Solomon Edwards Group Reduces Exchange Storage Space by 80%
with Waterford Technologies’ MailMeter Software

SEG reduces storage capacity from 500G to 100G.

Wednesday, 18 February 2009 - Solomon Edwards Group implemented Waterford Technologies’ MailMeter solution to manage their rapidly growing volume of Email and to allow its managers and executives to have easier access and the ability to quickly search historical Emails. Solomon Edwards Group reduced the size of their Email data store from 500 GB to less than 100 GB with Waterford’s MailMeter Storage Manager. Because of the reduced Email file storage, the time it takes to backup Email was cut in half. Access and search for historical Emails was made easy with Individual Search & Retrieval (ISR).

Background
Solomon Edwards Group, LLC (SEG) is a national CFO services firm solving the shifting needs of CFO organizations and its professionals. It is recognized for delivering talent, perspective, and action in the critical areas of risk and regulations, resource management, accounting operations, and business performance. Headquartered in Philadelphia, the firm operates offices in Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, Kansas City, New York Metro, and Washington, D.C. Metro. Additionally, it maintains a global network of partners to serve multinational clients. For more information, visit www.solomonedwards.com.

The Challenge
“We were having Microsoft Exchange performance issues and were concerned with the time it took to back up Exchange Email files,” said Ted Locke, IT Manager, Manager, Information Technology, SEG. “And with all of the large attachments, restoring the Exchange Server would have taken two days if Exchange had crashed.”

“Also, our HR Director had a problem with the time it took to search through thousands of Emails (over 8 GB) stored in PSTs files and in her personal Email Inbox, all information and documentation vital for her to keep track of. She needed a single search capability. She didn’t want to search one PST file, wait, then search another PST, and go through 10 PST files to find what she was looking for.” SEG previously trialed GFI for a year, but GFI limited the database size to 4 GB. After that, their search locked up. GFI’s recommendation was to split the database into 4 GB increments, but to find something you would have to know which database to search, or search them all.

Solution
SEG looked at some big providers like Symantec, EMC and Quest, but decided to go with Waterford Technologies. “Waterford worked with us to journal thousands of Emails from March 2007 to the time we installed MailMeter,” said Locke. “They helped us import all of that information. One of the main positives for MailMeter is the use of Stubbing technology. Stubbing takes attachments to another server where they can be searched a lot more efficiently. Those attachments no longer have to sit on the Exchange server.”

MailMeter Storage Manager reduces the size of the mail server by ‘stubbing’ the largest portion of the Email, the attachments, leaving the user’s normal Outlook message experience intact. Waterford’s MailMeter Storage Manager will replace attachments that meet the policy with a link (“stub”). The user simply clicks on the link to open and view the attachment and it loads from MailMeter instead of the Email server. The IT administrator controls the amount of space saved by adjusting the time settings, creating special settings for specific folders, attachment types, or attachment sizes. MailMeter Storage Manager stubs only the attachments, not the Email messages, and the attachments are compressed, single instanced, and stored separately from the mail server. It is seamless to users - no client software is installed on the user's PC.

“MailMeter’s Stubbing gave us the ability to reduce the size of the store by 2/3, down to 1/3. The other problem we were always running into was in order to shrink your store, you have to take it offline and do a compression/ defragmentation. To do that with the larger file set, it took us about a week to compress the entire store. After stubbing, we were able to move mailboxes easily. There were a lot of things that became easier once we stubbed the old files that had been taking up space for years. So time was a concern but also the ability to do a quick disaster recovery. Stubbing reduced the amount file storage we have to worry about. Tape-wise there was a big reduction in the amount of time it took to back up. Previously the full backup that started on Friday night would still be running in Monday morning. Now it is done on Saturday night, so a 24 hours saving.

“MailMeter also uses a flat file type system with meta tags in a SQL database for search capability. It then keeps the documents in a flat file elsewhere. So, some years from now I can decide I don’t need this 4 gig increment anymore and burn this to DVD, and I’m done.” “To address the Human Resource Director’s need, we merged all of her PST files into MailMeter. The result was that within 5 minutes she could get the document she was looking for. With ISR you can search multiple PSS files to find the Email you are looking for. You set up one search in ISR and let it run, hands-free and you can work on something else, one location to find anything.”

“The piece that works with Outlook, works very well,” said Locke. The option to use either Internet Explorer or Outlook to get access to information is nice. When you are in Outlook and you are doing a search, Outlook is pretty much waiting until that search is complete, and if you run a bad search it is going to take awhile. Whereas if you use the Internet Explorer against the flat file, you can let that run forever and even with a bad search, you can still use Outlook. If you know exactly what you are looking for, use Outlook, if not, use Internet Explorer.”

“As a preventative measure, we use another Waterford MailMeter Product – Insight, to look at individual Email usage, in order to protect company assets from getting away from us.” With MailMeter Insight reports and charts, you can view email usage via your browser and easily drill down to get detailed information on email patterns that looks out of the ordinary. You can sort by senders, recipients, file size, volume of emails, etc. to monitor employee productivity, enforce Email policies, identify Email abuse, and reduce the risk of lawsuits.

MailMeter Storage Manager can easily be installed in a few hours. “It only took us about 20 minutes, however, and the product was up and running. Waterford’s support and sales guys are really good. They know their product well. You call up and there is someone on the phone. They know their product and how to fix it. The longest call I ever had was 30 minutes. They are very knowledgeable about the product and how people think, and the possible problems people have.”

Results
Waterford Technologies’ MailMeter solution allowed Solomon Edwards Group to reduce their rapidly growing volume storage of Email and allowed its managers and executives easier access to search capabilities for historical Emails. Solomon Edwards Group reduced the size of their Email data store, from 500 GB to less than 100 GB with Waterford’s MailMeter Storage Manager. Because of the reduced Email file storage, the time it takes to backup Email was cut in half. Access and search for historical Emails was made easy with Individual Search & Retrieval (ISR), allowing their HR Director to search and retrieve historical Emails in minutes rather than hours.