Transpara

Online Subscription E-Mail Services Reduce IT Workload, Increase Company Control

Transpara, based in California, provides Visual KPI software to give businesses direct access to operational data and key performance indicators. Committed to using Microsoft® technology as well as a hosted, subscription-based e-mail and messaging model, the company was eager to try the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services. The Business Productivity Online Suite is business-class communications and collaboration software that is delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft, and sold with Microsoft partners. It includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Online, Microsoft Office Communications Online, Office Live Meeting, and Exchange Hosted Filtering. Transpara is thrilled with the simplified management, improved flexibility and control, cost savings, and the guaranteed reliability of 99.9 percent scheduled uptime.

Situation

Transpara helps companies to establish corporate transparency throughout the enterprise. The company’s Visual KPI (key performance indicator) operations intelligence software gives customers in the manufacturing and utility sectors real-time asset and operating data through any Web browser on desktops, laptops, and more than 350 mobile devices. Transpara, a Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner, is based in Pleasanton, California, and has 25 employees and contractors.

Compared with the effort that it takes to manage an on-premises server, the effort that it takes to use the Business Productivity Online Suite is a big zero. It’s great.  Michael Saucier Founder and CEO Transpara

At the company’s inception in 2005, Founder and CEO Michael Saucier knew that he wanted to use a subscription-based, hosted solution to meet the company’s e-mail and messaging needs. Because the company is a startup, such a solution would be more economical than using an on-premises solution. Saucier says, “E-mail, document collaboration, and Web meetings are essential infrastructure but are not directly related to our business purpose. So we prefer a hosted solution because it lets us devote our capital to our business rather than to infrastructure.”

Saucier also describes Transpara as being “100 percent committed to a pure Microsoft stack.” The software that the company relies on includes the Windows Server® 2008 operating system with Hyper-V™ technology, Microsoft SQL Server® 2005 data management software, Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, and the Microsoft Visual Studio® Team System 2008 Team Foundation Server development system. To meet its e-mail and messaging needs, Transpara chose Microsoft Exchange Server 2003—and later Exchange Server 2007—and an external host.

Hosting the solution externally requires little effort in comparison with on-site server management, but Saucier has had to change providers in search of greater reliability. “Our current hosted solution works, but I get a fair amount of dropout instances—periods where our e-mail client software is disconnected from the host server or when e-mail is slow to load,” says Saucier. He would like to achieve “five nines of reliability”—99.999 percent uptime.

Another drawback with the external hosting model has been a lack of mailbox interconnectivity. To keep Transpara employee mailboxes connected to one another—for example, for employees to be able to view and interact with colleague calendars—Saucier and his IT administrator had to implement third-party connector software. He says, “Because mailboxes are managed 100 percent independently, we require an extra layer of technology—connectors—to manage them.” And because tending 25 e-mail accounts independently is, as Saucier puts it, “a ridiculous amount of work,” it’s a cost of hosting that Transpara would like to eliminate.

“We want to make IT invisible to us in sales, development, marketing, and operations,” says Saucier. “We will have succeeded in that when nobody ever complains about the IT infrastructure or e-mail availability and when everyone is flat-out developing, marketing, and selling software.”

Solution

When Saucier learned about a hosted e-mail, messaging, and collaboration solution from Microsoft—the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services—he could not wait to try it. “The only reason we didn’t host everything at Microsoft to begin with is because it wasn’t an option. We’ve been waiting for this kind of a service for years,” says Saucier.

Designed for customers who want a managed IT model, the Business Productivity Online Suite is business-class communications and collaboration software that is delivered as a subscription service. It is hosted by Microsoft and sold with Microsoft partners. By removing the hassle of routine management from IT personnel, the services help IT to focus on core business initiatives that help move the business forward. At the same time, the Business Productivity Online Suite gives companies a direct relationship and service level agreement (SLA) with Microsoft. Customers receive automatic technology upgrades and can quickly scale up or down based on business demand.

Just the fact that the Business Productivity Online Suite gives us automatically shared calendars is going to remove a whole collection of technologies—external connectors—from our stack.  Michael Saucier Founder and CEO Transpara

The Business Productivity Online Suite includes Microsoft Exchange Online, Microsoft Office SharePoint Online, Microsoft Office Live Meeting, Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering, and Microsoft Office Communications Online, which are available individually or as a suite. By using the central Online Administration Center—a Web-based tool—customers can manage users, create and configure SharePoint sites for collaboration, administer Office Live Meeting for Web conferencing, and download Directory Synchronization, coexistence, and migration tools.

Tight integration between the Business Productivity Online Suite and applications in the 2007 Microsoft Office system helps ensure that users receive an integrated experience, whether they access applications online only, or both on-site and online.

“It took 20 minutes to set it up,” says Saucier. “It took another half an hour for the Domain Name System changes at my Internet service provider to propagate. It was incredibly fast and easy.”

Transpara plans to move all its employees to Exchange Online and Office Live Meeting. It will continue to use Office SharePoint Server 2007 on premises, and may move to Office SharePoint Online at a later time. After deploying the solution initially to a handful of users, Saucier says, “We’ll have all our users on the Business Productivity Online Suite by the end of the year. There are a lot of management issues that we expect the Business Productivity Online Suite to solve, including shared calendars and global address lists as immediate benefits.”

Benefits

Transpara is relieved to be able to entrust its technology even more completely to Microsoft. “For small and midsize companies that want an integrated feel and an integrated solution for their e-mail capabilities—this is it,” says Saucier. The solution provides simplified management, improved reliability, more flexibility and control, and cost savings.

