Ohio Board of Regents

Success Story

Tired of periodic outages and the slow performance of its UNIX-based collaboration software, the Ohio Board of Regents moved to Novell® GroupWise® on Linux*. The organization reduced its IT costs by 33 percent, while providing users with fast and secure access to e-mail from any location and device.

Overview

The Ohio Board of Regents coordinates and implements higher education polices for the State of Ohio. The Board recommends how to best direct the state's $2.6 billion investment in higher education.

Challenge

As an educational institution, the Ohio Board of Regents is a target for hackers, so security is high on its priority list. The Board controls hundreds of college education funds and therefore needs to safeguard confidential student information. As a result, the Board needed collaboration software with greater security for accessing and exchanging information.

Spam was also a problem with the Board's previous Sun* iPlanet* Messenger system, sometimes accounting for 60 percent of its e-mail. Its Sun iPlanet Messenger system was also extremely slow and lacked integrated calendaring and scheduling. As the organization has many traveling members, the IT staff wanted a collaboration solution that would provide fast and secure access to e-mail from any location, and from any device.

Novell solution

"Novell GroupWise running on Linux was the right fit for us. GroupWise provides far greater performance and security and endless options for our remote users. All GroupWise e-mail is encrypted so they can communicate without worrying about security."

Mike McGee
IT Director
Ohio Board of Regents

After evaluating several collaboration solutions, the Board was concerned about the security issues with Microsoft* Exchange and felt that Lotus Notes* was too big for its needs. Instead, the Board decided to move its e-mail platform from Sun Solaris* to Novell GroupWise on Linux. The Board runs Novell GroupWise on SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server, included in its purchase of Novell Open Enterprise Server.

With GroupWise WebAccess, users have fast access to e-mail and calendars from any location, using any standard Web browser. Many Board users have PDAs or smart phones. With GroupWise Mobile Server, users can rely on their mobile devices to send and retrieve e-mail, appointments, attachments, tasks and contacts in real time.

"We love the flexibility and centralized management of GroupWise Mobile Server," said McGee. "Our users no longer need to travel with laptops as they can be connected to their offices with a mobile device, even while traveling abroad."

GroupWise Messenger gives users secure instant messaging, based on user identity, to protect against hackers. Users also have the flexibility to create groups, as well as notify others of their status (e.g., busy, meeting, on a call).

In the past, the Board had problems maintaining large e-mail archives. GroupWise archive capabilities make it easy for users to archive and retrieve their own e-mail. A database attached to a storage area network (SAN) allows users to store e-mail without clogging up the post office, thus maintaining faster e-mail traffic.

The Board runs Novell GroupWise on Novell Open Enterprise Server. Open Enterprise Server includes SUSE Linux Enterprise server, but also provides additional networking tools and productivity services not found in standard Linux distributions. As the organization's IT staff was familiar with UNIX*, the team has made a smooth transition to Linux.

"Novell Open Enterprise Server is our gateway to Linux," said McGee. "With an open enterprise, we can deploy a wider selection of products that cost less. We anticipate huge savings in licensing, maintenance and support costs."

The Board has a comprehensive Novell support contract, including a Premium Support Engineer for on-site support.

"Our best experience with Novell has been with its excellent support services," said McGee. "Our dedicated engineer really knows our environment and has helped us grow into new areas. We also save money by having multiple solutions under the same contract."

Results

"Novell Open Enterprise Server is our gateway to Linux. With an open enterprise, we can deploy a wider selection of products that cost less. We anticipate huge savings in licensing, maintenance and support costs."

Mike McGee
IT Director
Ohio Board of Regents

Novell Open Enterprise Server running on Linux has helped the Ohio Board of Regents reduce its licensing and IT costs by 33 percent. The organization anticipates a 50 percent reduction in the coming year.

With Novell GroupWise, the organization’s mobile staff is now more productive with the flexibility to securely access their e-mail and calendars from mobile devices. Users can exchange encrypted e-mail and instant messages, which protects sensitive student information and also reduces the IT budget required to manage security.

"With our previous UNIX systems, we had regular outages, but we have had no unplanned downtime since our move to Linux," said McGee. "Our SUSE Linux environment is much easier to administer and Novell GroupWise has dramatically improved collaboration for our users."