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Psion Teklogix
Selected Case Studies
Psion Teklogix Migrates From NT® 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 To Improve Communication and Collaboration and Network Management
Psion Teklogix designs and manufactures rugged hand-held computers for the supply chain and logistics, and mobile computing markets. Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, the company provides rugged mobile computing devices, wireless data collection and RFID solutions to enterprises worldwide. As a widely distributed organization serving customers all over the globe, the company has over 1,500 mailboxes for more than 1,000 users who need remote access to e-mail, calendars and contacts. Psion Teklogix wanted to improve the speed, security and reliability of its messaging and collaboration infrastructure to give employees a more stable system for handling mission-critical business applications. The company upgraded from Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 and Exchange 5.5 to Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, and consolidated its 11 remote mailboxes and 18 servers to five central locations and 16 servers. The upgrade has helped Psion Teklogix improve network stability, IT management, and communication and collaboration among employees.
Company Overview
Psion Teklogix designs and manufactures rugged hand-held computers used for data collection and other front-line applications. Headquartered in Mississauga, Ontario, the company provides mobile computing devices, and wireless data collection and RFID solutions, to enterprises worldwide. The company was formed in September 2000 from a strategic merger between the U.K.-based Psion Enterprise division of Psion PLC, and Canadian-based Teklogix Inc. With over three decades of industry experience, Psion Teklogix has customers in more than 70 countries, and over 36 sales and support offices in 17 countries.
Business Challenge
As a widely distributed organization serving customers all over the globe, Psion Teklogix has a highly mobile workforce. The company has more than 1,500 mailboxes for over 1,000 users who need remote access to e-mail, calendars and contacts. Psion Teklogix wanted to improve the speed, security and reliability of its messaging and collaboration infrastructure to give employees a more stable system for handling such mission-critical business applications.
The company was also looking for a way to reduce the complexity of its infrastructure, which had become difficult, expensive and time-consuming to maintain. Of its 36 offices, 11 offices were hosting local mailboxes on 18 servers running Microsoft® Windows® NT® 4.0 Server operating system and Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5. As well as being too complex to administer in a cost-effective way, the system was outdated, and did not provide the level of stability and security Psion Teklogix needed to support communication and collaboration across the company. The company also needed a solution that would provide full e-mail functionality to its mobile users.
“The old solution no longer met our needs. Many of our users travel frequently on customer visits, and we wanted to provide them with a better mobile e-mail experience to improve their ability to collaborate effectively, and allow them full access to calendar and contact information away from the office,” says Grant Ferguson, director of information services, Psion Teklogix. “Exchange 5.5 is an outdated technology, so we knew it was time for an upgrade to improve functionality and security. E-mail is such a mission-critical application for us that it’s crucial we provide our people with a stable, secure platform that enables them to work together effectively, no matter where they’re working from.”
Solution
To address its e-mail service issues, Psion Teklogix enlisted the help of Microsoft Gold Certified Partner Buchanan Associates in designing a solution to consolidate its 11 remote mailboxes in five central locations for greater security, easier management, mobile access and improved total cost of ownership (TCO).
Buchanan Associates helped Psion Teklogix deploy Microsoft Windows Server™ 2003 operating system, and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server as its solution. The company upgraded from its Office 2000 and XP application to Microsoft Office Outlook® 2003 messaging and collaboration client, to help users better manage and organize their e-mail messages, schedules, tasks and contacts.
Psion Teklogix also deployed Active Directory® 2003 directory service to help ensure secure and reliable authentication, dynamic e-mail distribution, and profile-building processes.
