Elabs

Hosted Service Provider to Reduce Mailbox Costs by 50 Percent with Messaging Solution

Elabs is a Germany-based hosted service provider that supports IT solutions for resellers and customers of all sizes. Elabs requires a highly available, secure, and cost-effective messaging environment to supply its customers with communication and collaboration services. To improve its service offerings and reduce costs, Elabs deployed a pilot of Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010, as a part of the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program. With the new capabilities in Exchange Server 2010, Elabs expects to simplify administration, provide better site resiliency with higher availability, lower mailbox costs, and reduce storage requirements, resulting in a 50 percent reduction in the cost of hosting a mailbox. Using the new messaging environment, Elabs can offer more premium services to help improve its customers’ communications capabilities.

 

Situation

Headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany, Elabs is a hosted service provider that supports IT solutions for resellers with customers of all sizes. Thomas Keck, General Manager at Elabs, says, “Though we do sell directly to customers, our main business is selling through partners. We enable independent software vendors (ISVs), system integrators, and Internet service providers (ISPs) to sell our software services or platform services.” It is critical for the Elabs IT staff to manage multiple software applications and data services for customers on a highly reliable, secure, and cost-effective computing platform.

Elabs runs two product lines for e-mail messaging and communication: Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. The Exchange Server 2003 offering combines e-mail messaging with third-party products, including FAX, archiving, mobile phones, and other services. The Exchange Server 2007 environment is based on the Microsoft Solution for Hosted Messaging and Collaboration 4.5 (HMC 4.5). HMC 4.5 gives hosting providers the tools and guidance they need to easily provision customers with Exchange Server, Office Communications Server, and Windows® SharePoint® Services.

In addition, Elabs has developed a custom solution called “Cockpit,” which works with HMC to include additional programs, such as Windows Server® 2008 Terminal Services and Microsoft Dynamics® CRM business software, and handle the reseller billing process. Christian Stenger, Service Manager, says, “One of the most important parts of the HMC 4.5 solution is that it automates delivery and provisioning. We also added a billing system on top of HMC so that we can deliver white label services to our customers. They can resell their own branded services using our systems and the provisioning and billing is fully automatic.”

Facing challenges resulting from maintaining two separate e-mail systems, Elabs wanted to deploy a solution that could unify the two e-mail environments and provide the latest communications capabilities to its customers. Elabs also wanted to look into alternatives to its storage area network (SAN) systems with fiber channel disks. Keck explains, “With previous versions of Microsoft Exchange Server, we preferred the SAN because of performance, resiliency, and also availability, but it was expensive.”

Solution

In August 2009, Elabs deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 as part of the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program. Elabs worked with Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Siemens to plan, test, and implement the solution. “Siemens is a really great partner for us. They have their own big environment and understand the problems we face, especially with our mixed environment,” says Keck. “They are not only supporting us in the testing of Exchange Server 2010, they are also really involved in the decisions of how to migrate our current solutions.”

We estimate that Exchange Server 2010 can reduce our costs to provide a mailbox by more than 50 percent. Thomas Keck General Manager, Elabs

Elabs plans to replace both of its existing e-mail messaging environments with Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. The Exchange Server 2003 environment will be migrated first, followed by the Exchange Server 2007 environment, once the HMC integration and Cockpit solution are available for Exchange Server 2010. “At the end of 2009, we will begin to offer Exchange premium services. This service will differentiate us from other hosted mailbox services here in Germany. We want to base this service on Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 because it will really decrease our production costs,” says Keck. Elabs plans to take advantage of new capabilities in Exchange Server 2010, including a new solution for high availability and disaster recovery, expanded storage options, new administration capabilities, and its ability to interoperate with the rest of the Microsoft communications and collaboration solutions.

Elabs plans to expand its solution offering by delivering premium e-mail services based on Exchange Server 2010. Keck says, “With this upgraded package, we will be able to provide exciting new services to our customer base, including integrated and improved antivirus, antispam, archiving, and backup features. We will also include two mailbox-size plans: one with a 5-gigabyte mailbox and one with an unlimited mailbox. Exchange Server 2010 is what makes it possible for us to offer this.”

Elabs will also offer the Unified Messaging capabilities in Exchange Server 2010, which include the new voice-mail preview voice-to-text technology. When users receive voice mail, they can access a text-based version from a unified inbox in the Microsoft Outlook® messaging and collaboration client, Outlook Web App, or Microsoft Outlook Mobile, instead of calling in to check voice mails. Users can view the caller’s information, respond to messages via e-mail, or file them in folders. “Exchange Server Unified Messaging is great because we typically travel by car here in Germany. You call in and have Exchange read your e-mail messages to you. The German-language version is working great.”

Exchange Server 2010 has dramatically reduced input/output (I/O) requirements, which makes possible a variety of new storage options. Elabs will switch the disk type it uses in its storage area network (SAN) from fiber channel to Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) disks. Keck explains, “SATA disks are much cheaper and provide great performance with Exchange Server 2010.”

Elabs also found that Exchange Server 2010 offers an easier way to replicate e-mail data to a remote location, in order to safeguard its Exchange Server environment against site-level disasters. The database availability group (DAG) feature combines on-site data replication and off-site data replication into a single solution. Keck notes, “DAG will help us with scalability and add flexibility to our high-availability options. Backups should also get easier. With DAG, it seems like it will be quite clear how to set up a new backup scenario.” Using DAG, Elabs will have added flexibility in the way that it can implement high availability.

