SAS Group Consolidates Mail Servers and Cuts Costs by up to 50 Percent

Situation

Best known for Scandinavian Airlines, Stockholm-based SAS Group is the parent company to more than a dozen airline, hotel, and travel-related businesses. Fly anywhere in northern Europe, and you’re likely to fly on an SAS Group airline or affiliate. Scandinavian Airlines and its partners transport 32 million passengers a year to more than 770 destinations worldwide; travelers stay at 190 SAS hotels in 41 countries. SASFlightAcademy has trained pilots, cabin crew, and aircraft technicians for 150 different airlines. Jetpak Group offers door-to-door express package deliveries. In all, SAS Group companies employ more than 33,000 people in 180 countries. In 2004, gross revenue for SAS Group was SEK$58,073 million (approximately U.S.$7.2 billion).

Several years ago, SAS Group implemented the Microsoft® Exchange Server version 5.5 communication and collaboration server as its corporate messaging solution. The company deployed Exchange Server 5.5 in three Scandinavian sites—Stockholm, Copenhagen, and Oslo—as well as in New York, London, and Bangkok. Since 2004, employees have used the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client on their workstations. Flight crews and other employees not based in offices used Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access to send and receive e-mail from computers at airline offices, hotels, or public kiosks.

When the company first deployed Exchange Server 5.5, the architecture worked well for employees who didn’t rely heavily on e-mail for office communications. But in time, the messaging solution began to play a more mission-critical role in the company. Employees began using e-mail not only for internal and external communications, but also for custom solutions that SAS Group had developed in Exchange Server 5.5. Employees also began relying on Exchange Server 5.5 as a means for collaboration by using public folders as a simple document management system.

By early 2005, the Exchange Server 5.5 deployment had grown to 48 servers and 33,000 users. With such heavy use, the system was being overtaxed, and downtime was becoming an issue. Exchange Server 5.5 didn’t support single mailbox restoration, so solving an e-mail problem for a single user meant that the system had to be taken down and the entire database restored. The database itself was growing rapidly and was prone to errors. When critical incidents occurred because of database corruption, it would sometimes take more than a week to restore service. Lengthy, routine backup and restore operations also contributed to downtime.

Although interruption of service seldom affected all employees, downtime for even one company or group was very costly. The messaging system had become costly from an operations standpoint as well. In an effort to reduce backup and restore time, individual Exchange Server 5.5 servers typically supported fewer than 1,000 users each. That meant that many servers were required in order to service all 33,000 employees. The “server-heavy” environment was expensive to operate and time-consuming to manage and maintain. SAS Group wanted to cut hardware and operating costs drastically, improve uptime and system reliability, and simplify system management.

Solution

In 2004, Microsoft began working with SAS Group on a major project to upgrade its infrastructure systems. Aimed primarily at cost savings, the project involved updating and streamlining systems, which included deploying the Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, Microsoft Systems Management Server (SMS) 2003, Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) 2000, the Microsoft Windows® XP Professional operating system, and Outlook 2003.

In February 2005, SAS Group took the next step in the infrastructure project by upgrading to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 1 (SP1). The newer version included many enhancements that directly addressed issues the company was hoping to solve. Specifically, Exchange Server 2003 SP1 offered improved database architecture and server management capabilities that allowed SAS Group to consolidate servers, thereby cutting costs. In addition, improved support for clusters helped to increase server availability and reliability and made the system easier to manage; enhanced backup and restore capabilities reduced scheduled downtime.

SAS Group outsourced its messaging solution project to a consulting firm, which developed the Exchange Server 2003 SP1solution, including migrating the company’s custom Exchange Server 2003 SP1applications and public folders. The consulting firm also launched a pilot program to test the new mobility features supported by Exchange Server 2003 SP1. Selected SAS Group executives received Pocket PCs running Microsoft Windows Mobile® 2003 software for Pocket PCs. Using the “always up-to-date” feature, SAS Group executives kept current with e-mail, appointments, and contacts while traveling. Executives set their Pocket PCs to synchronize whenever they received a new e-mail, calendar appointment, or contact in their Outlook 2003e-mail accounts.

