Business needContech Engineered Solutions needed a better way to control spam and viruses, which IT spent too much time managing.

SolutionThe company deployed a hosted Dell email security solution and is also using Dell email archiving and network monitoring tools.

Benefits• Contech IT saves 10 hours per month due to

reduced support call volume • The IT team has more time available for

proactive tasks• IT employees have network visibility and can

troubleshoot problems more effectively• Legal department easily and quickly

complies with information requests• Organization gets streamlined support and

reduces spam

Solutions at a glance• Data Center and Cloud Management• Email Security

Stronger relationships, simpler managementContech Engineered Solutions responds faster to customers and improves network visibility using an email security solution and network tools

“Maintaining SonicWall Hosted Email Security has been a dream. It basically runs itself and allows our employees lots of flexibility to determine their own level of spam filtering.”Matt Alvord, Senior Systems Engineer, Contech Engineered Solutions

Customer profile

Company Contech Engineered SolutionsIndustry ManufacturingCountry United StatesEmployees 850Website www.conteches.com

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“ We can be more responsive to customers and provide the high level of service they demand because of SonicWall.”

Brad Ludwig, Infrastructure Project Manager, Contech Engineered Solutions

Brad Ludwig, infrastructure project manager at Contech, says, “Our existing email filtering solution wasn’t effective at controlling spam, which was growing so much that it had really slowed down our network bandwidth.” Contech also needed a better way to protect its email environment from threats. “We need to prevent viruses from coming in as well as spam,” says Matt Alvord, senior systems engineer, Contech Engineered Solutions. “We’ve received a lot of spam, which has led to lost productivity because employees spent too much time managing their junk email.” Another challenge was the prevalence of phishing emails, which often contain links to malware-infected websites that can infect systems.

Also, employees would sometimes miss important emails, because the company’s email filtering solution marked some legitimate emails as junk. “Employees would frequently get notifications from customers about emails that had been sent, but the employees hadn’t received them. So our IT help desk would have to try and find the original email. It took quite a bit of effort to do that, and the help desk needs to be able to concentrate on more important projects,” says Alvord.

Company chooses Dell hosted email security solutionContech’s contract with its email filtering solution provider was coming to an end, so the firm began evaluating solutions from other vendors, including Google Postini. The organization evaluated SonicWall Hosted Email Security, a

solution offering cloud-based protection from spam, malware, zombie and phishing attacks. “The possibility of using SonicWall excited us because we’d been a Dell customer for many years,” says Ludwig. “We use Dell laptops and desktops throughout our organization.” For the past several years, Contech has also used Dell Foglight for network monitoring, Dell Archive Manager for email archiving and Dell Enterprise Single Sign-On for authentication.

Contech could see that the solution’s email filtering capabilities would meet its needs perfectly. “The fact that the SonicWall solution is hosted externally was definitely attractive to us, and we also liked the fact users can manage their own junk boxes,” says Ludwig.

“Employees can set up their own lists of spam-free email addresses and blacklisted addresses, so they’re really handling their own spam management, with no intervention from the help desk.”

Like most companies, Contech Engineered Solutions - a manufacturer of construction products for bridges and civil engineering sites - relies heavily on email to do business. Each day, about 40,000 email messages go in and out of the firm’s Microsoft® Exchange Server-based system. However, a growing amount of spam and junk email was causing problems.

Products & ServicesSoftwareDellTM Archive Manager

Dell Enterprise Single Sign-on

Dell Foglight

SonicWallTM Hosted Email Security

View more case studies at www.sonicwall.com/casestudies

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Firm is more responsive to customersContech now has the ability to respond faster to customers, because the SonicWall solution blocks spam and viruses in the cloud, so only legitimate email can be delivered to the company’s email infrastructure. As a result, network bandwidth is preserved. “About 70 percent of all email today is either junk or spam,” says Ludwig. “Why would we want that kind of traffic coming into our network, leaving less bandwidth available? With SonicWall Hosted Email Security, only legitimate traffic gets through, which has really improved our network performance. We can be more responsive to customers and provide the high level of service they demand because of SonicWall. We can respond faster to queries and invoices, and that really enhances our customer relationships. It makes our business better.”

Solution helps IT free up time for proactive tasksThe organization’s IT team now has more time to be proactive about administrative tasks, because SonicWall gives users the power to manage their email filtering instead of relying on IT support. “Maintaining SonicWall Hosted Email Security has been a dream. It basically runs itself and allows our employees the flexibility to determine their own level of spam filtering,” says Alvord. “That removes some of the administrative responsibility from the IT team, which saves at least 10 hours a month in support time. With more time available each month, the IT help desk can focus on other tasks instead of firefighting and responding to questions about spam. This really fits in well with the company’s move to a more proactive IT model.”

IT increases visibility into networkThe IT department also relies on Foglight to monitor the ERP system and other parts of the IT environment.

“Foglight is a powerful tool that helps us see much more of our application environment and identify problems almost before employees notice them,” says Alvord. “We rely on Foglight every day to see what’s going on over our entire infrastructure, from our Microsoft SQL Server environment to dozens of critical business applications. Even our vice president uses Foglight to view the network. It’s a valuable technology for us even at the highest level of the organization.”

Contech has also upgraded to the newest versions of Foglight and Foglight Performance Analysis for SQL Server, and hopes to use those tools to monitor even more of its infrastructure. The organization is also evaluating the Dell SQL Optimizer for Oracle and the Dell Spotlight on SQL Server, and additional monitoring tools including the Foglight Cartridge for Exchange and the Foglight Cartridge for VMware.

Legal department can handle information requests faster For the Contech legal department, Dell Archive Manager provides a specific advantage: the ability to handle higher value tasks because information requests are handled much faster than before. Previously, when the department was asked to share emails from a certain company for legal purposes, it could take weeks to find all the emails pertaining to a case. “Putting that information together was a painstaking process before Dell Archive Manager,” says Ludwig. “But now our legal department can either get emails quickly or provide access to a specific account.

The department often receives these types of requests for archived email, and there have been several court cases that have been helped by our ability to quickly provide this information.”

Organization gets streamlined support Contech receives strong, unified support from a single vendor because it has multiple Dell products, including the email security solution, network monitoring tools and laptops. As a result, employees face fewer interruptions because of an increase in infrastructure uptime. “Where possible, we try to work with the fewest number of vendors, because it makes things much easier in terms of support,” says Alvord. “With the Dell solutions we have, the support is consistent across all the products, so we get faster access to technical support and quick answers to our questions. The responsiveness from Dell has been outstanding.”

The company also receives insight into upcoming Dell products, because Dell product managers meet with Contech every month. “Those monthly meetings not only give us visibility into what’s new from Dell, but they also give us an opportunity to share our business needs,” says Ludwig. “The Dell product managers really listen to us, and because they understand our business, they can help us meet our specific needs. Dell also does a great job of providing first-class solutions, so we continue to be excited about our relationship with Dell heading into the future.”

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