C2C Increases Microsoft Exchange Efficiency Throughout Smithson

C2C announced that Smythson, the British luxury leather goods and stationers whose ranges include iconic leather diaries, hand crafted jewellery and watch boxes and handbags, have installed ArchiveOne Express across their employees’ 130 mailboxes.

Selling through high end boutiques, online and luxury department stores worldwide, Smythson have seen an increase in orders to their online store – particularly on products that are customisable, for example, stationery and leather goods with names, initials and personal messages engraved in gold, silver or blind lettering. Like all successful retail organisations, alongside the rise of online orders comes the increase in email communications and when some of the stores’ high-end stationery is detailed with 24-carat gilded edges and personalised monograms, attention to detail and a traceable record of communications is paramount.

Hemanth Racherla, Technical Analyst, Symthson, describes the email environment prior to ArchiveOne Express being installed: "The prompt for capturing a more efficient way of storing and retrieving email actually came with the upgrade of our Microsoft Exchange 2003 server to Microsoft Exchange 2007. We keep all emails for 7 years, but data growth was such that simply the 2003 server was congested and crashed frequently due to sheer volume of data."

The prolific email growth was also beginning to cause problems in the retrieval of mails stored on Networked Attached storage. "We needed to address growth and restoration issues with the implementation of an effective email archiving and data protection solution," continued Hemanth. "After evaluating other solutions in the marketplace, we contacted C2C as their ArchiveOne Express solution seemed to fit our requirements exactly both in terms of functionality and, of course, price."
 
Installation commenced in the summer of 2010. The knock on effect for primary storage on the Exchange server was immediate and visible. "Although migration was easier with everything seamlessly captured under ArchiveOne Express, it was the immediate space saving that appealed most – we made a space saving of around 70%  overnight and 95% of our users knew no different – the only thing that changed for them was clicking on an icon to retrieve archived items."
 
Policy management was also alluring. Internally Smythson’s retrieval procedures revealed that 75-80% of retrieved emails are less than 7 days old. ArchiveOne Express allowed them to simply set and implement that policy. For compliance everything still remains stored for seven years but as data is compressed and migrated off the primary store, space on the Exchange server is no longer an issue.
 
With the installation still in early days, Hemanth is also relishing the ability to be able to control all PST files from one central place across the organisation. He continues: "With so many PST files floating around the organisation, we are looking forward to using the PST Management and Discovery tool. This will ensure there is no-where for PSTs to hide and all files are backed up. Overall, the implementation of ArchiveOne has been easy to manage, straightforward and extremely good value for money."
 
Andrew Brown, Sales Manager EMEA, C2C Systems commented: "Smythson’s issues prior to the installation of ArchiveOne Express are typical of any growing, successful organisation. The knock-on effect of installing ArchiveOne Express rebounds through the organisation with significant advances in the speed of retrieval and access of mail; surety of email data and lower costs."
 
C2C’s Archive One was installed at the beginning of July 2010.