In October 2005, SAS Group completed the deployment of Exchange Server 2003 SP1, including migration of custom applications and public folders. The company plans to install Exchange Server 2003 with Service Pack 2 (SP2) by early 2006 and simultaneously deploy Smart phones running Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0 software for Smartphones to about 3,000 mobile users.

Benefits

In less than nine months, SAS Group has seen great benefit in the new solution. The company achieved its primary objective of lowering costs and, at the same time, increased system uptime and reliability. Both workstation and mobile users benefit from the improved performance and reliability and have more flexibility for remote access.

Cost Savings

For SAS Group, lowering costs was the driving force for upgrading its messaging system from Exchange Server 5.5. Although state-of-the-art at the time it was installed, the previous solution had become costly to operate and manage. With support in Exchange Server 2003 SP1 for multiple databases per server, SAS Group was able to increase the number of users per server. This feature alone allowed the company to eliminate 70 percent of its messaging servers. This reduction simplified the infrastructure, significantly lowering both hardware and operating expenses. Overall, the new solution enabled SAS Group to cut system costs by 40–50 percent. SAS Group hopes to further reduce costs by consolidating its six current Exchange Server 2003 SP1 deployment sites into just one or two sites.

Increase in Uptime and Reliability

With Exchange Server 5.5, downtime had become a major issue for SAS Group. The messaging database had become huge and was subject to corruption, making it difficult to recover from failures quickly. Many servers were required to support the volume of users, and routine backup and recovery times were prohibitively time-consuming. With Exchange Server 2003 SP1, which supports up to 20 databases per server, data management is far easier and more flexible. Backup and restore capabilities are greatly improved with support for Volume Shadow Copy Service, a feature of Windows Server 2003. Volume Shadow Copy Service offers instantaneous backup and restore capabilities and lets administrators back up Exchange Server 2003SP1 storage groups without taking systems offline. “Uptime is now 99.99 percent, and the system is so reliable, we haven’t received a single incident report since migrating to Exchange Server 2003 [SP1],” says Claes Norrman, IT Director, SAS Group.

Increase in User Productivity

Although the total number of e-mail users has not changed significantly, the volume of e-mail has increased dramatically since SAS Group migrated to Exchange Server 2003 SP1. Before, users became frustrated with the e-mail system because of poor response time and frequent downtime. With the new system, they get great response time and appreciate how much more dependable the system is. As a result, they trust the system more and rely on it as their primary tool for communication which, in turn, makes them more productive than before.

Perhaps the most significant productivity success story has been that of the SAS Group executives who are part of the pilot mobility program. “Windows Mobile [software] has literally changed the way these executives work,” says Norrman. “Not only are they able to keep in touch with current news and information, but they receive e-mail and calendar information almost instantly. When a secretary books a meeting or appointment for them, they are notified almost instantaneously. They can tell up-to-the-minute what their schedules are.” One SAS Group executive relies so heavily on his Pocket PC that he carries five batteries with him when he’s traveling.

Of the new solution, Norrman says, “We have had no doubts about the migration, especially for an environment the size of ours. Exchange Server 2003 [SP1] is so greatly improved and offers so many advantages that it would have been foolish for us not to migrate. And lowering our overall operating costs so dramatically has definitely met our expectations.”

Microsoft Windows Server System

Microsoft Windows Server System™ integrated server infrastructure software is designed to support end-to-end solutions built on Windows Server 2003. It creates an infrastructure based on integrated innovation, Microsoft’s holistic approach to building products and solutions that are intrinsically designed to work together and interact seamlessly with other data and applications across your IT environment. This helps you reduce the costs of ongoing operations, deliver a more secure and reliable IT infrastructure, and drive valuable new capabilities for the future growth of your business.

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