Case Study - City of Kennesaw

Company: City of Kennesaw
Location: Kennesaw, Georgia, U.S.
Industry: Government
Number of employees: 300
Products in use: GFI MailArchiver™

Quick Read

The following is a case study featuring the implementation by the City of Kennesaw of GFI MailArchiver to manage large mailboxes in Exchange and to have centralized email storage from which to retrieve large volumes of email.

City Hall is the seat of government for the City of Kennesaw in Georgia. A growing community in terms of population and services, City Hall's IT department needed a solution that would help it control the growth of employees' mailboxes and provide a means to retrieve emails in the easiest and most efficient manner possible. The City considered a number of products before choosing GFI MailArchiver for Exchange Server.

Challenges

The City of Kennesaw in Georgia, US, is a fast-growing city and the Mayor's office at City Hall provides a range of government services to the 23,000 plus residents who live there. With over 300 employees, email is an essential form of communication and day-to-day business tool. While email has improved productivity and business response times, the ever-increasing volume of email traffic can have a negative impact on email servers, affecting storage capacity and performance.

According to Teri K. Chambers, Information Technology Director, the size of users' mailboxes was beginning to put a strain on the Exchange server and this was an issue they wanted to address.

"The growth in mailbox size and the inbuilt storage limitations on the Exchange Server was something we had been noticing for quite some time. However, that was not the only problem we sought to address. As a government body, we are also bound by the laws of Georgia, which laws state that a record of all email correspondence must be retained and systems must in place to be able to retrieve that information at will," Ms. Chambers explained.

Implementation

With these two requirements in mind, Ms. Chambers' team began the process to source the best product on the market. Although price was a factor, they wanted a solution that was easy to install, configure and use.

"After a careful and time-consuming research period we found that GFI MailArchiver was much easier for our employees to use and it provided the tools that assisted us in compliance much better than the competition. We looked at Symantec's Vault however it was too labor intensive to install and roll out," she explained.

Implementing GFI MailArchiver was a smooth process and the product was easy to install.

"It requires no installation on our clients' machines because it works by web browser; which automatically provided everyone with the tools to manage their own archival box. One feature I really loved was the ability to allow others to manage their staff's emails. Many times I get requests from managers who are concerned about the volume or content of their employees' emails. I was able to allow them access to their employees' email and save everyone time," she added.

Benefits

Implementation of the software was carried out in stages with the IT department testing it first before going for a full roll out.

In terms of benefits, Ms Chambers said: "We now have a method for pulling large quantities of emails to respond to an Open Records Request (compliance with a State of GA law) or for discovery purposes. Furthermore, we can also review quickly for inappropriate emails or categorize them as we need."

Target Reached

In a concluding remark about GFI MailArchiver, Ms. Chambers said: "It is quick, easy to use and it was easy to deploy to our users. It is a time saver."

Links

For more information about GFI MailArchiver Click Here.

^{May 2008}