“We concluded that upgrading to Exchange Server 2010, rather than implementing a third-party archiving system, would give us the best user experience, along with more streamlined IT management.”

Neil Bingham, IT Manager, Frontier Silicon

Frontier Silicon, a fabless semiconductor company, needed a better way to archive its scattered email. The company chose to adopt Microsoft Exchange Server 2010—rather than a third-party archiving product—because of its advanced archiving capabilities and familiarity among users. Frontier Silicon now has an easy-to-use messaging solution that offers a unified view of current and historical email and contributes to a manageable IT environment.

Business NeedsEstablished in 2001 as a privately funded semiconductor company, Frontier Silicon supplies most major consumer electronics makers with turnkey semiconductor, module, and software solutions. The company has offices and manufacturing facilities in Europe and Asia, with its engineering talent spread across the globe. “Email is vital to our cross-team collaboration,” says Neil Bingham, IT Manager at Frontier Silicon. “As the company has grown, so has the need for our engineers and manufacturing personnel to be able to communicate with their dispersed colleagues.”

In 2007, Frontier Silicon adopted Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 to handle that communication. The company found that its messaging infrastructure served it well but that it needed a better way to manage all its email. “Employees constantly refer back to old material, whether sales quotes or engineering decisions,” says Bingham. “We were continually archiving email to PST [personal storage table] files, which meant that our archives were located on desktop computers scattered among all our locations.”

In June 2010, the Frontier Silicon IT department set out to find a new solution for archiving. “We generate a staggering amount of email—as much as 2 gigabytes

per executive per quarter—and having easy access to it would help support our effort to decrease time-to-market for our products,” says Bingham.

SolutionFrontier Silicon considered systems from CommVault and Symantec, as well as Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. Although the company used backup software from CommVault, it determined that employees would find Exchange Server 2010 easier to use than the CommVault alternative. As for Symantec Enterprise Vault content archiving software, adopting it would have been a departure from the company’s existing infrastructure. “Introducing Symantec software would have resulted in more than [U.S.]$8,000 (£5,000) in training costs alone for IT staff and end users as well, because it did not behave the same way from remote locations as it did on the local area network,” explains Bingham. “We also would have needed to include add-ins and toolbars to employees’ desktop software for either non-Microsoft alternative.”

Frontier Silicon found flexible archiving functionality in Exchange Server 2010 that it could install, use, and manage without burdening IT staff or end users. This functionality included the Outlook Anywhere feature, which mobile workers use to easily access archives without a

Customer: Frontier SiliconWebsite: www.frontier-silicon.comCustomer Size: 120 employeesCountry or Region: United KingdomIndustry: Professional services—EngineeringPartner: POSTctiPartner Website: www.postcti.com

Customer ProfileBased in London, United Kingdom, Frontier Silicon supplies semiconductor, module, and software solutions for digital radio and connected audio systems around the world.

Software and Services Microsoft Server Product Portfolio− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010

Microsoft Office− Microsoft Office Communications

Server 2007 R2− Microsoft Office Communicator

2007 R2− Microsoft Office Outlook 2007− Microsoft Outlook 2010

Technologies− Outlook Anywhere− Outlook Web App

For more information about other Microsoft customer successes, please visit: www.microsoft.com/casestudies

Microsoft Exchange Server 2010Customer Solution Case Study

Electronics Supplier Enhances Efficiency, User Experience with Improved Archiving Solution

virtual private network, instead using remote procedure call (RPC) over HTTP and avoiding the need for extra logons.

“We concluded that upgrading to Exchange Server 2010, rather than implementing a third-party system, would give us the best user experience, along with more streamlined IT management,” says Bingham. “Plus, we can get an email transcription of all voicemail using Exchange Unified Messaging, so remote workers can access their voicemail, email messages, and calendars all through Microsoft Exchange.”

To conduct the upgrade, the company worked with POSTcti, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner specializing in communications solutions. Starting in November 2010, POSTcti deployed Exchange Server 2010 and upgraded IT staff mailboxes for testing. Frontier Silicon then smoothly upgraded the remaining employee mailboxes and imported the PST file archives into each user’s mailbox for easy searching, after which POSTcti uninstalled the previous system.

“We will establish a fault-tolerant array for greater resiliency and integrate Exchange Server 2010 with Microsoft Office Communications Server 2007 R2 and Office Communicator 2007 R2 to enhance functionality through embedding presence in multiple applications,” says Alasdair Cumberworth, Unified Communications Sales Specialist at POSTcti. Frontier Silicon also plans to integrate Exchange Server 2010 with its telephony solution for Unified Messaging.

BenefitsFrontier Silicon now has the messaging solution that it needs to safely archive email without creating headaches for end users or IT staff. “Using Exchange Server 2010 solves a fairly large problem for us by identifying, organizing, and giving us control over all our disparate email archives,” says Bingham. “We have unified access to both current and historical email with a single user interface.” By upgrading to Exchange Server 2010, Frontier Silicon experienced these additional benefits:

Better user experience. Frontier Silicon employees appreciate the ease of use that comes with Exchange Server 2010.

“Our end users like that they no longer are told that they are over their quota for email, and it’s now easier for them to complete common tasks, such as scheduling a meeting room, because of improved integration with the Microsoft Office Outlook client,” says Bingham. “Also, we’ve seen that the Outlook Web App technology in Exchange Server 2010 fully supports multiple browsers.”

Reduced IT complexity. By choosing Exchange Server 2010 rather than a third-party product, the company keeps its IT environment more manageable. “Bringing new tools into our environment is serious business. If we can get the features that we need while building on our existing investment, why would we adopt something different?” says Bingham.

Faster time-to-market through employee efficiency. Frontier Silicon cuts valuable hours off its product-development timeline by using integrated communications capabilities. “Every step that we can save makes a difference,” says Bingham. “For instance, it’s now easy for our engineers to escalate communication—they can immediately jump into an instant-messaging or screen-sharing conversation with a colleague several time zones away using Office Communicator 2007 R2 to get the information that they need. Employees now can make extensive use of presence and select the most appropriate way to work together in any given situation, due to the tight integration between Outlook, Exchange Server 2010, and Office Communications Server.”

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.

Document published March 2011