Microsoft Exchange Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Tool Company Improves Email Performance with Switch to Microsoft Exchange Server

OverviewCountry or Region: SwitzerlandIndustry: Manufacturing

Customer ProfileFor 130 years, PB Swiss Tools has produced high-quality hand tools in the Swiss Emmental region. The company has 140 employees, and its products are 100 percent made in Switzerland.

Business SituationPB Swiss Tools had outgrown its MDaemon email system, which delivered slow performance, lacked remote access, and required too much administration.

SolutionPB Swiss Tools replaced its MDaemon email with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 to take advantage of higher performance, remote access, calendar features, and streamlined administration.

Benefits Better user experience Enhanced customer service Higher efficiency, lower costs Solid groundwork for growth

“We spend about 85 percent less time on email administration. The upfront investment in Exchange Server 2010 has been worth it because, over the long run, the solution lowers our total cost of ownership.”

Marc Braitsch, IT Administrator, PB Swiss Tools

PB Swiss Tools, a manufacturer of high-quality hand tools, had an MDaemon email system that provided slow performance and required too much maintenance. The company switched to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 and gained significantly higher email performance. Employees now have easy remote access to their email when traveling and have new tools for scheduling meetings and managing their email. As a result, employees are more productive and can respond to customers faster. The solution has also reduced the time the company spends administering email by approximately 85 percent. PB Swiss Tools expects to gain further benefits related to email archiving and discovery when it deploys Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1. With its new low-maintenance email system, PB Swiss Tools can spend more time driving its manufacturing business forward and less time managing its IT systems.

SituationPB Swiss Tools started with a village blacksmith in 1878, in the picturesque Emmental region of Switzerland. The family-owned company now has 140 employees who produce high-quality hand-held tools for Swiss and foreign markets. PB Swiss Tools performs 100 percent of its manufacturing in Switzerland, produces more than 2,200 different types of tools, and ships approximately 700,000 units each month. It exports 66 percent of its goods to more than 41 countries, including markets in Europe, Asia, and the United States.

PB Swiss Tools relies on email to communicate with customers and to receive and process orders for tools. Customers send orders in the body of an email message or attach an electronic data interchange file to a message, and those orders are then processed for fulfillment or production by the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. The company, which has enjoyed great success over the past 30 years, struggled to keep pace with its growing volume of email. It relied on an email system called MDaemon Email Server.

“With MDaemon, every single message is maintained as an independent file, and we were storing hundreds of thousands of files on the system,” explains Marc Braitsch, IT Administrator at PB Swiss Tools. “The directory structure of MDaemon resulted in very slow performance. Users complained about how unresponsive the system was.” Because order processing was linked to

email, slow server performance made it difficult for employees to submit orders. Employees often had to wait several minutes for the system to send and receive their messages.

MDaemon also didn’t provide remote-access capabilities. PB Swiss Tools executives and sales representatives spend a great deal of their time traveling to customer locations, and they had to use a virtual private network (VPN) to access their email. Also, managers on the production floor are rarely near a computer. All of these employees needed web-based and mobile access to email, to ensure that they could respond quickly to customer inquiries and requests. In addition, PB Swiss Tools wasn’t satisfied with the calendaring functionality provided by MDaemon. “It was limited and very slow,” says Braitsch. Employees resorted to trying to schedule meetings over the phone or through email, and they used paper-based calendars, but it was a challenge to keep everyone updated and make sure they attended meetings on time.

PB Swiss Tools, which prides itself on efficiency and quality, has a small IT department of two people. The IT administrator responsible for email also deployed and maintained computers for administrative staff and production workers. “He spent 8 to 16 hours each week solving email problems; that was time he couldn’t afford,” Braitsch says.

The MDaemon system was also running out of storage space, which further degraded email performance. And although the IT department backed up

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“The directory structure of MDaemon resulted in very slow performance. Users complained about how unresponsive the system was.”

Marc Braitsch, IT Administrator, PB Swiss Tools

email data, it had no failover plan in place to ensure high availability. “We also didn’t have any archiving capabilities,” says Braitsch. “We have fairly stringent compliance regulations in Switzerland, and it’s becoming increasingly important to be able to search and discover information sent through email.”

