Del Monte Foods

Del Monte Foods Improves Employees’ Mobile Access and Streamlines IT Tasks

Del Monte Foods is a nationwide producer of human food and pet products in the United States. Because of its multiple locations, number of frequent travelers, and the increasing preference of executives to communicate with wireless devices, the company wanted to make it easy for mobile users to connect to the corporate network. Del Monte also wanted to offer all users more storage space for their e-mail messages, and to automate time-consuming IT tasks. Del Monte decided to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007. Users appreciate the new, full-featured Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access interface, the ease of connecting with their wireless devices, and expected fourfold increase in mailbox size. IT staff appreciate the ability to script additions and deletions of user accounts, and the 15 percent reduction in help-desk calls resulting from the software’s smoother operation.

Situation

Del Monte Foods is a leading producer and distributor of processed fruits, vegetables, and tomato products in the United States, with annual sales of more than U.S.$3 billion. Headquartered in San

The new Outlook Web Access interface is really awesome. It’s pretty close to that of the desktop Outlook client software. It’s a big improvement over the previous version. Chris Habala Senior Architecture Analyst Del Monte Foods

Francisco, the company’s core product line runs from A to Z (apricots to zucchini), and in 2002, it acquired several additional high-profile consumer brands, including StarKist, College Inn broth, Kibbles ’n Bits, and 9Lives. Additional acquisitions in 2006 included Milk-Bone and Meow Mix pet products. With 17 production facilities and 18 distribution centers throughout North America, plus sites in American Samoa, Ecuador, and Venezuela, Del Monte has more than 17,000 employees during peak seasons, including 8,900 seasonal workers.

With so many dispersed locations, employees communicate through e-mail. “Everybody, except for a small number of seasonal factory workers, is involved with e-mail,” says Chris Habala, Del Monte Senior Architecture Analyst. “We do a lot of workflow through e-mail, including capital appropriations and employee hire and termination processes. Messaging plays a very important role in our business.”

Though generally pleased with its Microsoft® Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server, Del Monte was facing some challenges in managing its messaging environment. One issue was employees’ increasing need to be connected while traveling. “We have a lot of users who are very mobile,” says Habala. “Many of our VPs and senior VPs would prefer not to travel with their laptops. They want the ability to do their work on the road with only a phone or a personal digital assistant.” Habala wanted better support for these mobile executives.

Another concern centered on e-mail storage quotas; the amount of space allocated to each employee for e-mail had been set at 100 megabytes. Habala says, “Every week, we were getting at least 10 to 15 phone calls saying, ‘I want more space.’” But adding more storage for everybody would represent a significant hardware investment for the company.

Finally, there was the level of support required from the IT department. Creating accounts for new employees and deleting accounts for those who had left the company took a lot of time. “We go through a lot of accounts, probably 80 to 100 a month and sometimes more at the beginning and end of peak seasons,” says Habala, noting that the recent acquisitions have added to the flow of work. At one time, the new-account process had been paper-based, with the Human Resources department sending out a form describing the type of hardware, e-mail account, and groups a new employee would require. Workflow processes—sending an e-mail to the appropriate personnel—started streamlining the procedure, but the work of manually creating and deleting those accounts still proved time-consuming.

Del Monte was interested in a new messaging environment that would better support mobile devices, enable cost-efficient storage increases, and help the IT department become more efficient .

Solution

In June 2006, Habala learned about the planned release of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 and realized it could bring Del Monte significant benefits. The company signed up with Microsoft to provide real-world feedback on a prerelease version of the new software.

The scripting capabilities in the Exchange Management Shell will save us a lot of time that was just wasted…we will probably save a combined total of 40 to 60 hours per week.  Chris Habala Senior Architecture Analyst Del Monte Foods

In late August, Del Monte installed Exchange Server 2007 on an HP ProLiant DL580 server computer running the Microsoft Windows Server® 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition operating system. Habala began migrating users as he started deploying the software to its full production environment. “We have Exchange 2003 servers in Ecuador, American Samoa, and the United States, and before we migrate them to Exchange Server 2007, we want to make sure we have all of our bases covered,” Habala says.

Regarding the initial deployment, Habala says, “We got Exchange Server 2007 up and running in no time. There were no major stumbling blocks, roadblocks, or anything like that. It’s been a very smooth transition migrating the users to Exchange Server 2007 and getting their mobile devices set up on the Exchange ActiveSync® technology.” The only issue in the migration to Exchange Server 2007 involved Captaris RightFax, which Del Monte uses to send faxes via e-mail, and which currently lacks a connector for Exchange Server 2007. Until that’s available, Habala is limiting the conversion to users who don’t need to send faxes via e-mail.

All users who have been migrated are using mobile phones—such as the Palm Treo 700w or the Verizon XV6700—that take advantage of Exchange ActiveSync technology. The full production environment will include some users who have other wireless devices or mobile phones (such as the LG VX 9800), and Del Monte will continue to maintain infrastructure for those devices.

