Case Study - Medium Size Interstate Business
Business Challenge:
A medium sized interstate business with six branch offices in three states was experiencing issues with an outdated infrastructure and email messaging system. The email server (MS Exchange 5.5) and operating system (Windows NT 4.0) were no longer supported by the original manufacturers for software updates, vital security patches and anti-virus protection. The system was experiencing software and hardware errors that required constant monitoring by the ons-site staff taking valuable time away from other network and system maintenance. Most of the efforts were towards reactive error correction and hardware replacement. No one had any real confidence in the system. In addition the hardware underlying the servers were many years old and experiencing hardware failures. This hardware was not standard but "home built"and thus did not have any form of maintenance associated.
Network Solution:
Texcel, with its experience with server solutions, network, security, storage and messaging background provided a great fit for this problem.
We presented the customer with a comprehensive systems solution designed around IBM xSeries servers, with Microsoft Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2003 standard editions. Email anti-virus & an anti-spam solution was also presented to greatly reduce the amount of spam entering the company and to secure the incoming and outgoing emails from the company.
Upon acceptance of the solution, the Texcel team had an upgrade checklist and document ready. The entire migration from a Windows NT domain to an Active Directory based domain and the migration from a Exchange 5.5 Server to a Exchange 2003 Server was performed successfully in one night. Users came in the next day in the morning and logged on to a much better and more secure system and did not have to go through any time lost during the transition. A comprehensive antivirus system and anti spam system were implemented during this migration as well. Over the next few days, the client side software was updated to the latest and older obsolete computers were replaced. Domain controllers were also deployed at the various out-of-state branch offices to better serve clients at those locations.
Business Results:
Using this updated design the company was able to better serve its branch offices and reduce the time that associates had to waste on spam and virus emails. The IT department also experienced a more reliable system which allowed improvements to be implemented in other areas that could not be looked at previously. The IT administrator is quoted as saying: "Prior to Texcel coming in I was spending all my time fighting fires with this system. After they were through the email system no longer took all my time just keeping things running."