“On the Active Directory side of things, consolidation was even more dramatic,” says Ferguson. “In the old set up, we had a total of 10 trusted sites, each with their own local domains. Three sites had separate Active Directory 2000 forests, and seven of the trusted sites were running Windows NT4, which made things problematic, unreliable and painful to administer. Consolidating on Active Directory 2003 has given us one global domain subdivided internally into 10 organizational units.” With extensive experience in Microsoft Exchange Server and Active Directory architecture, design and migrations, Buchanan Associates’ expertise and proactive consulting enabled Psion Teklogix to update its messaging and collaboration solution with minimal disruption to e-mail service. "Buchanan Associates provides our clients with proactive consulting. Our vast experience with Exchange and Active Directory migrations helped us mitigate any risk to Psion Teklogix’s end user community, and ensure the process was seamless and glitch-free," says Stephen Sweett, regional vice president, Buchanan Associates.
Buchanan Associates designed and implemented Microsoft Office Outlook Web Access (OWA) to help provide Psion Teklogix with a more secure and user-friendly interface that closely matches the interface of Outlook 2003. By clustering Exchange 2003 and load balancing the OWA front-end servers, Psion Teklogix has the benefits of a reliable, high performing, secure and scalable e-mail environment.
Remote users can choose to connect Microsoft Office Outlook 2003 to the corporate Exchange 2003 server over the Internet without being required to use virtual private network connections. The RPC over HTTPS feature of Outlook 2003 allows remote users to use the full Outlook client and access the Exchange 2003 Server when they are working outside the organization’s infrastructure.
Business Benefits
Psion Teklogix has seen significant benefits from its Exchange Server 2003 deployment, and expects these benefits will grow along with the company. In the future, the company plans to continue consolidating its environment and decommissioning old servers. The solution has helped Psion Teklogix streamline the management of its systems, enhance communications and collaboration ability for its mobile workers, and improve the overall performance and reliability of its e-mail infrastructure.
Lower Total Cost of Ownership
With the consolidation of its servers, Psion Teklogix immediately reduced its hardware costs and software licensing fees, resulting in lower TCO. Further benefits were realized by deploying its servers running Exchange Server 2003 in five location sites grouped into two regional hubs. Centralizing its servers has helped Psion Teklogix lower its administrative overhead by saving IT staff hours of support and maintenance time. For example, e-mail support time has been reduced by 25 per cent.
“Our IT staff had a lot on their plates trying to manage our previous system across 11 different locations,” says Ferguson. “With all our servers now consolidated in five locations, they spend less time troubleshooting and more time on strategic IT projects.”
Increased Employee Efficiency
Exchange Server 2003 and Windows Server 2003 have helped Psion Teklogix improve employee communication across all sites. The ability to collaborate easily is helping staff work more efficiently, and with Outlook 2003, employees are better able to access critical corporate data stored on Exchange Server 2003.
Psion Teklogix uses Outlook 2003 cached mode to provide a local copy of the user’s mailbox on the local computer. Users can retrieve their e-mail messages from the Exchange 2003 server while referencing local copies of all other mailbox data. This architecture allows remote users to connect to the corporate Exchange 2003 server over slower network connections, without slowing their e-mail experience.
Increased Reliability, Stability and Manageability
With the clustering services and load-balancing built in to Microsoft Windows 2003, Psion Teklogix anticipates greater than 99 per cent availability in its messaging solution. Mailbox information in Outlook 2003 is stored in redundant data storage locations, so if one location should fail, another is in place to handle the overflow. This helps ensure high availability for users.
“Today our network is much more simplified, streamlined, robust and reliable,” says Ferguson. “Active Directory lies at the core of our computing foundation, and we use that to help our employees work and collaborate more freely, accessing the applications and other information resources they need, regardless of location. Beyond that, Active Directory also underpins our customer and partner extranet, and helps us share information and collaborate more freely with our customers and partners.”
Microsoft Windows Server System
Microsoft® Windows Server System is a comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable server infrastructure that helps reduce the complexity and costs of building, deploying, connecting, and operating agile business solutions. Windows Server System helps customers create new value for their business through the strategic use of their IT assets. With the Windows Server operating system as its foundation, Windows Server System delivers dependable infrastructure for data management and analysis; enterprise integration; customer, partner, and employee portals; business process automation; communications and collaboration; and core IT operations including security, deployment, and systems management.