrilled to have Gavin Guynes join OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch as co-host. Gavin, a longtime OpenDNS user who runs the network for Mississippi’s Madison County Schools, will tell you all about how he set up OpenDNS quickly and easily and share the many benefits Madison has gained from making the switch. You’ll learn about how the free service can help you achieve CIPA compliance, save your district lots of money and keep your students and staff safe online.

We know you’re busy, so we’ll keep the webinar short and informative – just 30 minutes. When you sign up you’ll be prompted to invite colleagues, so help us spread the word!

“ABCs of OpenDNS for K-12 Schools in the 2009-2010 Year”
Thursday, August 20, 2009
10 AM PDT – 10:30 AM PDT
Register here

Just a friendly reminder that the “OpenDNS for Schools: Free and Efficient Web filtering for students” webinar is this Wednesday, Dec. 3 at 11 AM PST. It’s free to everyone who wants to attend, so be sure to invite friends and colleagues who aren’t using OpenDNS yet.

The event, hosted by Founder David Ulevitch, will answer all of your questions about OpenDNS in a K-12 school environment. Here’s the description:

K-12 schools make student security on the Internet a top priority. Learn how to use OpenDNS to enable free Web content filtering and security for students, achieve CIPA compliance, set up OpenDNS in minutes without the need for expensive hardware appliances, as well as how OpenDNS differs from competitive offerings.

We like our webinars short and sweet, so this one will be just 30 minutes in length. And no worries if you can’t tune in live – we’ll have a recorded version posted to the site after Wednesday.

Invite friends and register here. See you Wednesday!

UPDATE: Watch the recorded webinar here.

OpenDNS U is a webinar series we’re kicking off next week. We rounded up all the questions you’ve asked us over the past several months and designed a series of webinars to address them. The entire series is designed squarely with you in mind.

The first one, hosted by CEO David Ulevitch, is happening next Wednesday, January 30, at 11 a.m. PST. The topic is one we know lots of you will excited about “Using OpenDNS stats to your advantage: How to understand and act on statistical data about your network.” Here’s a more thorough description:

Your OpenDNS statistics are rich with data that can help you spot problems before they become headaches. Attend this 30 minute webinar and learn how to block hosts from your stats dashboard, adjust timescales to see trends emerge over time, filter lists based on domains, and much more!

We like our webinars short and sweet, so all of them will be just 30 minutes in length.

Invite friends and register here.