Simplified Management

For Saucier and his single IT administrator, “The Business Productivity Online Suite means more integration and less administration. It means one less thing to manage.” Saucier notes that this applies not only to software maintenance but also to routine tasks like billing, which will be more consolidated. “Everything is in one place, and that makes us happy.”

With regard to software management, instead of managing individual mailboxes for 25 users, centrally managing all user accounts has greatly simplified things for Saucier and his IT administrator. “I love the Microsoft Online Administration Center. We can submit support tickets and get responses quickly. There’s a support tab where I can submit service requests. They get assigned within Microsoft, answered, and then assigned back to me. So rather than sitting on hold with the help desk for 20 minutes, I can see at a glance who is waiting on whom.” Saucier says that this amount of integration means that “we don’t have to log on some other place or manage this stuff over e-mail, which inevitably gets lost. It’s all right there in one place—and we benefit from that instantly.”

More visibility and control extends to routine administrative tasks as well. “It's easy to use the Business Productivity Online Suite to add and delete accounts. We can do it ourselves, online, at any time—which is essential,” says Saucier. He adds, “This is possible because the Business Productivity Online Suite uses an organization-centered host, rather than a user-centered host.”

The beauty of it is that we can modify our use of the Business Productivity Online Suite whenever it is convenient for us. And it’s going to cost less while giving us more control.  Michael Saucier Founder and CEO Transpara

Transpara will soon be able to completely eliminate an entire layer of its software. “Just the fact that the Business Productivity Online Suite gives us automatically shared calendars is going to remove a whole collection of technologies—external connectors—from our stack.” In turn, says Saucier, “Having a more streamlined infrastructure will increase reliability.”

Improved Reliability

As part of its commitment to a high standard of service, the Business Productivity Online Suite guarantees 99.9 percent scheduled uptime and offers financially backed SLAs. By using applications that are designed, built, tested, and deployed according to Microsoft software development disciplines—and data center design best practices—Saucier expects to achieve optimal reliability. “We have very high expectations for reliability,” he says.

So far, Transpara has had no reason to doubt. “Our overriding motive for using the Business Productivity Online Suite—to move as much of our infrastructure as possible to Microsoft—transcends whatever problems we do or don’t have with other people’s technology. Our goal has been consistent from day one.

“Microsoft technologies are the basis of every aspect of our company’s infrastructure,” Saucier continues. “Our ability to take advantage of the pre-integrated nature of the entire Microsoft stack is what helps us to move faster than our larger competitors.”

More Flexibility and Control

The Business Productivity Online Suite makes it easy for clients to use the best business model for them. Clients can migrate totally to the subscription service, or they can maintain their existing Microsoft Office system applications and use the Business Productivity Online Suite as needed. Meanwhile, they can use the Directory Synchronization Tool to keep everything synchronized.

Saucier says, “The beauty of it is that we can modify our use of the Business Productivity Online Suite whenever it is convenient for us. And it’s going to cost less while giving us more control. So it’s really all about giving us greater flexibility without adding complexity.”

At no additional cost, Transpara also gains greater flexibility in its use of Microsoft Office Live Meeting. “By moving all our users over to the Office Live Meeting service, we will have individual Office Live Meeting accounts instead of having to share one,” says Saucier. This delivers significant value to Transpara, whose 25 employees are highly dispersed. Saucier explains, “In today’s business environment, interacting with remote partners, customers, and contractors is a daily part of doing business.  As such, we basically live on Office Live Meeting. We rely on it for everything from sales discussions and demonstrations to software deployment.” 

Saucier is really looking forward to no longer having to worry about employees competing to use Office Live Meeting at the same time. “That used to be a problem, and now it’s not,” he says.

Cost Savings

The solution offers many kinds of savings. The subscription-based IT model offers more predictable costs than an on-premises solution, as Saucier is already aware. “Yes, it does cost less, so we are saving money. But the Business Productivity Online Suite helps us to save more than that—like time and effort and frustration.”

As a small startup, Transpara is “on” 24 hours a day, seven days a week. So far, using the Business Productivity Online Suite has helped the IT administrator to use his time more efficiently. “With the Business Productivity Online Suite, we are excited about having more time to make our customer portal perfect, manage our Active Directory® service, keep the Web site up to date, manage the many vertical market simulations we employ for demonstration purposes, and the list goes on,” says Saucier.

Saucier concludes, “It is the differentiating characteristic of the Business Productivity Online Suite that I can remotely manage these integrated accounts, rather than spend my time calling three different help desks.

“This opens up a brand new opportunity for lots of businesses that want a managed, low-cost, low-effort solution. Compared with the effort it takes to manage an on-premises server, the effort it takes to use the Business Productivity Online Suite from Microsoft Online Services is a big zero. It’s great.”

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 who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information by using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Transpara products and services, call (North America) 866-99-4KPIs (866-994-5747), (International) 925-218-6983, or visit the Web site at:
www.transpara.com

Microsoft Online Services

Microsoft Online Services is a business-class communications and collaboration software offering delivered as a subscription service, hosted by Microsoft and sold with partners. These services help make it easier for customers to rapidly and cost-effectively access the most up-to-date technologies, and are designed for rapid deployment to provide customers with streamlined communications, simplified management, and business-class reliability and security.
 
For IT staff, Microsoft Online Services helps reduce the burden of performing routine IT management tasks such as installation, provisioning, ongoing maintenance, patches, updates, and upgrades, making it possible for them to spend more time on initiatives that move the business forward. These services are backed by strong SLAs and are designed to meet the regulatory compliance and reliability needs of enterprise customers. On a technical level, the services boast the sophistication and reliability that customers expect from Microsoft, which continues to invest heavily in building data centers to support these services.

For more information, visit:
www.microsoft.com/online

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published September 2008