Administration will be easier with Exchange Server 2010 because of capabilities such as the online move mailbox feature, role-based access control (RBAC), and improved coexistence capabilities for on-premises and hosted solutions. With Exchange Server 2010, Elabs will be able to move customers onto its Exchange Server 2010 with seamless transition because Exchange Server 2010 makes it easier to manage an environment with users in both an on-premises solution and in a hosted solution. The Federation feature will also enable hosting companies to share calendar information with a new customer before the migration begins. Users can also be transitioned between the environments or between databases without taking the accounts offline. With RBAC, Elabs can provide limited administration capabilities to its customers when they need it.

Elabs also is planning to provide Microsoft Outlook 2010 to its customers when it becomes available. “We always provide the latest version of Outlook because it enables our customers to receive the full benefits of Exchange Server.” Customers can download Outlook from Elabs as part of their hosting agreement. Elabs will actively help customers to migrate to Outlook 2010 to take advantage of new capabilities such as:

• MailTips – provides users with feedback on a message before it is sent, such as whether the recipient is out of the office.
  
  
• Conversation view – gives users a new way to organize messages, which pulls together all of the messages in a conversation into one simple view, even if they have been stored in separate folders.
  
  
• QuickSteps – provides users with a new capability that automates frequent workflows such as replying to the sender and then deleting the message.
  
  
• Office Communications Server interoperability –shows a user’s contact list from Office Communicator. The user can initiate a conversation with contacts, whether by e-mail, instant message, conference, or telephone call.

Benefits

Elabs is expecting a number of benefits from upgrading its existing Exchange Server 2003 and Exchange Server 2007 hosted environments to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, including decreasing storage and mailbox costs while improving performance and ensuring high availability for its customers. Keck says, “We estimate that Exchange Server 2010 can reduce our costs to provide a mailbox by more than 50 percent.” Elabs also will use capabilities in Exchange Server 2010 for additional productivity solutions included in its Premium Exchange Services package, such as Unified Messaging and increased mailbox size for each user.

Reduces Costs

Elabs will take advantage of the reduced I/O requirements in Exchange Server 2010 to significantly reduce storage costs. The company will switch from small, expensive fiber channel disks to large, cheap SATA disks. By making this change, the hosted services provider can considerably increase the amount of mailbox storage it offers to resellers and customers without an increase in costs. Keck comments, “The main area of cost savings is storage. The cost savings from switching from fiber channel to SATA disks is about 70 percent. The I/O system of Exchange Server 2010 is really optimized. If you look at Exchange Server 2007, it's good; but Exchange Server 2010 is really great. You can significantly reduce the disk costs when you run Exchange Server 2010.”

Simplifies Administration

Exchange Server 2010 has many features that make managing the environment easier for hosting companies like Elabs. High-availability solutions have more flexibility and are more straightforward to implement than in the past. Elabs can perform coexistence and migration from the customer’s environment to Elabs solutions with less work and will have more capabilities to manage mailboxes within the environment.

I think Exchange Server 2010 is one of the best Microsoft products that has come out in the last ten years. Thomas Keck General Manager, Elabs

Elabs can use the many options of DAG when the company provides high-availability options to its customers. It can implement as much redundancy as is required for each customer, whether that means providing redundant servers, storage, or data centers. “Providing high availability in Exchange Server 2010 is also much better because it's much simpler. It's not as complicated, so we can use cheaper, standard components,” says Stenger.

Moving users between Exchange Server environments will also be easier. “Our customers have their local systems and we need to integrate with them,” explains Keck “This has not been easy in the past, but Exchange Server 2010 will make this easy.” One capability that Elabs can use to make the transition easier is Exchange Federation. By enabling data to be shared between accounts on its environment and those on the customer’s environment, Federation enables a seamless transition.

With Exchange Server 2010, Elabs IT administrators can move mailboxes between databases without taking users offline. This means that Elabs customers can continue to send and receive e-mail without interruption, a significant benefit in avoiding downtime when Elabs performs moves during operational hours.

Improves User Experience

Elabs will improve customer satisfaction by using Exchange Server 2010 to offer an increase in mailbox size to 5 gigabytes or larger. This larger mailbox size ensures that employees can access the information they need to do their jobs in a quick and efficient manner. Customers also will be able to use improved search capabilities in Exchange Server 2010. “When I first looked at Exchange Server 2010, search was the first thing I noticed. It was very fast and had great results. This may be a small point, but most customers use search every day, so this is going to have a huge impact. The search is not just working better, the search is working great,” says Keck. Outlook 2010 also provides many new capabilities that will help Elabs customers be more efficient such as conversation view and QuickSteps.

Elabs will also improve its customers’ experience by providing them with Exchange Server 2010 Unified Messaging. Since it is now available in German, many Elabs customers will enjoy having the service in their local language. Users also will benefit from the message transcription so that they can read messages rather than listen to them.

By deploying Exchange Server 2010, Elabs will create a lower-cost messaging solution that makes it possible for customers to improve the quality of their communications. Keck concludes, “I think Exchange Server 2010 is one of the best Microsoft products that has come out in the last ten years.”

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Exchange 2010 can help you achieve better business outcomes while controlling the costs of deployment, administration, and compliance. Exchange delivers the widest range of deployment options, integrated information leakage protection, and advanced compliance capabilities, that 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

For More Information

For 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 in the United States and Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. 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 Siemens IT Solutions and Services products and services visit the Web site at:
www.siemens.com/it-solutions

Siemens AG
Siemens IT Solutions and Services
Germany
Otto-Hahn-Ring 6
81736 Munich
Tel: +49 (0)89 636 51289
E-Mail: andreas.essing@siemens.com
 
For more information about Elabs products and services, visit the Web site at:
www.elabspro.com

Elabs AG
Hanauer Landstrasse 324
60314 Frankfurt am Main
Germany