Kyocera Mita South Africa, a local subsidiary of one of the world's leading document solutions companies, has successfully migrated to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, providing a stable virtual environment for the future. Local converged network provider and Microsoft Certified partner, KSS Technologies, provided the solution.
Werner Engelbrecht, Kyocera Mita South Africa's senior manager, Shared Service, explains: “As our company grew, there was the continuous need for new applications and services to be loaded onto our existing IT infrastructure. Before we realised it, we had had the incorrect mix of applications running on the same server, because one couldn't purchase a new server for every new application.”
Kyocera Mita had various servers, each running its own independent operating system with a mix of applications running across them. Furthermore, the Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 environment could not support in excess of 75 Gigabytes of mail storage.
Engelbrecht advises that problems arose when applications or services required continuous maintenance. “Any downtime affected all applications and users. Our IT infrastructure became extremely complex and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 limited our data size, resulting in services being stopped. The result: people not having access to their e-mails 24/7, which became a critical factor within our business operations.”
To solve the problem, KYOCERA MITA had two options, either changing Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to a version that would accommodate more than 75 Gigabytes of data, or migrate to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010, with all the additional new functionalities.
“As a global IT company, it is paramount for us to stay ahead of the game and we therefore decided to migrate to Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. On the virtualisation, we had the opportunity to plan our server environment from scratch. We were able to balance the workload more effectively, and in the process, have a more stable network infrastructure,” explains Engelbrecht.
“We managed to isolate core application and services on separate virtual machines. Even though the cost associated to the IBM Server hosting the virtual environment was substantially more than just another IBM Server, it provided us with much more flexibility. As a result, the available resources on the server are managed more effectively between the virtual machines running on the server.”
Since the implementation, Kyocera Mita has realised substantial savings across the operation, as its downtime has decreased to almost zero, resulting in a much cleaner, well-planned and effective server environment. Furthermore, the organisation has experienced energy cost savings, as the two existing physical servers have since been taken out of operation. This becomes a rather significant outcome considering the fact that Kyocera Mita continues to make strides in reducing energy costs and meeting the criteria surrounding their ISO14001 targets.
“Since our conversion, feedback from our staff has been highly positive, as access to e-mail is readily available on a 24-hour period. More importantly, we have less downtime as result of individual application server downtime.
“We've come a long way with KSS Technologies and it has been instrumental in keeping us abreast of the latest technologies. KSS has been our trusted partner in implementing various projects over the last six years. A proper handover was done, including training, to our network administrator to ensure he is able to take care of the new virtual environment and Microsoft Exchange Server 2010,” he concludes.
For more information contact KSS Technologies on (011) 545-6306 or email enquiry@kss.co.za
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