TriNet Manages Mailbox Health with Mimosa NearPoint
"From the start, it was clear that the Mimosa NearPoint architecture offered a significant advantage over competitive products. NearPoint can archive my entire Exchange Server without impacting Exchange application performance in any way." — Felipe Bagkus, System Engineer, TriNet

Background

TriNet’s business model relies heavily on email communications, both internally within TriNet and externally with customers. As such, it is critical that TriNet be able to manage and archive all of its Exchange information. In addition, TriNet is often required to analyze historical email records and trace conversations threads with customers in regards to employee relations matters.

Business Situation

The challenges in managing its Microsoft Exchange messaging application was two fold. First of all, increases in both business activity and the number of employees was growing the total Exchange Store size exponentially. “My Exchange environment has quickly grown to over 300 mailboxes and over 150 GB of total storage,” explained Felipe Bagkus, System Engineer, TriNet. “Quotas are not an attractive solution to my Exchange storage issues. My users desire unlimited mailbox capacity and my customer service personnel who communicate directly with our clients demand it. I was concerned with the risk of losing data should anything disrupt service on my Exchange Server and force a recovery.”

For managing total Exchange storage, while allowing unlimited mailbox capacity and user access to data, TriNet turned to Mimosa Systems to provide the solution.

NearPoint Answers TriNet's Multiple Exchange Challenges

Benefits for eDiscovery
To improve support for assured adherence to corporate governance rules, Mimosa NearPoint™ creates and manages a complete archive of all historical email information. Using its unique One Pass Protection™, NearPoint creates an “off-host” indexed repository of all Exchange information. “The NearPoint installation went smoothly and I was impressed with the way NearPoint’s One Pass Protection was able to archive my entire Exchange Server without impacting the performance of Exchange,” said Bagkus. The NearPoint repository contains a complete record of all historical email information including all email content and attachments as well as calendars, contacts, notes, tasks, drafts, etc. In addition, NearPoint keeps a record of all contextual information such as folders and message properties.

To facilitate content review, NearPoint provided TriNet with two key methods:

1. Using the base NearPoint product, the administrator or in-house counsel can perform quick ad hoc search and discovery of the archive. Searches can be defined by mailbox, search word(s), recipients and time to quickly identify if a major problem exists.

2. For extended review and discovery support, TriNet installed the Mimosa NearPoint eDiscovery Option, a thin client application that searches the NearPoint archive and performs more robust searches.

“I was an early adopter of the of the NearPoint eDiscovery Option and I was very impressed with its capabilities from our first searches,” said Bagkus. “The first test was on a mailbox containing 27,000 messages, which produced a 130 MB result set in just minutes.”

Benefits for Corporate Governance
Based on experience, the TriNet corporate staff saw the need to manage all of its business records, including email information, for retention and disposition. After careful consideration, the multi-level retention policy was established: seven years for executive and financial staff, and three years for the remainder of the company. Using NearPoint, Felipe was able to configure automated retention and disposition policies to satisfy this mandate. “It was straight forward to configure the retention policies I required using NearPoint,” said Bagkus.

Benefits for Mailbox Management
Exchange storage growth was a major concern for Felipe Bagkus at TriNet, who is responsible for managing Exchange Server. The Exchange storage was growing exponential due to increased number of users, higher email activity and TriNet’s unique business demands causing them to preserve all email communication with clients.
NearPoint allows TriNet to manage storage on Exchange Server and local desktops. NearPoint Mailbox Extension — a policy driven feature that intelligently replaces attachment files on Exchange with a small “stub file” — dramatically reduced Exchange storage. Users continue using Outlook to access email and attachments, unaware that attachments are being recalled from the NearPoint archive directly to Outlook.

Offline email storage in PST files also presented a challenge for TriNet. Users relied on PST files to circumvent mailbox quotas, increasing the risk of email being mismanaged or lost. “I was greatly concerned when I discovered that users were storing email in local PST files,” explained Bagkus. “I know from experience the problems that can result when PST files grow too large, and I was concerned with the risk of loosing email.” Using NearPoint PST Archiving Option, TriNet copied the contents of existing PST files directly into the NearPoint archive where the data can be protected and easily accessed.

Benefits

Mimosa NearPoint delivered the following benefits for TriNet:

• Corporate Governance: NearPoint provided robust and powerful search tools for easy, fast search across thousands of emails.
• Mailbox Management: NearPoint helped reduce total Exchange storage, reducing recovery times and the risk of losing critical email information.
• Improved end user productivity: TriNet users now enjoy “super-sized” mailboxes without undesirable quotas, while providing self-service access to all historical emails.

 

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