Creative Flavor Needed Exchange and SharePoint

Microsoft Exchange, Rackspace Email, Exchange Hybrid, Technology, Consultants, 100-500

Headquartered near Denver, Colorado, Creative Flavor serves clients nationwide with design and interactive development services providing usable tools and exceptional services to encourage growth.

• Challenge
  Finding a reliable, full-service hosting provider able to handle multiple IT needs
• Solution
  The Exchange Hybrid with iPhone^™ support and SharePoint^® service
• Results
  Greater efficiency from a unified solution and reduction in support requests

Seeking Single-Provider Solution for Multiple IT Needs

Creative Flavor’s customers rely heavily on email in the commission of daily business. “Our clients use email for internal corporate communication, contacts from their website, sending order information and customer service emails,” says Bill Finch, Founder and President of Creative Flavor. They managed their clients’ websites and email in-house on dedicated servers at a national data center. “Our client emails and site would go down regularly. The data center claimed they had issues with internal routers, but it happened repeatedly. We’d call and, sometimes, wait days for a response. Even in an emergency, it might take 24 hours to get us back up and running,” Bill recalls. Furthermore, they didn’t have support for Exchange or iPhone™.

At the same time, they had two other goals in mind. “The objective was to not have multiple hosting companies,” says Bill. They needed a provider capable of providing a variety of systems to streamline their vendor relationships and maintain a consistent level of quality throughout their hosted infrastructure. Additionally, they were looking for a document management solution. “We were considering hosting file management apps on our dedicated servers for corporate access to images and files,” Bill says.

Creative Flavor was only looking for a full-service, business email provider. Finding an email provider that could also address other business needs, like web and file hosting would support their initiative to consolidate IT vendors.

Exchange Hybrid Offers Flexibility and Cost Savings

Bill’s CFO wanted Microsoft^® Exchange, iPhone™ support, and SharePoint^®. In researching options, he found that most Exchange providers only offered Exchange mail hosting without additional hosting options, which can be an expensive proposition for many businesses. When Bill found the Rackspace offering, he found a company able to host his email, provide mobile Exchange options, offer SharePoint to address document management needs, and hosting for his websites.

The Rackspace Email & Apps division also offered him another bonus, a hybrid email environment. The Exchange Hybrid allows customers to add and assign mailboxes of Exchange and Rackspace Email on the same domain. In the Hybrid email environment, a business can provision Exchange for power users and Rackspace Email for the majority of the team that don’t require Exchange services. Both email systems can be conveniently managed from the Control Panel. The feature set between the two email applications is very similar and both integrate with Outlook, so most end users won’t even notice the difference. The biggest difference customers notice is price. By selecting Rackspace Email over Exchange for some users, they save big on their monthly bill.

“The first rep I contacted to answer initial questions really stood out as someone who was really knowledgeable. She could’ve worked in our office – I felt like she was already part of our team,” remembers Bill. He selected the Exchange Hybrid for a mix of Exchange and Rackspace Email, iPhone sync, and SharePoint. “It was all incredibly easy to setup; much easier than I thought. I was concerned about the conversion of our current mailboxes, but Rackspace offered a lot of features that made it easier to move email accounts and maintain them after the move,” says Bill. Tools like DNS auto-detect for recognizing Exchange accounts, the Rackspace Migration App, and APIs for both Rackspace and Exchange make moving email data, mailbox setup, and maintenance easier for IT pros and novices.

Rackspace Meets the Need

Bill can see the effects of switching to Rackspace already, “I was getting about 15 calls a week from clients about their email service. Since the move, the calls have gone to one or two minor issues a week,” reports Bill. The value of having Fanatical Support^® is also immediately evident, “Everyone I’ve spoken to is very personable, which is unique in the IT industry, and they’re always willing to help with my issues,” he says. While Bill has multiple venues to access support – phone, chat, email, or our library of support documentation – he prefers chat. “I use the support chat option primarily. It’s easier to walk through the solution while chatting with the rep. I can pull up a chat window and have someone right there who’s well-versed in what I’m trying to do,” he says.

He’s found the most benefit from the Control Panel interface. “It’s efficient and a great resource for information and reports. For example, we were able to upgrade one of our clients with over 120 users from Outlook ’03 to ’07 right from the Control Panel,” Bill states.

Now, he has an inclusive IT services provider in Rackspace. “We were considering one other provider but decided against them specifically because the idea of having our site, email, SharePoint, and the cloud offerings was such a huge attraction. Having them all with one provider improves our management capabilities, reduces our hosting costs, gives us better service, and makes us more efficient,” says Bill.

With iPhone support, Bill reports an increase in the outside sales teams’ ability to stay in touch with customers from the road. This allows the sales team to be more responsive and supports strong customer relationships. SharePoint has helped streamline their accounting processes. “The accounting team uses it as a repository for scanned images, to report internal information, and to organize reporting files.” Thanks to SharePoint, they were able to solve their documentation sharing and storage needs without adopting another server. Moreover, they were able to meet their goal of consolidating services, “We really wanted to eliminate having multiple hosting providers; with Rackspace, we have it all in one place.”

“I’ve been in IT for over 15 years. I’ve dealt with hundreds of top-notch hosting services, and you guys are the cream of the crop in the industry. There haven’t been any hiccups or delays and made the whole experience something to look forward to,” he says.