Johnstons of Elgin

Textile Manufacturer Uses Hosted Filtering Service to Instantly Eliminate Plague of Spam

Johnstons of Elgin, which makes cashmere and other fine textiles in northern Scotland, was receiving up to 1 million unwanted e-mail messages a day. The spam clogged data lines, crashed server computers, overwhelmed numerous internal solutions, and diminished employee productivity. Efforts to stem the spam were ineffective, and some proposals were prohibitively expensive. Finally, Johnstons worked with Microsoft® Gold Certified Partner Adventi Group to implement Microsoft Forefront™ Online Security for Exchange, which routes incoming e-mail messages to the Microsoft global data center network for filtering. The solution, which required no capital expenditure or long-term commitment, virtually eliminated spam instantly. With more reliable incoming and outgoing mail, Johnstons saved three to five hours per week of IT administrative time, and restored employees’ faith in the IT department.

Situation

Johnstons of Elgin is a textile manufacturer known primarily for its cashmere. The company produces knitted and woven garments including scarves, sweaters, socks, gloves, and rugs for well-known global designers. In addition to its wholesale business, it has its own retail Web site. The company is based in Elgin, Scotland, and operates two mill sites in Scotland plus several worldwide sales offices. Johnstons employs 500–800 people depending on the time of year.

We first put in Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange on a two-week trial, and we could see straightaway the impact that spam had had on our system.  Craig Lambourne Senior IT Business Partner Johnstons of Elgin

When Craig Lambourne, Senior IT Business Partner, joined Johnstons in January 2007, he discovered the company had a problem with e-mail messages. “We were getting hit with a colossal amount of spam,” he says. “Our server was so slow, trying to handle so many messages, that we didn’t even have a way to get an idea of how much spam it was.” Lambourne would later learn that the volume was approaching 1 million messages per day.

The spam overload hampered Johnstons employees’ ability to do their work. “The server was so bogged down that legitimate messages were getting lost,” Lambourne says. “It was also crashing on a regular basis, which meant that we were losing both incoming and outgoing mail, including confirmations for orders and business-critical contact information. The IT department was getting requests daily for problems with e-mail.”

Part of the problem was bandwidth. Because Elgin is in a rural area on Scotland’s north coast, Johnstons couldn’t simply upgrade its data lines to handle larger volumes. Yet when incoming data overwhelmed the line, its effects rippled around the world, because the headquarters served as the company’s central mail location. “All of our mail came in here and then was passed out to our other sites and global sales offices,” Lambourne says. “But the incoming mail quantity was restricting our bandwidth so much that we couldn’t provide good service to our agents around the world. We were the bottleneck.”

Furthermore, Johnstons was looking to implement a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which would be heavily dependent on e-mail. “The company is trying to become paperless, to do all of our invoicing and ordering through e-mail,” Lambourne says. “We knew going forward that we would have to resolve our problems and improve our quality of service for both incoming and outgoing e-mail messages.”

Solution

When he first started at Johnstons, Lambourne found that the company’s mail server was exposed and apparently being used as a relay server. He locked it down, but performance didn’t improve. Originally, the company was using Microsoft® Exchange 2000 Server on its mail server computer. Thinking the problem might be server-related, Johnstons installed an adjacent server computer running Exchange Server 2003. Performance did not improve. However, the upgrade did provide the analytic tools to demonstrate the source of the problem. “The amount of messages we were receiving was just eating up our line,” he says.

Johnstons had a trained spam filter on client and server computers, but the torrent of spam overwhelmed the software. “The amounts were just huge,” Lambourne says. He tried several other internal solutions, including purchasing a spam blocker add-in to the company’s Watchguard firewall software. “But it was all just throwing a pebble in the sea. It was making no difference at all.”

So Johnstons started turning to outside vendors. Lambourne recalls, “When we first took a consultant in and showed him the amount of spam we got, he said, ‘This is too big for our software.’ He actually turned us down!”

Other vendors claimed they could solve the problem, but at a very high price. “As a small company,” Lambourne says, “we can’t afford to sign a big contract. We had people proposing solutions that would cost a great deal per client computer, or would require a yearly subscription. But given that nothing had worked so far, our financial director didn’t want to spend a lot of money and then find out that it hadn’t solved the problem.”

Because of Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange, I don’t have to go on wild goose chases, trying to figure out whose fault it was that a message didn’t get delivered.  Craig Lambourne Senior IT Business Partner Johnstons of Elgin

In May 2008, Lambourne spoke with Richard Mason, Presales Consultant at the Adventi Group, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner based in Bellshill, Scotland. Mason proposed a different approach: Johnstons could route its incoming e-mail messages through Microsoft Forefront™ Online Security for Exchange (then called Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering). Because the spam would be filtered offsite, before the mail reached Johnstons server computers, it wouldn’t clog Johnstons bandwidth. And because it could be billed monthly, it did not require a significant commitment. “If we found out it wasn’t doing the right job for us, we could cancel it,” Lambourne says.

