Exchange 2003 deployment at Holler Digital Ltd
Overview
Holler's IT systems had grown up and been patched and added to organically over several years. The environment had been mainly supported by internal staff whose skills lay in web development rather than server infrastructure. Holler recognised the need to bring in experts to make things run better and to allow their developers to get back to earning money for the company. They chose ISN to put together a plan for upgrading the server infrastructure.
Plan
Email was identified as a key area for improvement. Mail for 30 PC and 5 Mac users was delivered from external POP3 host servers and stored in local PST files. These files were becoming difficult to manage and susceptible to corruption. Managing diaries, maintaining contacts and coordinating meetings and meeting room availability were cumbersome manual exercises. Remote access to email was not available. Holler agreed that ISN's proposed solution, based on introducing a new Windows 2003 Server with Exchange 2003 Server was a logical way forward.
Solution
As part of the installation of Outlook 2003 on each PC ISN imported existing users' mail, contacts and calendar events into their new Exchange mailbox. Data was now consolidated in the Exchange database and reliable backup from a single location was possible. It was also now possible to control threats from spam and viruses centrally. Secure remote access was implemented using Outlook Web Access.
Results
Holler's technical manager, Peter Eichhorn reports “We are very pleased with the resulting system, it has all but eliminated the need for desktop support in the company. Exchange 2003 has provided a robust platform for email and has allowed the development team to work more effectively together”.