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IceWarp helps PGTELCO Solve Security issues on the Way to Virtual Environment
June 2011 by Marc Jacob
The Prairie Grove Telephone Company (PGTELCO) is family-owned and operated and has been since its incorporation in 1906. In the late 1960s, plans were made to upgrade all multiple-party lines to single-line service. This project was completed in 1977, marking Prairie Grove as the first telephone company in the state to provide all private lines to its customers in a multi-exchange company. In 1979, the Prairie Grove Telephone Company converted its central office switch to the Northern Telecom DMS-10 digital equipment. This allowed customers the convenience of touch-tone and benefits of call-waiting, call-forwarding, three-way, etc. Currently, PGTELCO is a dynamic telecommunications services provider, offering its customer the whole mix of options, including high-speed internet, Dedicated Hosting, Video Streaming & Direct TV and Web mail.
Problem:
PGTELCO infrastructure was partially powered by two servers that were barely coping with growing workloads.
“One server was Red Hat Version 6, running virtual email host, and it was ready to go down anytime, trying to run 10-12 virtual domain tasks in a short period of time,” explains Scott Griffin, Senior Systems Administrator at PGTELCO.
The company’s other server, the main e-mail Postfix machine, was also straining under heavy load. “There were a lot of problems on that machine, primarily with Webmail,” says Mr. Griffin. “Users quickly reached their quota, couldn’t log in, and had a myriad of other problems. It’s a serious business when people are paying money for a service, and their e-mail won’t work. People get pretty excited over e-mail, they don’t have much patience.”
However, the dwindling server capacity was not the only problem. The other grave issue was security. The legacy email servers used IP ranges for end user authentication. Both machines had no limit on the e-mails sent, and it was extremely difficult to track down exploited accounts.
“Using IP ranges as a criteria means that if a machine is exploited, it becomes an open relay for sending out huge amounts of spam,” says Mr. Griffin. “Just one compromised home computer resulted in whole server blacklisting. People have no tolerance for spam anymore – they’ll just block you without any notification.”
It took weeks, sometimes months to take the PGTELCO servers off numerous blacklists, and that was seriously affecting customer satisfaction. “If your e-mail server is out of control, than your business is out of control,” notes Mr. Griffin.
Solution:
PGTELCO decided the time had come for radical infrastructure upgrades. After reviewing several options, the company decided to go with virtual environment. PGTELCO adopted Dell Equal Logic iSCSI SANS via iSCSI Dell M1000e Blade Chassis machine running VMware vSphere 4.1. Additionally, it acquired an off-site DR SAN running VMware vSphere.
However, seamless migration to virtual environment required a reliable and easy-to-manage mail server with the most robust security capabilities on the market. PGTELCO looked at different communication platforms, but still could make a decision – they all had stability and maintenance issues. Then another company with similar challenges recommended IceWarp, and PGTELCO decided to go off the beaten path and adopt the solution.
“Migration assistance services from IceWarp, security, ease of management, and ability to lock down compromised user accounts with laser accuracy were the decision-making factors,” explains Mr. Griffin.
According to Mr. Griffin, the migration from the Red Hat server was pretty seamless.
“We put IPs and networking on to the new server, rebooted and it was up and running,” he recalls. “Although there was a learning curve, it was about 100 times easier than with other solutions. IceWarp was a lot more secure in cutting spam and unwanted activities because of the multiple security layers offered.”
The Postfix served was not that easy to migrate. It was hard to pinpoint which accounts were in good standing and which were removed, so it involved intensive testing.
“In the second attempt we migrated 5500 mailboxes in about 45 minutes,” remembers Mr. Griffin. “Migration wasn’t entirely pain-free, but it went very well. Big kudos to IceWarp support team – they were a huge help.”
Results:
Deploying IceWarp within a virtual environment turned out to be a big win for PGTELCO, especially in terms of improving security capabilities.
“All security aspects are now in the single management console,” says Mr. Griffin. “This greatly improves the overall functionality. I can view the stats and see how many emails were sent, their size, and when users last logged on/off from what IP address. And, it is easy to identify inactive accounts and those that exceeded their quota.”
Also, the company saw immediate customer satisfaction improvements.
“We had a customer with twelve virtual domains, and I was always getting calls about this server not working correctly,” recalls Mr. Griffin. “I always had to reboot it because it would always lock up. And I was so used to phone calls about their problems: e-mails being blocked, rejected, denied – you name it, they had it. But soon after the migration the phone quit ringing. I thought something was wrong! However, the explanation was simple: the user satisfaction just hit 100 percent!”
Users who get IceWarp Web Client through their subscription package also like its look- and-feel. In Mr. Griffin’s opinion, it’s another important customer satisfaction factor directly affecting ROI. “The interface is modern-looking, it has the features customers want, and it works,” notes Mr. Griffin. “And the phones don’t ring.”
ROI:
PGTELCO concluded that the ROI on the IceWarp adoption was immediate, primarily through reduced maintenance and improved customer satisfaction. In Mr. Griffin’s view, technical support quality was also an important ROI-boosting factor.
“With other products you are pretty much on your own once you install them,” says Mr. Griffin. “With IceWarp we have a support contract which is well worth the money.”
Mr. Griffin, who found IceWarp through a recommendation, says he would definitely recommend the solution to other companies.
“I would recommend IceWarp to migrate from a legacy product such as Microsoft Exchange, Lotus Notes, Kerio, among others because it is secure and easily installed,” says Mr. Griffin. “It’s an easily-managed bundled package with all its components in one location on the server and not all over the place. Plus, you can run it on a Linux machine. I have recommended it several times!”
