Azaleos
® Corporation (
www.azaleos.com), the managed
Microsoft Exchange services company, today announced that iFLOOR, a major online flooring retailer, has selected Azaleos to manage its Microsoft Exchange messaging infrastructure. To maintain direct control over its data, improve uptime, and take advantage of the disaster recovery benefits of VMware Infrastructure, iFLOOR has moved from a hosted Exchange provider to Azaleos
OneStop services which run Exchange 2007 with Service Pack 1 (
SP1).
iFLOOR (www.ifloor.com) is the 119th largest Internet retailer and additionally operates 36 retail stores offering more than 50,000 flooring products. iFLOOR was using a provider of hosted Microsoft Exchange services, but wanted better uptime performance and the ability to configure Exchange to match its business requirements. iFLOOR also selected Azaleos for its ability to keep messaging data on-premise for easy access to archives and to leverage the robust virtualization capabilities of VMware Infrastructure for e-mail disaster recovery.
“With a hosted solution, we had no direct control over our data, which is troubling when message discovery is needed. In addition, we were frustrated by the inability to make small configuration changes to our Exchange environment like redirecting Outlook Web Access to an https link,” said Kevin Sonney, director of information technology for iFLOOR. “The Azaleos solution allows us to keep our messaging data in-house, while outsourcing the day-to-day management of Exchange to the experts in their network operations center. Azaleos was unique in its ability to offer a complete set of customizable services for Exchange that includes archive and disaster recovery systems in a virtualized environment.”
On-Premise, Virtualized and Remotely Managed Exchange
iFLOOR turned to Azaleos for its flexible, modular and turnkey managed Exchange services. Azaleos solutions revolve around OneServer for Microsoft Exchange 2007, a high availability, hardened e-mail appliance that is managed remotely by Azaleos OneStop Managed Services.
Azaleos OneServer Virtual Edition uses VMware Infrastructure to reduce the number of physical servers required to deploy Exchange 2007 from four to two. It also provides easy image replication for disaster recovery. This functionality reduces both hardware and power costs, allows faster deployment, and improves availability and reliability.
To meet its monitoring, reporting, and storage requirements, iFLOOR deployed the following three OneStop Managed Services:
- ViewXchange, which provides iFLOOR IT staff with real-time graphical views and formatted reports that cover Exchange health monitoring, e-mail traffic analysis for both internal and external e-mail, as well as message hygiene including SPAM and virus activity, archiving, and mobility statistics.
- ManageXchange, a remote command and control service that allows Azaleos network operations center technicians to monitor, manage, patch, troubleshoot and fix issues in iFLOOR’s Exchange environment on a 24x7 basis.
- ArchiveXchange, which automatically archives and stores iFLOOR e-mail from the Exchange server to secondary storage to improve performance and reduce costs. ArchiveXchange enables iFLOOR users to access older mail seamlessly using Outlook, web browsers, or mobile devices.
“Online organizations like iFLOOR rely on e-mail to run their business and expect dial-tone levels of availability from Microsoft Exchange,” said Keith McCall, CTO of Azaleos. “However, most do not have the internal resources required to perform the monitoring and management required to get there. Azaleos combines proprietary technologies, VMware Infrastructure, and a team of messaging experts that remotely maintain Exchange environments for rock solid performance and reliability, while keeping customer data on their premise.”
“With its innovative use of VMware Infrastructure, Azaleos has architected a highly repeatable, virtualized Microsoft Exchange 2007 solution,” said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. “The Azaleos OneServer Virtual Edition offers customers the transformative benefits of virtualization, such as increased efficiency, lowered costs and improved data center management, through a simple managed services offering. Azaleos has taken an important step to make Exchange both easier to deploy and more reliable in everyday operation.”