4-page Case Study - Posted 1/12/2009

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Webcor Builders

Integrated E-Mail, Search, and Archiving Gives Construction Giant Peace of Mind

Founded in 1971, Webcor Builders constructs commercial, institutional, industrial, and multifamily residential buildings, and ranks at the top of industry lists for outstanding and green building construction. Like many construction companies, Webcor is concerned about litigation. The company needed a way to intelligently manage its ever-growing volume of e-mail—which includes legally sensitive data—and be able to quickly comply with legal data requests. Webcor turned to Microsoft® Exchange Server for e-mail and Symantec Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange for archiving and e-discovery. Webcor can now find any document within minutes. Users have an enhanced, seamless Exchange Server experience. IT staff can better manage large volumes of e-mail, and Webcor is certain that it is in compliance with regulatory and legal mandates.

Situation

San Mateo–based building contractor Webcor Builders is known for its outstanding high-tech campuses, such as Oracle Corporation, and its sustainable buildings, including the California Academy of Sciences. In 2007, the company generated more than U.S.$1.2 billion in revenue and developed more than 3.2 million square feet of LEED-quality residential space. Currently the largest structural concrete contractor in California, Webcor has 1,200 employees.

With Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange, we’ve probably saved $70,000 in IT staff time and $40,000 in attorney staff time with more efficient searching.  Gregg Davis Senior Vice President and CIO Webcor Builders

Like many construction companies, Webcor is required by law to retain its information records for up to 10 years. “We have to follow strict compliance regulations, including the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Sarbanes-Oxley regulations,” says Davis. “There are very particular rules about preserving e-mail and correspondence—we must be able to instantly retrieve our records to comply with legal subpoenas and discovery requests.”

Webcor needed an efficient messaging solution and the ability to quickly locate information, not only in the body of e-mails but also in e-mail attachments. “A lot of the information that we need to produce at a moment’s notice in a legal scenario is nestled in e-mail attachments,” says Davis.

The company wanted the two components—the e-mail system and the searching of messages—to work together seamlessly. Webcor also desired a way to efficiently archive, store, and manage its ever-growing volume of e-mail.

Solution

Since 1996, Webcor has standardized on Microsoft® software for its information infrastructure. “About 95 percent of our core infrastructure—including server, database, office, and collaboration software—is based on Microsoft technologies,” says Davis. The company uses the Windows Server® 2008 operating system, Microsoft SQL Server® 2008 data management software, and Microsoft Office SharePoint® Server 2007.

For its messaging infrastructure, Webcor deployed Microsoft Exchange Server 2003; the company will roll out Exchange Server 2007 in February 2009. For enhanced archiving, search, and management of the Exchange Server environment, Webcor chose Symantec Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange. Davis says, “The solution combines the proven efficiency of Exchange Server with a powerful search and data management tool in Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange.”

Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange lets businesses discover corporate data from e-mail systems, file servers, instant messaging stores, and collaboration systems—by using a single, centralized search interface. Winner of the Best Exchange Archiving Solution award in the MSExchange.org Readers’ Choice Awards, it also lets users search authorized e-mail accounts directly from within the Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client.

Key and add-on features of Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange include:

• Policy-based archiving to move less-frequently used information from high-cost disk and archive to lower-cost storage while maintaining accessibility.
• Automatic mailbox management to archive e-mail and attachments out of Exchange Server and into online Enterprise Vault stores. 
• PST file migration to locate, collect, and migrate personal store files, helping IT staff to regain control of older data.
• Electronic discovery and search with guided review to give role-based access to users to search and review archived data. 
• Legal hold to automatically suspend the deletion of archived data in response to internal litigation or regulatory requests.
• Exchange Server 2007 managed folder support to synchronize settings with Exchange Server managed folders, in line with the way users work with Exchange Server data.
• Archiving for Exchange Server journals and public folders.
• Exchange Server migration support to reduce the size of migration stores by 80 percent. 
• Mobile search support to access archived e-mail and attachments through a handheld device browser.
• Software development kit to customize Enterprise Vault functionality and add third-party components by using fully documented application programming interfaces.

The solution combines the proven efficiency of Exchange Server with a powerful search and data management tool in Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange.  Gregg Davis Senior Vice President and CIO Webcor Builders

Webcor chose Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange in large part because of its transparency to Outlook for Exchange Server users. “Other products we looked at forced users to change their behavior—for example, to flag something to say it’s okay to archive it or to move files to a specific folder. Some solutions even moved messages so that users couldn’t find them. Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange keeps all user settings intact and requires no user effort.”