In July 2008, Johnstons began a trial period with Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange. The seamless implementation involved zero downtime. Mason says, “During the trial period, we provided Johnstons with comprehensive reporting that identified the scale of the spam problem. Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange was blocking an average of 1 million spam messages per day, and thus reducing the volume of Johnstons e-mail traffic by about 1.5 GB per day.” After the successful trial, Johnstons finalized the implementation a few weeks later.

Now Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange routes all incoming e-mail messages to the Microsoft global data center network. Messages that are flagged as spam can be quarantined for up to 15 days or sent to a specific mailbox for review. Legitimate messages then go to the Johnstons Exchange Server 2003 mail server. (The company has decommissioned the server computer that ran Exchange 2000 Server.) Employees access messages using the 2002, 2003, or 2007 versions of the Microsoft Office Outlook® messaging and collaboration client, or Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, just as they always have.

Filtering through Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange is one of several hosted services offered by Microsoft Online Services. Additional services offered include: archiving, to store e-mail and instant messages that help companies meet legal and regulatory requirements; continuity, to store a month’s worth of e-mail messages that can be accessed during a planned or unplanned outage; and encryption, to provide policy-based message encryption from sender to recipient.

Johnstons is considering working with Adventi to add the archiving service. “We’ve built quite a good relationship with Adventi,” Lambourne says. “They also have a support contract for some of our other software, and they may be able to supply us with some hardware as well. So the relationship is growing, which is great.”

Benefits

Johnstons achieved an instant reduction in spam, which improved the reliability of its incoming and outgoing mail. With no spam or false positives, Johnstons has used Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange to increase employees’ productivity and restore their faith in the company’s IT systems.

Reliable Incoming and Outgoing Mail

“The main difference that we’ve seen is quality of service,” says Lambourne. Because all the spam is filtered offsite, only legitimate e-mail messages come in to Johnstons data lines and servers. Thus there’s no clogging or overloading, and the system can perform legitimate functions speedily and effectively.

“With Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange, we know that all of our outgoing messages actually get sent,” Lambourne says. “If there are any delays, it’s never due to a problem at our end. It’s always on the receiver’s end.” Now that e-mail service is reliable, Johnstons can move forward on implementing its ERP system.

We don’t have false positives for spam. I don’t think I’ve seen a single one in the entire time we’ve been on Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange.  Craig Lambourne Senior IT Business Partner Johnstons of Elgin

Instant Elimination of Spam

Almost no spam gets through the Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange filter. “We’ve had only two messages that have made it into the business in the eight months since we signed up,” says Lambourne.

Not only was the reduction in spam dramatic, it was instantaneous. “We first put in Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange on a two-week trial,” Lambourne says, “and we could see straightaway the impact that spam had had on our system. We had evidence to take to the financial director and the board to get them to agree to sign up.”

In addition, the solution blocks only the messages it needs to. “We don’t have false positives for spam,” Lambourne says. “I don’t think I’ve seen a single one in the entire time we’ve been on Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange.”

Empowered, More-Productive Users

Users continually tell Lambourne how delighted they are with the system. “If they want to scan through the messages that Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange has filtered, they can simply click on a Web link,” he says. “We were getting daily requests to monitor mail, but now users can do it themselves, which is great.”

Users also feel empowered because the system is not difficult to learn. “Everybody finds the system so easy to use and so straightforward,” Lambourne says. “And they have the confidence that this is a Microsoft product. They know they can rely on the system, that their outgoing messages are safe and issue-free.”

Savings of Three to Five Hours per Week

With less spam and user-friendly procedures, the solution dramatically reduces the time the IT staff spends administering e-mail. “We were spending three to five hours a week dealing with e-mail issues,” Lambourne says. “When Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange first went in, that went down to maybe one investigation per month—and the investigations never showed a problem with our system. Now that work is almost totally gone. We do a weekly check on the mail server, and we have some monitoring software, but we don’t have to touch it.”

Without the burden of pursuing lost e-mail messages, IT staff can turn to more productive work. “Because of Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange, I don’t have to go on wild goose chases, trying to figure out whose fault it was that a message didn’t get delivered,” Lambourne says. “I can start focusing on projects that move the company forward.”

Restored Faith in IT

“Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange has given our employees their faith back in their IT systems,” says Lambourne. “People have trust and confidence in the system again. If a message is lost, they can confidently say the problem is at the other end, not ours.” That trust is especially important as the IT department leads Johnstons in its new ERP efforts.

“With the difference that Microsoft Forefront Online Security for Exchange has made for all of our employees—all the way up to the director level—and the trust and confidence they now have in our systems,” Lambourne says, “I don’t think we would ever cancel it.”

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 using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com

For more information about Adventi Group products and services, call 0845 606 2641 or visit the Web site at:
www.adventi.com

For more information about Johnstons of Elgin products and services, call 44 (0) 1343 554000 or visit the Web site at:
www.johnstonscashmere.com

Microsoft Forefront Product Portfolio

The Microsoft Forefront comprehensive line of business security products provides greater protection and control through integration with your existing IT infrastructure and through simplified deployment, management, and analysis. Forefront is a comprehensive solution that helps provide protection for the client operating system, application servers, and the network edge.

For more information about the Forefront product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/forefront 

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

Document published March 2009