University Health System Streamlines Exchange Migration with DYS Analytics' Email Control! For Exchange
Saves over 130 hours of IT time on One Project Alone, Achieves ROI in Months, Readies Network for Growth as Mobile Email Devices and Email Use Expands
WALTHAM, MA August 21, 2006
DYS Analytics, Inc., whose innovative products and services manage today's top messaging platforms, announced that the University Health System (UHS), a regional healthcare network in Knoxville TN, achieved major cost, time, and email resource savings in a Microsoft Exchange migration using DYS' award-winning Email Control! for Exchange software. UHS' experience typifies the challenge faced by many IT organizations to efficiently cleanup, improve performance and reduce operational costs as they migrate their Exchange servers to the current release in preparation for Exchange Server 2007.
UHS encompasses the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, its medical center, and various physician groups - yet only 5 full time IT staffers manage over 160 Exchange and NT servers that power email for over 4,000 users. In its first use of Email Control! for Exchange, UHS saved over 130 hours of IT time - nearly a month of a full-time administrator - by using the product to identify and automate the clean-up of its Exchange network prior to migration. Without DYS' software, UHS IT staff would have needed to write extensive scripts that automate the correct identification of unused or seldom-used accounts.
Using Email Control! as an instrumental part of its pre-migration cleanup task, UHS removed 25 percent of the mailboxes and over 80% of the storage that would otherwise have had to be migrated. This allowed the entire migration to Exchange 2003 take place at least a month sooner than planned. The now- smaller Exchange 2003 storage requirements keep the new Exchange servers at peak performance with lower ongoing email administration costs and improved potential disaster recovery time.
The software also provided critical information so UHS could best architect its Exchange network topology for top performance. For example, Control! analysis showed usage and Exchange message traffic patterns that guided the placement of users on servers for optimal performance.
"I needed help to quickly understand how our users used email, and how Exchange serviced that demand, before redoing our Exchange network architecture," said Jerry Hook, IT manager for University Health System. "DYS' Email Control! gave me tools that don't exist in Exchange. Control! saved me an immense amount of time helping me cleanup my network. The product paid for itself in just over four months based only on the immediately realized IT cost savings. We now use Email Control! to help in our ongoing Exchange operations so we can solve operational issues faster and hopefully even prevent issues from occurring the in the first place."
"As we roll out our new Exchange network, we know our email traffic is only going to grow as our users add email mobile devices - and as Exchange Outlook Web Access feature lets more of our casual users, such as nurses, to make greater user of email," Hook continued. "That means the cost and complexity of managing our network will only increase. Now that our migration is complete, Email Control! gives us the critical insight we need to maintain peak Exchange performance. It will let us concentrate our resources and budget on providing new services, instead of just maintaining the status quo," Hook said.
Proactive Email Management Beyond the Migration
"It's clear that organizations aren't being as proactive about email management as they could be to operate efficiently, at lower cost and with better end user performance levels," said Michael Osterman, principal of Osterman Research. "In a recent survey we found that Exchange managers spent an average of 18 percent of their typical work week - or about 30 hours a month - troubleshooting problems with Exchange or handling end-user email inquiries. Yet in more than half of the organizations surveyed, email managers find out about server problems from end-users after a problem's occurred - not from proactive monitoring systems," Osterman continued.
"University Health Systems' use of DYS' Email Control! for Exchange is the kind of proactive email management we expect to see more of in the coming months, as organizations realize they can readily lower the cost and complexity of managing Exchange," Osterman said.
Exchange and Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) provide basic health and availability statistics, yet do not give an administrator the tools necessary to understand who is using Exchange, how they are using it, and what performance is being delivered to the desktop. Such insight is vital in maintaining Exchange service levels and eliminating user behavior that taxes and slows email for all.
Email Control! provides an easy to use interface to vital information such as mailbox size, email use characteristics, speed of delivery, details on message routing paths, real-time end-to-end delivery times and optional alerts when issues arise. Email Control! collects, analyzes and displays both historical usage metrics as well as real-time probe results to ensure that Exchange functions efficiently. Using CONTROL, IT speeds Help Desk call resolution, confirms server and network up/down status, develops and enforces email policies and can clean up mailboxes.
"As Exchange upgrades and migrations loom on the horizon, and as email volumes continue to grow, IT administrators must work smarter - with insight, not guesswork," said Andrew Wolff, VP, Products of DYS Analytics. "As with UHS, Control! turns a potential time-sink - a migration project planning - into a major advance for email system performance."
About DYS Analytics
DYS Analytics provides innovative products and services that manage today's top messaging platforms. DYS lets IT staff regain control of their IBM Lotus Notes and Domino, Microsoft Exchange, IBM Lotus Sametime and IBM Lotus QuickPlace networks. Using Control!, administration costs are slashed, service quality is improved, user policies are created and enforced, security improved and delivery issues resolved. DYS customers are large and small, global and local, including such firms as JPMorgan Chase, HSBC, Bank One, ABN AMRO Bank, Zurich Financial Services, IBM, CSC, Henkel, Novartis, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Schering, Linde Gas and GlaxoSmithKline. For more information, visit www.dysanalytics.com.
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DYS Analytics, Control!, Email Control!, CONTROL Guardian, Control! OnDemand, Efficiencize and the DYS logo are trademarks of DYS Analytics, Inc. IBM, Lotus, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus Notes are registered trademarks. Notes and Domino are trademarks of IBM. All trademarks, trade names, service marks, and logos referenced herein belong to their respective companies.
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