PB Swiss Tools decided to replace its email system. Braitsch says, “We wanted users to be able to send and receive email without a problem and IT staff to spend less time administering, so we could focus on other tasks that drive the manufacturing business forward. We didn’t want to think about email. We just wanted it to work.”

SolutionPB Swiss Tools began to evaluate different email systems, including Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, IBM Lotus Notes, and the Kolab open source solution. Kolab wouldn’t integrate easily with the company’s ERP system. Also, Braitsch had heard positive feedback about Exchange Server from members of the IT community. As a result, PB Swiss Tools opted for the Microsoft solution. When the company was ready to deploy, Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 had been released. The company was eager to take advantage of its improvements in areas such as management and remote access.

In June 2010, Baggenstos IT Services and Solutions, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, helped PB Swiss Tools deploy Exchange Server 2010 on three HP ProLiant DL380 server computers

running the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Exchange Server 2010 Mailbox server role runs on one server, the Client Access server role on the second, and Active Directory Domain Services on the third.

Baggenstos and PB Swiss Tools deployed Exchange Server 2010 in parallel to the company’s MDaemon environment. They automatically configured 140 new user accounts through the Exchange Server 2010 Autodiscover service, which relies on a user’s email address and password to configure a profile. Once all employees had moved their email to the new system, PB Swiss Tools decommissioned MDaemon.

Baggenstos helped PB Swiss Tools deploy the Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 messaging and collaboration client, connect the software to its ERP system, and, after comprehensive compatibility testing, upgrade to Microsoft Outlook 2010. “We helped PB Swiss Tools lay the groundwork for a Microsoft-based email infrastructure,” says René Lübke, Team Leader Projects at Baggenstos.

Employees rely heavily on iPhones for mobile communications. With Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync in Exchange Server 2010, employees can synchronize data from their Exchange Server accounts—such as contacts, email messages, and calendar items—to their iPhones. Employees also now gain the benefit of web-based access to email and calendars through Microsoft Outlook Web App, from any major web browser.

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Further, with Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010, PB Swiss Tools employees can schedule meetings with people inside and outside the organization. Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010 also deliver other timesaving features to help employees manage daily tasks and higher volumes of email. For example, Conversation View groups messages from a single conversation together, even if individual messages are stored in separate folders. Each group of messages can be moved, deleted, or otherwise managed as a whole.

The company also plans to implement a high-availability solution with the Exchange Server 2010 Database Availability Group feature, which uses continuous replication to keep database copies up to date and provide automatic database recovery from failures at the disk, server, or data center level.

Initially, Baggenstos will help PB Swiss Tools manage the Exchange Server 2010 environment. Administrators use the Exchange Management Console, a graphical user interface that provides streamlined navigation and integrated management and troubleshooting tools.

PB Swiss Tools is in the process of implementing an email backup solution from Symantec. When the backup solution is in place, the company will deploy Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1 (SP1) to take advantage of enhancements in archiving and discovery. For instance, with Exchange Server 2010, PB Swiss Tools can store older messages in an archive mailbox that’s seamlessly accessible from Outlook

2010 and Outlook Web App. With SP1, IT staff will be able to provision the archive mailbox on a different mailbox database than the one where the user’s primary mailbox is located. This flexibility will help the department to implement a tiered storage strategy. Also, improvements to the multi-mailbox search feature, such as a search preview function, will make it even easier for designated compliance workers or auditors to search multiple mailboxes for email message content, attachments, calendar items, tasks, and contacts.

BenefitsBy switching from MDaemon to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, PB Swiss Tools has created a high-performance email environment that helps employees communicate with each other and customers more quickly. Employees can access the system remotely, which also contributes to better customer service. In addition, PB Swiss Tools has reduced the time it spends administering email by approximately 85 percent.

