2 page Case Study - Posted 5/18/2009
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Construction Firm Boosts Productivity by 30 Per Cent with Messaging Solution
Golden Pyramids Plaza (GPP) is a leading Egypt-based developer of highly prestigious commercial and residential urban projects. GPP needed to guarantee a secure environment to protect its confidential business information. It decided to migrate from open-source technology to Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition communication and collaboration server and now predicts a 30 per cent rise in productivity.
Business Needs
GPP has recently completed the flagship Citystars property development in Cairo. This real estate complex comprises three international hotels, retail and entertainment outlets, high quality office blocks, residential towers, and a medical centre. Experts describe Citystars—located between Heliopolis and Nasr City in Cairo—as the first integrated urban development project of its kind in Europe and the Middle East.
To coordinate its expanding portfolio of high quality building and property management projects, GPP needed a stable and reliable communications and collaboration infrastructure. But its existing open-source IT environment made it challenging for its employees to streamline operations and increase productivity. There were too many systems in place with different support communities and processes.
- IT staff spent excessive time integrating systems and synchronising different applications, distracting them from strategic, value-added work.
- Communications back up was manual.
- To deploy scripts and ensure the correct security rights for each user, the existing system required manual rules and workarounds.
- Security challenges arose on the proxy settings plus integration problems between the Web filter and the open-source software.
As a result, GPP decided that it needed an integrated solution from a single and dependable vendor. Engineer Ahmed Hassan, Management Information System Manager, Citystars, says: “Our aim was to ensure better infrastructure design, improved back up and security for our users—all integrated and out of the box with a good support contract.”
Solution
Microsoft Egypt recommended a solution based on Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server® 2008 Enterprise operating system. “Microsoft showed us how easy it was to manage our infrastructure with Exchange Server,” says Hassan. “Open-source solutions took a lot of configuration to give us the level of security and reliability we needed.” The current phase of the Microsoft implementation includes:
- Migration from Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) and Postfix running on the CentOS operating system to the Active Directory® service and Exchange Server.
- Removal of Samba on SUSE Linux previously integrated the LDAP with the existing Microsoft environment. Hassan says: “This ensures a reliable and secure infrastructure between the mail system, directory services, and the Web filter.”
With Active Directory, IT team members can set rights remotely, and organise users into groups with the same access privileges. The Group Policy feature enforces the company’s security rules automatically, removing the need for custom scripts or programming of individual machines.
Exchange Server gives employees secure access to their e-mail through Microsoft Office Outlook® 2007 messaging and collaboration client. Employees working off site can pick up messages through Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access, with the same user experience they’d have inside the organisation. Administrators can provision new users, set mailbox size limits and filter messages using tools such as Exchange Management Shell. Security is enhanced with the addition of integrated antispam and antivirus tools, and encryption for important messages.
Benefits
The new messaging infrastructure is a cost-effective and resilient communication and collaboration environment, with the scalability to meet the ambitions of a rapidly expanding company. Microsoft has transferred knowledge into the GPP IT support team and provided a reliable technical support service. Hassan says: “With Exchange Server none of our confidential data is at risk of falling into the wrong hands. And life is easier for the IT team, eliminating repetitive work and freeing it for more strategic tasks.”
- Productivity is increased. IT employees spend 30 per cent less time on maintenance and have more time for developing new applications. Employees can access their e-mail from home or remote locations.
- Management is easier. Administrators use the graphical interface to set up new users and groups and e-mail archiving at the click of a mouse.
- Support costs are reduced. With Windows Server 2008, employees can run several virtual servers on a single machine. GPP can buy less hardware, reducing IT spending by 15 per cent.
- Security is enhanced. User privileges and access rights are set by administrators, and security procedures are enforced using the Group Policy feature.
- Integration is straightforward. Unlike the previous open-source system, no customisation or complicated configuration is required for applications to work together.
- More support is available. GPP employees can take advantage of extensive online forums for free technical support.
- Cost-effective software. By taking advantage of the Microsoft Enterprise Client Access Licence agreement, GPP pays almost 50 per cent less than if it bought products individually.
- Less training is required. Employees access the network and their e-mail messages with familiar Microsoft applications, and thus require minimal training.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
