Gates Corporation

Manufacturer Reduces Spam Threat, Boosts Worker Productivity with Hosted Solution

Gates Corporation is a Colorado-based manufacturing firm that produces automotive and industrial products for customers around the world. Many of the company’s employees depend on e-mail to keep in touch with each other and with customers. However, these workers experienced productivity problems resulting from a proliferation of spam messages in their e-mail inboxes. In November 2006, Gates decided to deploy Microsoft® Exchange Hosted Filtering, a hosted solution that provides multiengine spam- and virus-scanning capabilities. Since that deployment, the company has eliminated 99 percent of spam messages, freeing up IT staff members to devote more time to researching new products, while taking advantage of the solution’s easy administration. Exchange Hosted Filtering has also helped increase the company’s network bandwidth.

Situation

With our previous filtering solution, we might have gotten rid of about 80 percent of spam. With Exchange Hosted Filtering, we have eliminated 99 percent of spam.  Mike Langenkamp Messaging Architect Gates Corporation

Gates Corporation, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, is a manufacturer of automotive and industrial products such as hoses, belts, hydraulics, and power transmission parts. The company has more than 13,500 employees, who work from offices in 22 countries around the globe.

Approximately 6,500 of these workers depend heavily on e-mail to communicate internally, as well as with suppliers and other Gates customers. “We absolutely need e-mail to do our jobs,” says Mike Langenkamp, Messaging Architect, Gates Corporation. Late last year, the company deployed Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 to manage e-mail for 100 employees, with the remaining employee mailboxes managed with Exchange Server 2003.

However, along with e-mail comes spam, and as Langenkamp reports, spam was a major problem for the company. “On average, every one of our 6,500 employees would receive at least 10 to 12 spam e-mail messages every day, with a small group of sales employees even getting hundreds of spam messages,” he says. “The company as a whole was receiving more than one million spam e-mail messages per day.”

Because many of these messages looked as if they were work-related, it was often difficult for Gates employees to determine if they were receiving a message that needed to be read or not. As a result, employee productivity and efficiency suffered. “The average Gates employee spent at least five minutes per day reading and deleting spam messages,” Langenkamp says. “If you multiply that number by 6,500 workers, that’s a very high number of hours spent dealing with spam.”

In addition, at least 1,000 Gates employees work in production environments in factories all over the world, using Windows Mobile® powered Pocket PCs to access e-mail messages. “Spam messages would get into those devices and cause them to operate slower than normal. As a result, productivity suffered,” says Langenkamp.

To try to meet the spam challenge, Gates used several third-party antispam and antivirus security software solutions. Those solutions, however, were only partially successful. “In spite of our best attempts to lock down the system, there were still way too many spam messages getting through,” admits Langenkamp. “There were also quite a few internal e-mail messages that were being marked “spam,” but were in fact legitimate. Obviously, that was detrimental to productivity as well.”

Gates decided to search for a new software solution that would better solve this growing problem.

Solution

Employees don’t have to spend time managing spam, because this solution already does all the work for them.  Mike Langenkamp Messaging Architect Gates Corporation

In November 2006, Gates Corporation decided to implement Microsoft Exchange Hosted Filtering, part of Exchange Hosted Services (formerly FrontBridge Technologies). Exchange Hosted Services is deployed over the Internet and provides organizations with around-the-clock multiengine spam- and virus-scanning capabilities. The solution takes advantage of a distributed network of Microsoft global data centers to analyze and route all incoming and outgoing e-mail messages, accepting e-mail for customers while providing separation between their server computers and the Internet.

Each Exchange Hosted Services data center contains load-balanced servers. If one center becomes unavailable, e-mail traffic is routed to another center, minimizing the likelihood of service interruption. “By employing Exchange Hosted Filtering, we knew we would not have to worry about managing spam and viruses ourselves,” says Langenkamp.

Exchange Hosted Filtering blocks all messages sent from illegitimate senders. After being passed through the solution’s initial spam filter, e-mail messages are sent through spam prevention technology, a policy enforcement engine, and several antivirus engines.

In the event that a Gates e-mail server is unavailable, due to a planned or unexpected outage, Exchange Hosted Filtering queues inbound messages in a secure environment for up to five days. When the server is available again, the queued messages are automatically forwarded.

Gates Corporation was able to switch to Exchange Hosted Services in only a few days. “We simply had to change our mail exchange (MX) record configuration,” Langenkamp says. “We were able to do that very quickly through our Exchange Server administration console.”

Benefits

With antispam and antivirus protection provided by Exchange Hosted Filtering, Gates Corporation has stronger message-filtering capabilities than it had with its previous solution. As a result, employees are more productive, and the company’s IT department can spend more time evaluating new technologies. The solution also simplifies the IT administration process and helps free up server and storage resources.

Stronger Message Filtering

Exchange Hosted Filtering gives Gates Corporation stronger message-filtering capabilities than the company had with its previous solution. “This product is definitely helping us eliminate viruses, spam, and other security threats before they get to the corporate firewall,” says Langenkamp. “With our previous filtering solution, we might have gotten rid of about 80 percent of spam. With Exchange Hosted Filtering, we have eliminated 99 percent of spam.” 

