Buccini/Pollin Group Uses Mimosa NearPoint to Adapt Exchange to its Fast-paced Environment
“I would recommend NearPoint to anyone who is struggling with Exchange storage growth and would like an alternative to using local POST file.” — William Medford, Director of IT, BGP

Background
Buccini/Pollin Group (BPG) develops, acquires and manages hotel, office, multi-family, townhouse, industrial, retail, and parking properties in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. To manage its widespread organization, BPG relies on Microsoft Exchange as its main tool for business communication. Even with one Exchange Server and 74 total mailboxes, BPG found that its e-mail storage was increasing rapidly. Continuously going to individual work stations to set local archive rules using local PST files was cumbersome and unproductive. BPG needed an e-mail data management solution that could restore end user productivity by reducing the dependence on troublesome PST files and at the same time provide easy access to archived e-mail. "Mimosa NearPoint really helped and solved all of my problems with PST files," explains William Medford, Director of IT, BPG.

Business Situation
The Exchange 2003 Server at BPG supports 74 total mailboxes and contains roughly 12GB of message data. Mailbox quotas were not implemented but nevertheless, BPG was forced to archive e-mail locally in PST files to reduce total Exchange storage. "My users were saving all of their e-mail, which was quickly filling up my Exchange Server," says Medford. "I attempted to manage local archive settings but I found that this took too much time and the resulting PST files just created more headaches."

What BPG needed was a means to support its insatiable appetite for Exchange storage without crimping end user productivity. "Continuing to use local PST files to off-load Exchange storage would ultimately decrease end users satisfaction with their overall message service," states Medford. "PST files are time consuming to manage while being prone to data corruption." For long term Exchange data management, BPG needs to manage its data growth and keep e-mail accessible for end users who depend on their e-mail for daily business.

The Mimosa Solution
Mimosa NearPoint addresses each of these critical Exchange issues.

Mailbox Extension Maximizes Exchange Storage
First, Mailbox Extension addresses BPG's Exchange server storage problem. A standard feature of NearPoint, Mailbox Extension allows weighty multi-megabyte attachment files be removed from Exchange Server and replaced with a small 'stub-file.' The benefit of Mailbox Extension is an immediate reduction in total Exchange Storage by removing capacity-hungry attachments from every mailbox.

Once NearPoint was implemented, mailboxes that were once pushing BPG's mailbox limit were reduced by over 80%. Not only did this benefit individual users who otherwise had to spend valuable time grooming their mailboxes, but it also drastically reduced the total Exchange storage. Administrative operations are improved by eliminating the day-to-day management of local archiving rules and the numerous end-user problems with PST files.

Self-Service Access™ Improves End User Productivity
BPG also realized that end-user satisfaction necessitated continued transparent access to all e-mails, current and historic, through Microsoft Outlook®, a requirement NearPoint met with its Self-Service Access functionality. As NearPoint is completely integrated into Outlook, users have immediate access to all e-mails through the NearPoint archive, which is a single folder located within Outlook. User actions remain the same, with the same ability to open, forward, and reply to messages.

NearPoint Features
NearPoint allowed BPG to effectively manage Exchange storage while at the same time improve end-user productivity. As Medford explains: "Mimosa NearPoint provided BPG with an alternative to using local PST files to control Exchange storage growth. Using the Mailbox Extension feature, I was able to set a simple rule, based on age and size, that effectively reduced my Exchange storage by almost 80%. Now with ample mailbox room, I no longer need local PST files."

While it is important to control Exchange storage growth, it is equally critical that end users have continuous access to archived e-mail items, and not be inconvenienced in the process. NearPoint's Self-Service Access took care of that requirement. Medford also found that the benefits were further enhanced with the extremely easy installation and usage that NearPoint presents.

As Medford sums up:

"I was very impressed with the 'self-service' features of NearPoint. Because the NearPoint Self-Service Access is completely integrated into Outlook, it was immediately accessible to all my end users. It was so simple to use that no training was required. I was also impressed with the ease which I installed NearPoint. I was expecting it to take days and it only took a couple of hours. I am sure that not requiring any agents on the Exchange Server or Outlook desktops really made the difference. I would recommend NearPoint to anyone who is struggling with Exchange storage growth and would like an alternative to using local PST files."

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