BJM, South Africa's leading independent securities house, chooses Mimecast

Issued by Global Research Partners for Mimecast
Johannesburg, 21 Jan 2008

Barnard Jacobs Mellet Holdings (BJM), a JSE-listed stock broking and financial services company and recognised as the leading independent securities house in South Africa, today announced that it had chosen Mimecast, an innovator in the business e-mail management market, to handle all its e-mail requirements on a global basis.

BJM, although based in South Africa with offices in Belville, Cape Town; Constantia, Cape Town; George and Rosebank-Johannesburg, also has offices in Edinburgh, London and Stamford (USA), and has some 250 users attached to its e-mail network.

"E-mails are key to our organisation," explained Floyd Makhubela of the IT department at BJM. "With our previous system, we were experiencing an enormous number of false positives, receiving a great deal of spam and many of our e-mails were being blocked and quarantined. Furthermore, 30% of our bandwidth was being consumed by our e-mail traffic and a significant part of the day, possibly as much as four hours, was taken up with handling these issues.

"Of the vendors we examined in the market, only Mimecast was thinking 'next generation' and besides, all vendors except for Mimecast needed to supply more than one product to meet our requirements," added Makhubela. "Moreover, the 10-year long-term storage option that Mimecast offered was an added bonus and further differentiated them from other vendors. The prospect of not having to concern ourselves with ever-increasing storage demands into the future was also an added attraction."

The installation of Mimecast was quick and painless, reduced the false positives situation to zero, and released bandwidth to BJM for other applications. All the support for the group, included the overseas operations, was handled through the South African operation of Mimecast.

"The issues highlighted by BJM are very much in line with the results of an independent survey that was recently carried out in the UK, which indicated that more than five million man hours per year are expended looking for 'lost' e-mails," concluded Garth Wittles, MD Mimecast South Africa.

"We fully understand these issues and those associated with the governance requirements that need to be met by all businesses. With the Mimecast product we can and have made a significant difference to the effectiveness and efficiency of many organisations re the handling and management of their e-mails."

For further information, please contact Mimecast RSA: telephone 0861 114 063, fax 011 258-5339, e-mail info@mimecast.co.za.

Mimecast (Pty) Ltd

Mimecast is a fast-growing Web 2.0 success story. Founded in the UK in late 2002, the company's proprietary 'software as a service' platform provides businesses around the world with mission-critical e-mail management services. Mimecast provides the industry's only comprehensive enterprise e-mail management solution from a single scalable Web-based platform. Clients save significant time and expense by connecting their existing in-house e-mail systems to Mimecast. They benefit from a range of services including long term e-mail storage, search and information management, security services including anti-spam and anti-virus, compliance, policy control and risk management, business continuity, and e-mail marketing.

Services on the Mimecast Network are sold by leading technology resellers and on a direct basis into strategic accounts. Mimecast consistently beats competitive alternatives by offering a broader solution, better value for money, more effective security, faster performance, and by placing significantly greater levels of administrative control in our clients' hands. In contrast, established first generation 'managed service providers' competing in Mimecast's chosen market face significant challenges due to their inflexible and fragmented technology, high third party licensing costs and outmoded service delivery strategies.

Mimecast's customers include AFGRI, Barnard Jacobs Mellet Holdings, De Beers Retail, Eurosteel, Gold Fields, Heraeus Chemicals, Hollard, International Marketing Council, Markinor, Moores Rowland, Mortimer Harvey, National Union of Mine Workers, RandGold Resources, Transnet Group and Touchline Media.

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