Customer Solution Case Study
/ Accountants improve communications with smart phone email access.
“[Thanks to Microsoft Exchange Online] we have prolonged the life of our server, saved the cost of a new one and avoided the cost of a Blackberry server.”
Alan Blue, Partner, Gilliland & Company
Gilliland & Company is a chartered accountancy practice in Glasgow. Their problem was that their main server was nearing its capacity with a resultant loss of processing speed. Five of the firm’s staff had Blackberries to enable continuous access to their emails but they did not wish to purchase a Blackberry Enterprise Server with the limited overall benefits that it would provide.
The firm consulted its IT advisers, IA3, who recommended Microsoft Exchange Online. The firm moved its entire staff to the new system and this freed up capacity on the existing server.
By switching to Microsoft Exchange Online Gilliland & Company was able to defer the capital cost of a new server for at least a year and avoid the cost of a Blackberry server licence (approximately £2,500) altogether. It improved company communications, saved money and freed up space on the main server resulting in greater efficiency.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published May 2011
Business Needs
“We wanted to ensure that the partners and associates continued to receive uninterrupted access to their emails on their Blackberries,” says Alan Blue, a partner at Glasgow accountants, Gilliland & Company. With five mobile users, this raised a real problem – cost – because it looked like the only way to do it was by investing in a Blackberry Enterprise server, costing around £2,500, which is a lot of money for a few handsets.
In fact, Gilliland & Company was looking at an even bigger bill. Their in-house email server was approaching the limit of its capacity and would have to be replaced.
Solution
Alan Blue set Microsoft Partner IA3 the challenge of solving these two problems. IA3 is, in effect, Gilliland & Company’s outsourced IT department. They recommended moving the firm’s email off the in-house server and onto Microsoft Exchange Online. This meant that the firm’s email was now running on Microsoft’s secure infrastructure and that employees received their messages over the internet direct from Microsoft and not by connecting to the company’s head office.
This solution killed two birds with one stone. First, it moved email handling off the company’s server, freeing up storage space and extending its life. Second, Microsoft Exchange Online supports Blackberry (and other smartphones) directly, without the cost of a separate licence. In addition, the new system was faster, freed up company bandwidth and reduced the company’s dependence on a single system.
Benefits
“We have prolonged the life of our server, saved the cost of a new one and avoided the cost of a Blackberry server,” says Blue. However, cost savings are not the only benefit.
All staff are now able to access their emails at home on any web browser via Outlook Web Access and this gives them even more flexibility.
In addition, the firm now has the assurance that their email is stored on secure, well-managed, geographically redundant, high-availability Microsoft servers with a 99.9% uptime service level agreement. They can be confident that their company email is safe, sound and available wherever and whenever they want it.
Perhaps the biggest compliment is also the most mundane. Despite saving money and getting advanced new technology, “the biggest compliment is that we have seen no change. Well, everything is a bit quicker but no-one has had any problems and we’re just getting on with business as before.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published May 2011