Better User ExperienceWith Exchange Server 2010, PB Swiss Tools employees enjoy much faster email performance. “Users no longer have to wait minutes to send and receive emails,” says Braitsch. “Since we switched from MDaemon to Exchange Server 2010, we have had problem-free communication with our ERP system. Performance is very fast.” Now employees can spend more time focused on important work: producing tools and responding to customers. “Exchange Server 2010 helps increase our productivity because

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“Since we switched from MDaemon to Exchange Server 2010, we have had problem-free communication with our ERP system. Performance is very fast.”

Marc Braitsch, IT Administrator, PB Swiss Tools

employees can get on with their work instead of worrying about email,” says Braitsch. “They feel more confident in the technology they are using, and more positive about how the IT department is supporting them in general. We get almost no complaints about email now.”

With Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010, PB Swiss Tools has also given employees timesaving tools for managing their email and organizing meetings. “It will take some time for users to get used to a new way of working, but Outlook Web App and Outlook 2010 give them a solid foundation for enhancing efficiency,” says Braitsch.

Enhanced Customer ServiceEmployees can now access the PB Swiss Tools email system remotely, through a web browser or from a mobile device. “This definitely improves our customer response time,” says Braitsch. “With mobile devices and web access, employees can get to their data faster, and they can respond to each other and to customers more quickly. We live in a time where people expect immediate responses. Exchange Server 2010 helps us improve the overall, long-term impression we make on our customers.”

Higher Efficiency, Lower CostsThe PB Swiss Tools administrator responsible for email used to spend 8 to 16 hours each week managing users’ email accounts, answering help-desk requests concerning poor email performance, and troubleshooting these performance issues. “MDaemon was becoming increasingly difficult to

maintain,” says Braitsch. “With Exchange Server 2010, the system pretty much runs itself. In the months since we have deployed, we have had no problems with email. Furthermore, we have much happier users.” Now, the PB Swiss Tools administrator spends only 1 to 2 hours each week managing the system. “We spend about 85 percent less time on email administration,” Braitsch says. “The upfront investment in Exchange Server 2010 has been worth it because, over the long run, the solution lowers our total cost of ownership.”

Features like personal archives and multi-mailbox search will also improve efficiency and lower costs. Braitsch says, “We had planned to use a third-party archiving solution, but we can avoid that cost with Exchange Server 2010 because archiving is built-in.” Solid Groundwork for GrowthTo continue to provide top-notch tools, PB Swiss Tools must keep pace with changes in its industry, and continue to enhance and expand its manufacturing technologies. “In my field, I have plenty of other challenges to overcome,” says Braitsch. “For instance, there are always changes to manufacturing and business processes that we must continually integrate with our ERP system. I don’t want to also have to worry about email. I want stability and speed, and that’s what we have gained with Exchange Server 2010. We are very happy with the new solution.”

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“Exchange Server 2010 helps increase our productivity because employees can get on with their work instead of worrying about email.”

Marc Braitsch, IT Administrator, PB Swiss Tools

“Employees can get to their data faster, and they can respond to each other and to customers more quickly…. Exchange Server 2010 helps us improve the overall, long-term impression we make on our customers.”

Marc Braitsch, IT Administrator, PB Swiss Tools

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can help you achieve better business outcomes while controlling the costs of deployment, administration, and compliance. Exchange Server 2010 delivers the widest range of deployment options, integrated information leakage protection, and advanced compliance capabilities, which combine to form the best messaging and collaboration solution available.

For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, go to:www.microsoft.com/exchange

For more information about Microsoft Unified Communications, go to:www.microsoft.com/uc

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For More InformationFor more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to:www.microsoft.com

For more information about Baggenstos IT Services and Solutions products and services, call +41 (44) 832 66 66 or visit the website at: www.baggenstos.ch

For more information about PB Swiss Tools products and services, call +41 34 437 71 71 or visit the website at: www.pbswisstools.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published February 2011

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio−Windows Server 2008 R2−Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Microsoft Office−Microsoft Outlook 2010

Technologies−Active Directory Domain Services−Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync

−Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Service Pack 1

−Microsoft Outlook Web App

Hardware HP ProLiant DL380 server computers

Partners Baggenstos IT Services and Solutions