Gusmus Electric Company Inc. Success Story
Novell Cool Solutions: Feature
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Posted: 13 Jan 2004 |
Novell Small Business Suite 6 and GWAVA Deployed to Solve Exchange-Transferred Virus Threats at Memphis Electric Company
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Overview |
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Gusmus Electric Company, Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee has been serving the electrical needs of Memphis and the Mid-South for over 25 years. The 65 employees of Gusmus strive to make the company "the most innovative and progressive in the industry" through the services of its own Engineering Department, an expansive Service Division, and an Exterior Lighting Division.
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Challenge |
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In June 2003, Gusmus Electric Company, like countless other companies around the world, was hit with the Sobig worm through its Microsoft Exchange server. The worm brought down the Windows 2000 server, which was the host for Gusmus' Exchange, proxy, and accounting application.
Gusmus Electric Company owner Ralph Gusmus called its principal solution provider at the time, but learned that he was out servicing other clients that day who had also been hit with the Sobig worm. Desperate to get the server up and running, Lee Gusmus, who handles much of the company's IT tasks, called Rob Oeding at Network Engineers, to see if he could come and solve their problem. Network Engineers services a significant number of clients that use Novell software and consequently, Rob Oeding and the other employees at Network Engineers were not out frantically solving the problems that the Sobig worm was causing on Windows servers that particular day.
After meeting with Ralph and Lee Gusmus, Rob was informed that this was the third virus problem in the last month for Gusmus Electric Company. After the worm was identified and removed, Ralph asked how these all-too-common events could be avoided in the future and asked Rob to come up with a solution for doing so.
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Novell Solution |
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The Network Engineers solution included a new HP ML 330 server with the Novell Small Business Suite 6 and GWAVA from Beginfinite Inc. The solution involved moving all Internet applications over to the Novell Small Business Suite's NetWare server. All Exchange data was migrated from the Windows 2000 server to the new Novell Small Business Suite 6 server. Following the migration, the role of the Windows 2000 server was changed to be exclusively the application server for the company's accounting application.
The Novell Small Business Suite's GroupWise 6 application was deployed along with GWAVA for its virus scanning and spam filtering abilities. To protect Gusmus' internal network from attacks, Rob also deployed the Novell Small Business Suite's BorderManager 3.7 product.
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Impact |
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Gusmus Electric Company's employees have enthusiastically embraced GroupWise 6 and the new features it provides for collaboration. The proxy cache built into BroderManager has eased the demand on the single channel ISDN Internet connection.
GWAVA, in conjunction with GroupWise 6, has reduced Gusmus' e-mail load by 38%. In a 30-day span between September and October, GWAVA identified 43 e-mails containing viruses.
Most importantly for Gusmus Electric Company, the company has not had to make any service calls related to virus problems. Using the aforementioned three service calls over 30 days as a basis, Gusmus has saved an estimated $409.68 per visit (3 hours of service plus tax) or $1,229 per month. Based on this number, Rob Oeding estimates the Return-on-Investment to be around four and one-half months and will lead to annual savings of $14,748 per year.
Lee Gusmus sums up the company's satisfaction with the Novell Small Business Suite 6 and GWAVA solution best: "I have not had to touch it (the server) - and that's what I like. Because with our Exchange server, once or twice a week I would have to go in and figure out what was wrong. This new solution has been a very smooth running operation. Rob told that it would be, and I've been very pleased."
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