Webcor also uses Symantec Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator, which enhances the Enterprise Vault search functionality and provides flexible export capabilities.

Since implementing the solution in 2004, says Davis, “We continue to use different features. As the amount of litigation grows, we rely on it more and more. Currently, we vault anything after 60 days.” Webcor frequently uses Enterprise Vault to migrate PST files, and people use the e-mail search feature every day because it’s integrated into their Outlook e-mail interface. “We also rely extensively on the litigation lock-and-hold features—when we think something is going to be in litigation, we immediately put it in legal hold to protect the content,” says Davis. Webcor also uses Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange to simplify Exchange Server migrations and maintenance tasks.

In addition to preparing to roll out Exchange Server 2007, Webcor will add documents stored within Office SharePoint Server 2007 to its pool of searchable files.

Benefits

By using Exchange Server with Symantec Enterprise Vault, Webcor can find important documents within minutes. Users have a seamless, enhanced Exchange Server experience. In addition, the IT department can more intelligently manage its massive volume of e-mail. Webcor is confident that it is in compliance with regulatory mandates and that it can respond quickly and accurately to legal requests.

Fast Discovery of Important Documents

Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange not only searches e-mail text and subject lines, but it also looks for more than 285 types of attachments. “It is a very powerful search tool that provides phenomenal savings,” says Davis. “If you told me, for example, to find a file between 2003 and 2008 with these two words e-mailed to these two people, I could have it to you in less than five minutes—we could never do that with traditional search tools.”

Employees now can quickly perform searches that they used to delegate to IT. “With Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange, we’ve probably saved $70,000 in IT staff time and $40,000 in attorney staff time with more efficient searching,” says Davis.

Enhanced, Seamless Exchange Server Experience

Webcor was able to easily implement the solution with no disruption to its employees. “Users don’t notice any difference other than a few buttons that enhance the Outlook experience. We didn’t need to do any training or formal presentations. We just posted a notice on the technology Web site saying this was happening—it’s been seamless.”

We now have shortened maintenance cycles—we can get Exchange Server up and running more quickly—because we’ve reduced our e-mail stores by 60 percent.  Gregg Davis Senior Vice President and CIO Webcor Builders

Because Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange lets Webcor offload much of its storage to the online vault, the company has more efficient maintenance. “We now have shortened maintenance cycles—we can get Exchange Server up and running more quickly—because we’ve reduced our live e-mail stores by 60 percent.”

Webcor is currently testing Exchange Server 2007 and plans for a full rollout soon. “Migrating to Exchange Server 2007 is much easier with Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange because we’ve drastically reduced our mailbox size. It’s made the migration a piece of cake,” says Davis.

Smart, Cost-Effective E-Mail Storage

With Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange, Webcor can flexibly store different files in the most appropriate storage medium. “We can store files to various media based on file type, age, date, size—whatever we want,” says Davis. “We delegate some files to optical storage, some to older, slower servers, and others to SAN [storage area network] or NAS [network-attached storage] devices.”

Davis says, “Because Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange helps us keep lower priority messages in less expensive storage, we can reduce management and costs while improving backup times, redundancy, and disaster recovery.”

Easier, Faster Legal Compliance

Webcor is now confident that it can provide an accurate response to any legal inquiry—quickly. “In the old days, the attorneys would sit down and tell somebody in IT what information they needed,” says Davis. “Then IT would have to hunt through e-mail messages and guess whether they had the right search parameters and terms.”

The company has eliminated the need for IT staff to conduct the searches. “Enterprise Vault for Microsoft Exchange and Discovery Accelerator put the attorneys in the driver’s seat—they control the searches. We give them a link to a Web page, and they search for the information they need,” says Davis. “They then classify the messages, and we do a quick export to whatever format or file type is needed—and it’s done.”

Davis says that for every subpoena, the IT group saves 40 to 50 hours that it used to spend searching for information. The solution also offers a level of confidentiality that Webcor didn’t have before. “Our team just clicks on a button and we export the results to the lawyers. We don’t even look at the messages. We just turn over the information on a DVD or CD.”

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 Symantec products and services, call (408) 517-8000 or visit the Web site at:
www.symantec.com

For more information about Webcor Builders products and services, call (650) 349-2727 or visit the Web site at:
www.webcor.com

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio

For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to:
www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx

For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to:
www.microsoft.com/exchange

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

Document published January 2009