Success Stories
Gaining Control of Email Administration
Organization Overview:
GeoMet is an independent energy company primarily engaged in the exploration for and the development and production of natural gas. GeoMet was founded in 1985 and has operating and production facilities in North America and Canada.
Drivers:
GeoMet was previously using a hosted POP3 email solution that was offered through their local ISP. While this solution had been appropriate for several years several factors required the need for more control over email and better integration with Blackberry mobile devices. Some of these drivers were:
· Sarbanes Oxley (SOX) compliance required GeoMet to be able to integrate their email with Active Directory authentication so that IT staff did not have direct access to all user passwords.
· An increased level of spam filtering was needed because the current solution was allowing too much spam to come into their environment.
· Blackberry device usage was increasing driving users to want syncing between Outlook and their mobile devices.
Solution:
MicroPulse, a local IT solutions provider and Microsoft Gold certified partner, proposed that GeoMet move to Exchange 2007 to achieve their goals. MicroPulse’s first task was to configure a Windows 2003 server on Dell hardware. We then implemented Exchange 2007 SP1 and migrated from the hosted POP3 solution to this new platform. Next, MicroPulse migrated the email filtering solution to AppRiver’s SecureTide filtering service. This is a fully managed email protection service that protects email from unwanted spam and viruses, giving an increased level of protection over the current solution. Finally, Blackberry Professional Server was implemented to provide the integration point between Outlook/Exchange and the Blackberry mobile devices.
Outcome/Benefits Achieved:
This complete email migration has given GeoMet the ability to meet its SOX compliance criteria by allowing all users to manage their own email passwords. It has also provided shared calendars for easier scheduling and shared contact lists throughout the organization. The addition of a common global address list and distribution lists was a side benefit that helped GeoMet better manage internal email addresses. The addition of the Blackberry Server has made users more productive while on the road by giving easier access to email, calendars and contacts. This is actually driving additional users to move to Blackberry devices as well for increased productivity on the road. Finally AppRiver has reduced the amount of incoming spam that GeoMet receives, thus reducing the administration time spent dealing with unwanted emails and increasing productivity.