Fortune 1000 Company Chooses Mailscape Over Solar Winds & ManageEngine

ABOUT THE CUSTOMER

For more than 35 years, this Los Angeles-based, Fortune 1000 enterprise has grown, harvested and marketed many well known agriculture brands. With 2 billion in assets and 500 employees across 20 plus locations, the organization is a leader in its industry and a member of the S&P 500.

THE CHALLENGE

As a company that supported various brands through development and acquisition, the decision to centralize infrastructure required not only device and server consolidation, but right-sizing of the IT support team. And, as the company continued to grow, it became apparent that the dedicated IT staff could not adequately maintain the exponentially expanding messaging platform or accommodate various user demands in a timely manner. Their IT Director stated “as there was increasing growth in responsibilities, the sheer number of Exchange servers that needed to be monitored were too great and therefore required an immediate and efficient solution."

And with the expanding number of servers, it grew more difficult to anticipate and efficiently respond to user needs. “The thing that everybody fears and hates is the first time you’re aware of that issue is based upon a user’s report. We need to know before the users do,” the lead Exchange Engineer added. The goal was not simply to consolidate but to improve the user experience in that the IT team could be “two steps ahead” of a negative impact on users

This required a solution that would not only provide the real-time visibility to act proactively, but provide the measurable and supportable data to resolve productivity blocks before users would be affected.

THE SOLUTION

Prior to installing Mailscape, the company utilized an alternative Exchange monitoring tool. However, once the license expired, the company re-evaluated their short and long term needs. It recognized that a more effective, consistent and comprehensive monitoring and reporting solution would support their expansion trajectory and service goals.

The company reviewed such products as Solar Winds and ManageEngine and found that neither could bundle the necessary monitoring functionality with the real-time enterprise reporting. Mailscape not only met the functionality criteria, but, according to the Exchange Engineer, the “first and foremost thing that caught my eye was this amazing visual component.” He was alluding to the easy-to-read central dashboard. He also approved of the reporting features. “Just the volume of the reports compared to Exchange Reporter Plus, wow. You could tell whoever set them up was an Exchange person and knew what to grab."

THE RESULT:

In less than a day, Mailscape was self-installed (“moderately simple”), customized and producing the first live streams of real-time data through a sleek “single-pane-of-glass” dashboard. What previously required juggling of multiple custom scripts and queries, in multiple silos of data, was now easily and prominently displayed on two large 60” monitors. The IT Director said, “Mailscape stands out you can see it from anywhere in the room. And if there is an error or an issue, BAM, it’s right there.” Any issue affecting Exchange across the enterprise could be seen and dealt with immediately according to priority and severity.

This setup also provided any team member, not necessarily fluent in Exchange technology, the ability to respond to a literal flashing alert and easily determine the root cause of the issue. This saved significant hours of troubleshooting, diagnosis and unnecessary escalation. What might have taken a day or two of down time and lost productivity could now be resolved in minutes.

For example, the engineer shared that errors regarding external mail flow might prompt alerts on half a dozen servers. But Mailscape cuts through the white noise and accurately and quickly identifies the issue as a Gmail delay issue and not an internal server problem.

Both the IT Director and the Exchange Engineer are also fans of the ENow support staff: “I’ve only had to work with you guys a few times, but every time it’s been extremely prompt and flawless. Quality people that know their stuff and get right back to me.”

One of the biggest results was the company’s ability to reduce dedicated hours to Exchange maintenance and re-assign headcount hours to higher value, revenue-supporting tasks. Although staffing was streamlined to one primary Exchange administrator to monitor over 30 servers, Mailscape relieved hundreds of annual hours and simplified the costly process of managing an enterprise messaging platform.

The system is more effective and efficient than ever. The one-look dashboard has given the company’s administrators confidence that all the components are constantly up and running smoothly and properly. The engineer added, “I can rely on the data…if the board is green that I can feel confident that everything’s ok and that’s a big load off my plate.”

And, the IT director summed it all up: “We are now able to invest time in non-monitoring and reporting day-to-day tasks such as migrations and constant acquisition of companies. Overall, Mailscape was exactly what doctor ordered.”

MAILSCAPE KEY FEATURES

Monitoring

• Mailscape’s one-look dashboard is an intuitive, visual approach to monitoring Exchange. Monitor all your environments vital components with a quick glance at a since screen, even from your phone or tablet. Empower your help desk and enable them to improve SLAs.
• Mailscape performs regular health checks to ensure all vital aspects of your messaging system are running optimally. It automatically tests critical Exchange services, such as Mail Flow, Outlook Web Access, ActiveSync, BlackBerry, Outlook Anywhere and DAG health.

Reporting

• Mailscape’s reporting provides both the real-time data and historical trending you need to optimize system performance, improve service levels, gain clear visibility into the messaging infrastructure, and plan for the future. Mailscape is equipped with over 220 reports out of the box and is easily customizable to meet your organization’s specific needs.
• Mailscape enables you to create reports based on several technologies, including BlackBerry, ActiveSync, iPhones, Outlook Client Version, Active Directory and Exchange objects.

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