Moser Baer Streamlines Messaging And Boosts Efficiencies With New Messaging System

“By using flexible access offered by Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, our employees can now connect with each other from any location at any time,” says Mahabir Bansal, Deputy General Manager – Information Technology, Moser Baer

Moser Baer is India’s largest and the world’s 2nd largest optical storage media manufacturer. It is a world leader in the development and manufacture of removable data storage media. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, it has a broad and robust product range of floppy disks, compact discs (CDs) and digital versatile discs (DVDs). Recently, the company has also forayed into exciting areas of Solar Energy, Entertainment and IT Peripherals and Consumer Electronics. With a large mobile workforce servicing the company, its existing messaging platform did not adequately support the messaging demands of the organization. Therefore, in October 2007 with help from Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS), Moser Baer upgraded from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. With the introduction of Exchange Server 2007, employees now have universal access to e-mail no matter where they are. The upgrade has also resulted in gains in collaboration, manageability, performance, security, and employee productivity.

Situation

Moser Baer India Limited is a world leader in the development and manufacture of removable data storage media. Incorporated in 1983, it is today one of India’s leading technology companies and ranks among the top three optical storage media manufacturers in the world.

Moser Baer has six marketing offices in India, USA and Europe and a presence in more than 82 nations. Its overseas offices are located in the Netherlands, USA, Japan and the Middle East. The company manufactures optical media at the lowest cost in the world and has collaborations with the world‘s leading technology companies. Currently, the company has five plants and a workforce of more than 7500 personnel.

Simultaneously, with the launch of the ‘moserbaer’ label in India, the company has emerged as the preferred choice in this burgeoning captive market. The result: strong growth, with revenues growing at a five-year CAGR of over 42 percent. No wonder Moser Baer has attracted and retained best-in-class global strategic investors including the International Finance Corporation (IFC), Warburg Pincus Singapore LLC and Electra Partners.

Moser Baer’s total revenues for the year ending 31 March 2007 stood at almost INR 2000 crore (U.S.$ 500 million approximately).

Due to its vast set up and the high mobility of its workforce across the continent, messaging is a critical function for the company. The current environment is operational on Microsoft Windows Server 2003 based Active Directory services and has Exchange in mixed mode with both Exchange 2003 and 2007 servers in the environment. A major drawback of this system was that mobile employees had limited access to messages and communication.

E-mail management was also an issue at the organization. With only 500 megabytes of e-mail storage allocated to the Senior Staff, managing their inboxes was a time consuming job. However, adding more storage for everybody would represent a significant hardware investment for the company.

The company was on the lookout for a new technology that could be used to improve the way it works individually and as an organization. “Our key requirement for upgrading to a new messaging platform was its ability to provide a safe collaborative environment, with integration between the different messaging tools,” says Anil Trivedi, AGM - IT, Moser Baer. “We wanted a more robust, feature-rich e-mail system, which will enhance the flow of information and enhance mobility.”

Solution

Moser Baer decided to meet the collaborative messaging needs of its employees with the help of Microsoft Consulting Services (MCS). Ultimately, Moser Baer decided to completely migrate from Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to Exchange Server 2007. “We had a taste in the past with Linux – Sendmail based solution (before we changed to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 based solution), there was not much need to explore for alternates,” says Mahabir Bansal, DGM - IT, Moser Baer. “Otherwise also at Moser Baer India Limited we have established most of the MS technologies, so for interoperability we chose Exchange Server 2007.”

The implementation began in October 2007 and was completed in 22 days. Eight Exchange servers were installed where in two servers were set as Client Access Servers (CAS), two as HUB transport servers and four servers in two Cluster Continuous Replication (CCR) sets. 40 mailboxes were moved to the CCR server at the primary site.

“Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 has a raft of enhanced benefits for our company’s mobile employees,” explains V Muthu Kumar, Senior General Manager – Information Technology, Moser Baer. “Also, at the same time, it delivers new levels of operational efficiency by optimizing hardware and networking resources and by delivering management features that help make administrators more productive.”

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provides out-of-the-box high availability, clustering, and disaster recovery capabilities. Cluster continuous replication (CCR) is a high-availability feature of Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 that combines the asynchronous log shipping and replay technology built into Exchange 2007 with the failover and management features provided by the Microsoft Windows Cluster service. CCR uses the database failure recovery functionality in Exchange 2007 to enable the continuous and asynchronous updating of a second copy of a database with the changes that have been made to the active copy of the database.

With the help of Microsoft Consulting Services, Moser Baer implemented the high availability feature of Exchange 2007 – CCR for the mailbox server role.

Exchange Server 2007 also includes new features designed to improve both the IT administrator and user experiences. For instance, the product includes tools for the IT teams to deliver better security policies and more flexible user access. This helped the company to create multiple storage groups and set individual policies for each group.

Additionally, Exchange Server 2007 includes Office Outlook Web Access, which accesses e-mail, schedules, and other information stored on Exchange Server using only a Web browser and an Internet or intranet connection. With Office Outlook Web Access, users can even manage contacts and view and update their calendars through a Web browser—all without having Office Outlook 2007 installed on the client computer.

“With Office Outlook Web Access features, such as monthly calendar views, recovery of deleted items, and public folder accessibility, Moser Baer employees can have access to information when they are away from the office, through an interface they are already familiar with,” comments V Muthu Kumar.

Exchange Server 2007 also provides updated administrative functions for the Moser Baer IT staff, such as the ability to consolidate mailbox sites onto fewer, centralized server computers for easier management, and the ability to manage Exchange Server 2007 remotely from a desktop computer with the Exchange Management Console.
_Benefits
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With Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, Moser Baer has an updated messaging solution that increases data protection, improves IT administrative capabilities, and lowers overhead costs.

Improved Administration

Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 provides Moser Baer with more efficient IT administration. The Exchange Management Console which combines all management tasks into one user interface and lets the IT staff easily manage all of the organization‘s messaging servers, recipients, and organizational components, is benefiting the IT department.

“Exchange Server 2007 is not only easy to deploy and use, it is also delivering time and money savings through enhanced administrative functionality,” concludes Mahabir Bansal.

Improved Mobile Productivity

With Exchange Server 2007, mobile employees can now do more when they‘re out of the office. The company has set up all of its migrated laptop users with the Outlook Anywhere feature, which provides Web access to Exchange Server 2007 using the RPC over HTTP protocol. This eliminates the need for users to establish a Virtual Private Network (VPN) link just to check their messages.

“Outlook Anywhere was very easy to setup,” says Anil Trivedi, AGM - IT, Moser Baer. “It gives our laptop users ‘anywhere’ availability—basically, anywhere they can get an internet connection, they have access.”

Improved Anywhere Access

Because Exchange Server 2007 features Outlook Web Access improvements, Moser Baer employees can have even easier access to important information when they are not in the office. Using this new version of Outlook Web Access, along with Exchange Server 2007, remote employees have better communications capabilities than before.

The Exchange Server public folders play an important role in communications and collaboration, and the enhanced Outlook Web Access in Exchange Server 2007 makes it easy to access public folders from any device with a current Web browser.