Langenkamp says that he ran a recent report that revealed that Exchange Hosted Filtering had blocked 2.5 million unwanted messages over a two-day period. “That figure represents 97 percent of all our incoming e-mail messages,” he says. “It’s hard to imagine how much time and effort our employees would have had to spend deleting those messages. With this solution, spam is no longer something we have to be concerned about.”

Langenkamp also notes that Exchange Hosted Filtering will continue to protect the Gates environment during the final migration of user mailboxes from Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007, which will take place before the end of 2007. “We won’t have to change our antispam and antivirus solution during migration, because Exchange Hosted Filtering will offer constant protection and won’t require us to make further changes,” he says.

Our IT department used to spend several hours every day just trying to control spam. Now, they spend zero time on the problem.  Mike Langenkamp Messaging Architect Gates Corporation

Improved Employee Productivity

Because employee e-mail inboxes are now nearly free from spam, productivity has increased. “Our people don’t have to deal with spam on a daily basis anymore,” says Langenkamp. “That means they can spend more time focused on dealing with customers and less time worrying about deleting unwanted e-mail.”

Likewise, the organization’s 1,000 mobile employees are able to be more productive as a result of the new filtering solution. “Spam is stopped before it hits mobile devices, too, so those users are freed from having to worry about the problem,” adds Langenkamp. “Employees don’t have to spend time managing spam, because this solution already does all the work for them.”

The solution also helps the Gates IT department make better use of its time. “Our IT department used to spend several hours every day just trying to control spam,” Langenkamp states. “Now, they spend zero time on the problem. We no longer have to spend our time chasing down blocked e-mail messages or trying to filter out spam and viruses.”

With more time at their disposal, IT staff members can concentrate on other, more productive tasks. “We can spend more time evaluating new products and technologies, for example,” says Langenkamp. “We can be proactive and help improve our infrastructure, as opposed to spending our time fighting fires every day.”

Simplified IT Administration

The Exchange Hosted Filtering solution also simplifies administration for Langenkamp and other members of his team. It offers a Web-based administration console that allows easy definition and management of settings and configurations. Using the console, administrators can quickly and easily change rules and settings. Management of this solution is very easy for me,” Langenkamp says. “The process of editing settings is not very involved at all.”

Additionally, Exchange Hosted Filtering offers the Gates IT staff advanced reporting resources. “As an administrator, it is imperative that I know precisely how much spam is coming in,” says Langenkamp. “Using the reporting capabilities in this solution, I can get a full view into how much spam a particular employee is receiving, or the number of messages that have been filtered. Managing these issues is much simpler than it was previously.”

Highly Reliable Network

Exchange Hosted Services gives organizations a highly available and reliable network, which provides further security to IT administrators. For example, Langenkamp previously had to accept IP connections from anyone and managed a secondary MX record to handle some of that traffic. “Unfortunately, we always had spam leaking in through there,” he says. With Exchange Hosted Filtering, however, Langenkamp was able to lock down Port 25 of the Gates firewall and configure it to accept only connections from Exchange Hosted Services.

As a result, he eliminated the secondary MX record and now has added security. “By restricting Port 25 to only accept Exchange Hosted Services connections, we got rid of that additional way for bad connections to get to the network. And with the Exchange Hosted Services multiple data centers, we now have the redundancy we needed,” says Langenkamp.

Improved Bandwidth

Because the Exchange Hosted Filtering solution is so effective at blocking unsolicited e-mail messages before they reach the Gates Corporation firewall, the company can save valuable network bandwidth. “The solution basically stops spam from reaching employee inboxes,” says Langenkamp. “That gives us more bandwidth for legitimate company use and increases our server and storage resources. Having a hosted solution that filters spam outside the network allows me to take a fairly large load off of our external LAN connections.”

In addition, Gates no longer needs to store unwanted e-mail messages on its Exchange Server e-mail systems, which frees up storage space and reduces e-mail server cycles. The company can now free up more of its network resources for more important corporate work. “Now we don’t have to store all this useless e-mail that holds absolutely no business value for us,” says Langenkamp.

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 Gates Corporation products and services, call (303) 744-1911 or visit the Web site at:
www.gates.com

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services

Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services (formerly FrontBridge Technologies) offer an easy-to- use way for enterprises to actively ensure the security and availability of their e-mail environment, while instilling confidence that their e-mail processes satisfy internal policy and regulatory compliance requirements. A seamless extension of Microsoft Exchange Server that operates at the Internet level, the complete line of services includes hosted filtering for active spam and virus protection; hosted archiving to satisfy compliance requirements and internal policies; hosted encryption to preserve e-mail confidentiality; and hosted continuity for ongoing access to e-mail during and after disasters. Microsoft Exchange Hosted Services provide value to corporate customers by requiring no upfront capital investment, minimizing IT management overhead, and removing incoming e-mail threats before they reach the corporate firewall.

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

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

Document published July 2007