For security, Del Monte uses Microsoft Forefront™ Security for Exchange Server to protect its users from malicious e-mail messages. Del Monte will also install the Microsoft Internet Security and Acceleration (ISA) Server 2006 integrated edge security gateway to help protect its IT environment from Internet-based threats while connecting remote users with Exchange Server 2007. Exchange Server 2007 interfaces with a hosted external service from MessageLabs for additional protection against spam and e-mail viruses, and products from Symantec for file-level protection. Exchange Server 2007 also fully integrates with the Active Directory® service, which Del Monte has long used to manage identities and relationships in its network.

The company is looking forward to upgrading to the 2007 Microsoft Office system release, and about half of the already-converted users are using the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client for e-mail, scheduling, task lists, and more.

Benefits

For Del Monte, the features and enhancements of Exchange Server 2007 will provide productivity gains for mobile employees because of the improved user interface, increase e-mail quota sizes due to the performance gains in 64-bit technology, and enable more efficient IT operations because so many tasks can now be scripted.

Full-Featured Mobile Client Software

Habala particularly likes the improved Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access experience in Exchange Server 2007. “The new Outlook Web Access interface is really awesome,” he says. “It’s pretty close to that of the desktop Outlook client software. It’s a big improvement over the previous version.”

The new Outlook Web Access interface helps make users more comfortable migrating to the new technology. “It’s so close to the desktop client that users are familiar with the interface,” Habala says. That familiarity has reduced the resistance some people have toward new software that they fear will be difficult to learn.

Only minimal training was required. Habala says, “We just showed our users how to get to the new Outlook Web Access address and helped them set up the features in their client software. It’s been a very easy transition for users.”

Improved Mobile Productivity

With Exchange Server 2007, mobile employees can now do more when they’re out of the office. “Our mobile employees can receive documents on their devices, update them, and send them back,” says Habala. “That will be a huge benefit for us.”

Del Monte has set up all of its migrated laptop users with the Outlook Anywhere feature, which provides Web access to Exchange Server 2007 using the RPC over HTTP protocol. This eliminates the need for users to establish a virtual private network (VPN) link just to check their messages. Habala says, “Outlook Anywhere was very easy to set up, much more so than it was in Exchange Server 2003, and it’s been working flawlessly. It gives our laptop users ‘anywhere’ availability—basically, anywhere they can get an Internet connection, they have access.”

Not only do far fewer users now have to worry about their VPN connections, but the technology will allow Del Monte to alter its future VPN strategy. “We’re looking to implement a new VPN solution,” Habala says, “and this will change how we architect it, which will definitely save us money.”

Larger Mailboxes

Exchange Server 2007 runs in a 64-bit environment, which provides more efficient use of memory. The result: Habala will be able to increase users’ e-mail quotas by a least a factor of three. From the current 100-megabyte limit, Habala says, “I hope to get the quota limit to somewhere around 350 to 500 megabytes.” Users will thus gain the storage capacity they need, and the IT department won’t have to field so many requests for increases.

In the same vein, Habala is eager to investigate the Unified Messaging component of Exchange Server 2007, which can deliver voice mail and e-mail to the same inbox. Users—especially those on the road—could save time by getting all of their messages in the same place, and the company may be able to save money by centralizing and/or consolidating systems and sites.

Increased IT Operational Efficiency

“Because we get so many user additions and deletions, a huge benefit for us is the ability to script that,” says Habala. The new Exchange Management Shell, built on Windows PowerShell technology, provides a command line interface and scripting language for administrators. For example, Habala will use scripting as part of the new-employee workflow process. Scripts can create a user ID and mailbox, assign the employee to appropriate groups, and send out verifications to the appropriate personnel. “The scripting capabilities in the Exchange Management Shell will save a lot of time that was just wasted, really,” he says. “Once the new hire/termination workflow is fully automated, we will probably save a combined total of 40 to 60 hours per week.”

Furthermore, Habala expects the IT department will save time because the Outlook client software will require less user training. “As users move to a new version of Outlook or to Outlook Web Access, of course we’ll give them training on what they need for some of the new features, but it will be a very smooth transition going from one client product to the next. It’ll save us time there.”

Finally, Habala believes that Exchange Server 2007 will decrease the number of help-desk calls that IT has to field. Many of those calls result from network connectivity hiccups, especially at remote sites where the wide area network connections can be uncertain. “The balloon pops up saying the user has lost connectivity, and he or she calls the help desk,” he says. However, using Exchange Cache Mode in Office Outlook 2007 means that the hiccups don’t affect performance. “Our users won’t be calling the help desk as much, because the little balloon is less likely to pop up when in cached mode. I’d say we’ve cut help-desk calls by 15 to 20 percent for the users we’ve moved over to Exchange Server 2007.”

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For more information about Del Monte Foods products and services, call (415) 247-3000 or visit the Web site at:
www.delmonte.com

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Document published October 2006