4-page Case Study - Posted 11/7/2009

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Super Group

Logistics Company Expands Communications Capabilities with Messaging Solution

Super Group is a supply chain management business that handles all activities involved in sourcing, procurement, and logistics management. Based in South Africa, Super Group has 10,000 employees and owns companies in numerous African countries, Australia, and New Zealand. The company is always looking to reduce costs while providing the latest communication and collaboration capabilities to employees. To enhance its unified communications platform, Super Group chose to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Server 2010 as a part of the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program. Benefits of the upgrade include expanding e-mail service to employees without computers, reducing IT administration, and cutting storage costs. The move to Exchange Server 2010 will also make it easier for Super Group to transition some or all user e-mail accounts to Microsoft Online Services in the future.

Situation

Super Group is a holding company with a broad-based supply-chain management business offering a comprehensive range of services and world-class skills. With its head office in Johannesburg, South Africa, Super Group has approximately 10,000 employees organized in five divisions and owns companies in numerous African countries, Australia, and New Zealand. The organization is as dynamic as it is diversified, with companies frequently being bought and sold.

This business model leads to a large amount of employee onboarding and turnover, making communication and collaboration critical to its success. Ronald Loewenthal, Customer Service Manager at Super Group explains, “Collaboration is quite important for us—and with different businesses coming in and going out, it’s possible for employees to remain isolated in their divisions. We try to break down these barriers as much as possible so that one side of Super Group knows what the other side of Super Group does. We want our employees to use collaboration tools as much as possible, and we are always looking to provide the latest capabilities.”

Super Group is always looking for ways to reduce the cost of providing these IT solutions to employees. One of its cost-cutting efforts has been to deploy Microsoft® technologies while reducing the number of solutions from other vendors. “In an effort to simplify our IT environment and improve employee productivity, Super Group has changed over the last five years from a 50 percent Microsoft shop to an over 95 percent Microsoft shop,” explains Loewenthal.

Super Group has been relying on a unified communications solution comprising Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, and Microsoft Office Professional 2007. The majority of its 2,500 e-mail users access their e-mail, contacts, and calendar through the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client. The remaining 7,500 employees don’t access computers as part of their jobs and currently do not have e-mail accounts. Loewenthal comments, “When companies are bought by Super Group, their employees immediately fall into our Exchange messaging architecture and are given a new address, mailbox, and, in some cases, a mobile device. There is constant change in our messaging environment because of this. So, one of the fundamental reasons for using Microsoft Exchange Server with Outlook is that it is a very common application—everyone knows how to use Outlook, and IT resources know how to maintain Exchange Server. With us buying companies and constantly onboarding new users, Microsoft technology allows us to avoid spending additional time and money on massive training efforts.”

The company’s Exchange Server 2007 environment was a single-copy cluster across two nodes: one active mailbox server and one passive server. Storage was managed on a storage area network (SAN) with fiber channel disks. Because the disks are small, however, a large number of them were required to meet the storage needs of the organization. This configuration was expensive, which limited the ability to provide larger mailboxes to all users. Adam Orpen, Enterprise Architect at Super Group, says, “Due to the storage architecture, the user mailbox sizes have been tiered, with the majority of users on 250 MB-sized mailboxes.” Reducing the cost of storage was an important goal for Super Group.

Solution

With the support of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Dell, Super Group identified Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 as an important upgrade to its Microsoft communication and collaboration solution. Super Group had already been working with Dell to deploy Windows Server® 2008 with Hyper-V™ virtualization technology throughout its environment. “Dell has the proven skills and the lab environment to implement a great solution for us,” notes Loewenthal. “We are using their expertise on Hyper-V to produce a really cost-effective Exchange Server solution.” In August 2009, Super Group began the testing and deployment of Exchange Server 2010 as part of the Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 Rapid Deployment Program.

Storage

Exchange Server 2010 has reduced disk input/output (I/O) requirements by 70 percent when compared to Exchange Server 2007, which enables a variety of new storage options. With the deployment of Exchange Server 2010,

We have 10,000 employees, but only 2,500 of them are computer users. We would like to improve the computer skills of these workers, and providing them with e-mail accounts is a great way to accomplish this. Ronald Loewenthal Customer Service Manager, Super Group

Administration

To simplify IT administration, Super Group will take advantage of capabilities in Exchange Server 2010 to perform online mailbox moves, which enable administrators to move mailboxes for maintenance without disrupting service to employees, and role-based access control (RBAC), which enables administrators to grant employees the rights to perform administrative tasks that align closely with their areas of responsibility.

Expanding Access

Super Group is a firm believer in the maxim that a company is only as good as its people, so much so that ‘People and Culture’ is one of the group’s four strategic priorities. Exchange Server 2010 has made it possible for Super Group to start moving forward with a critical next step in its social enrichment program. Super Group is planning to implement e-mail kiosks at its major sites and will provide e-mail accounts to its remaining 7,500 employees. These users will use Outlook Web App to access their e-mail accounts from these kiosks. “We have 10,000 employees, but only 2,500 of them are computer users. We would like to improve the computer skills of these workers, and providing them with e-mail accounts is a great way to accomplish this,” explains Loewenthal. Outlook Web App is a great way to provide these users with full access to Exchange Server capabilities such as calendaring, tasks, and contacts, and prepare them to use the full Outlook client in the future.

Additional Deployment Activities

By the end of 2009, Super Group is also planning to upgrade to Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 so it can deploy voice and conferencing solutions to its head office and primary warehouse facility, where approximately 60 percent of its employees work. Furthermore, it will deploy unified messaging capabilities in Exchange 2010 to improve employee communication; for instance employees will have access to a text version of their voice mail.

Benefits

The company’s investments in its unified communications capabilities help position itself for future growth; for instance, by transitioning some or all e-mail accounts to Microsoft Online Services in the future.

Improved Employee Communications

Exchange Server 2010 is the cornerstone for unified communications at Super Group. By enhancing the capabilities provided to employees through unified messaging, and by upgrading to Microsoft Outlook 2010 on the desktop, the company expects to improve communications and increase productivity.

In addition, Super Group will take advantage of the fact that Outlook Web App is now a full-featured e-mail client to provide a low-cost e-mail solution to employees who do not have a computer. Providing all employees with e-mail accounts helps Super Group improve corporatewide communications and supports the company’s social enrichment program. This is especially important for an organization that frequently makes acquisitions.

Reduced IT Administration

The IT department appreciates that Exchange Server 2010 has many features that will make managing the environment easier and more cost effective. For example, new capabilities for employee self-help, facilitated by RBAC, should reduce the workload of administrators.

Exchange Server 2010 is also expected to reduce administration time with the implementation of the personal archive capability. Employees will be able to keep all of their e-mail messages on their server where they can be easily managed rather than storing them in local PST files. “PST files are quite a nightmare for IT to manage. We look forward to Exchange 2010 negating the need for supporting PSTs. It’s going to take a lot of headaches away for us,” says Loewenthal.

Reduced Storage Costs

Because SATA disks can typically provide 10 times more storage for less than half of the cost of fiber channel disks, moving to SATA disks on its SAN system dramatically increases the amount of storage Super Group can allocate for Exchange Server and reduce costs at the same time.

Prepared Company to Meet IT Goals

The company’s long-term goal is to move many of its employees to Microsoft Online Services, a hosted solution that will help to further reduce IT costs. By doing so, Super Group can provide employees with online access to Microsoft Office Communications Server, Exchange Server, and Office SharePoint Server.

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 Dell products and services visit the Web site at:
www.dell.com

For more information about Super Group products and services, call (27) (11) 523 4000 or visit the Web site at:
www.supergrp.com