Rackspace Cures Email Headaches for Acumetrics

Microsoft Exchange, Rackspace Email, Exchange Hybrid, Technology, 10-50

By converting raw data into actionable information, Acumetrics supplies business intelligence and data warehousing services to help companies evaluate trends and plan for the future.

• Challenge
  Business email without the need for dedicated IT resources
• Solution
  Combination of Rackspace Email and Microsoft Exchange mailboxes with the Exchange Hybrid
• Results
  Anywhere access to email with easy Control Panel administration

Running Internal Email without Dedicated Resources

Steven Ng, Vice President of Professional Services for Acumetrics, was spending too many billable hours dealing with email. When they opened in 2003, they invested in the Microsoft Small Business Server. “We just kept buying more server licenses as we grew,” says Steven. And as the business grew, their needs grew, like the requirement for mobile email access.

“The server had everything on one box, so if that box went down everything went down, including email.” When the server’s hard drive failed, they lost a week of email and a week’s worth of Steven’s billable time to fix. “You can’t buy SCSI drives at the local office supply store. We had to wait a week for the new drive.” Downtime for any business results in lost productivity and “lots of lost opportunity cost, lost communication, and lost sales potential.”

Dealing with that outage took Steven away from his primary focus, “I’m a consultant and I’m spending a week doing IT work.” To make matters worse, the last server backup failed, and they lost a week of email.

Email plays a large role in maintaining communication with customers. Their website generates leads from visitors requesting information, and they use email to communicate with customers about projects. With international customers, “email costs less than long distance calls.” But, their spam filters were fighting a losing battle. As important as email is to their business, they didn’t have dedicated resources focused on email administration.

After the week-long server outage, they decided it was time to consider outsourcing. By outsourcing, they could offload the burden of equipment upgrades, server licenses, and backups. For Steven, that meant no more week-long stints as the email administrator.

Solutions to Fit User Needs

Busy growing the company, it took awhile for them to get around to researching the best email provider to trust with their mail. Then, one of the owners read an article about Rackspace’s dedication to Fanatical Support^®. That was the tipping point for Acumetrics. They visited our website for more information, “We read a lot of the site literature before making the decision, so we knew exactly what to expect.” The sales chat feature allowed him to get immediate answers and confirm pricing before signing up online.

They took advantage of the Exchange Hybrid option, hosting Rackspace Email mailboxes alongside Microsoft Exchange mailboxes. Not all of their users needed the capabilities of Exchange. With Rackspace, they don’t overpay for Exchange features that most users don’t need. By moving those users to Rackspace Email, the company saves money, and everyone gets the functionality they need.

Rackspace also takes care of Acumetrics’ ActiveSync^® and BlackBerry^® Enterprise Server (BES) licenses to access updated email and PIM data from their phone. Our mobile services allow them to send and receive mail from their BlackBerry, iPhone™, or Windows^® Mobile devices. They can also access and update contacts, calendars, and tasks from their mobile phones when they’re in the field.

Rackspace Cures Email Headaches

On the day we spoke with Steven, Acumetrics’ decision to outsource their email to Rackspace was actively paying off. Because their web service was down, everyone was sent home. Previously, without access to the local server, no one could access email. Now, everyone can easily access mail remotely and, says Steven, “We’re still business as usual.” Without firewall and server access issues, their users can truly access email anywhere there’s an Internet connection.

From the Control Panel, he can manage all of his mailboxes, Exchange and Rackspace Email, from one centralized location. “You can tell that your team put a lot effort into making the Control Panel usable,” he says about how simple the Control Panel is to use. Since the switch, they’ve also noticed a dramatic reduction in the amount of spam they receive.

After experiencing an outage, they reviewed our resolution report and determined, “that issue would have taken us hours to diagnose and even longer to fix.” Due to our relationship with Microsoft, we were able to get a hotfix directly from Microsoft faster than they could’ve identified and fixed the problem in-house. We employ over 100 Microsoft Certified Professionals and we’re a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. As a result, we can provide better support for our Exchange users.

When they had their servers in-house, they were responsible for troubleshooting issues. Now, when they have an issue or question around email, they engage live chat and get immediate answers. When they had an issue using a feature in Firefox, he contacted us via chat and got the answer he needed to resolve the problem in a few minutes.

Customers can access the live chat option without having to log in with a password or download a chat client. They can also access our library of support documentation, give us a call, or submit a support ticket. Giving customers multiple ways to consume support is part of our dedication to Fanatical Support.

Reflecting on the decision to outsource their email, “We lost enough time and money from one outage to pay for Rackspace hosting service for a year.” For other businesses dealing with in-house email, he cautions, “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.” Steven adds, “Going with Rackspace saved us a lot of headaches.”