CommuniGate Pro at Essec - Taking campus communications beyond email and into VoIP

CASE STUDY /06 01 INDUSTRY Essec is one of the three major Business Schools in France. Essec offers a range of programs from undergraduate to doctorate levels, and has a continuing education branch. Their campuses are located in Cergy and La Defense, France, with an Asian Center in Singapore, Malaysia. They have over 4,000 full time students currently enrolled at all of their education facilities, as well as over 2,000 part time students and over 500 staff members. CommuniGate Pro at Essec— Taking campus communications beyond email and into VoIP CHALLENGE Essec Business School has over 7,500 active accounts, 1,500 of which change each year. Their previous system (VMS Mail Environment) was becoming obsolete because of the change in the users habits due to personal computing and Web usage increasing in popularity. Despite a webmail interface, it was still based on a character mode interface which was no longer bearable. Essec needed a new environment which contained IMAP and POP capabilities, presented secure email services, and provided the option to integrate third party anti-virus and anti-spam products (over 70% of received, reported emails). Their solution was to turn to CommuniGate Pro. SOLUTION A description of their needs proved that CommuniGate Pro would meet their expectations. Communi- Gate Pro was one of two products perfectly coherent with Essec’s needs, “and the only one with a price schedule we could afford as a non-profit institution.” CommuniGate Pro provided Essec the IMAP/POP capabilities they required, as well as the option for anti-virus and anti-spam protection. Since email is their most commonly used feature (over 17,000 email connections a day at home and abroad), Essec is happy with the protection they receive from CommuniGate Pro. “CommuniGate Pro allowed us to cope with a 50% yearly increase in the number of emails processed, while providing our users with a full range of features now considered mandatory to anyone.” 1 MegaPath Networks Inc. is a business-class broadband access and network services provider In addition to using the email functionality, Essec takes advantage of the built-in SIP server for Instant that supplies high-speed access to the Internet and private networks, as well as network secu- Messaging and Voice e-mail, eCommerce and Web site solutions. MegaPath currently serves small, rity, remote access, over IP. A team of higher level managers across three different campuses have accounts to the server and use Counterpath’s EyeBeam softphones as their client allowing them to mid-sized and home-based businesses, as well as enterprise telecommuter markets and distrib- uted calls for free over the Internet and thus nationwide. place enterprises in 150 metropolitan areasreducing overall communications costs. EyeBeam includes Instant Messaging and presence features giving these managers the ability to use CommuniGate Pro’s VoIP, IM and video functionality. SYSTEM The server at Essec Business School currently runs on a Hewlett Packard DL380 G3, 3.2Ghz bi-proces- ARCHITECTURE sor with 4gb of memory and 6 72gb disks. Although CommuniGate Pro can run on numerous operating systems, Essec runs their version on RedHat Linux. BENEFITS CommuniGate Pro sets the standard regarding performance and functionality. “CommuniGate Pro proved to be a very robust and reliable system, and the ease of management allowed us to keep the postmaster function efficient and cost controlled. CommuniGate Pro is updated to meet the needs of our future, today.” Although they rarely have the need to use the support team, they have indicated that they are happy to have someone available to assist them when needed. They do, however, take full advantage of the mailing lists which include technical issues that, on limited occasions, do occur. For Essec Business School, the benefits that CommuniGate Pro offers were more than enough to meet their needs. Besides the IMAP/POP, webmail, VoIP and anti-virus features, CommuniGate Pro offers: anti-spam catchers, a MAPI Connector, extensive calendaring functionality, and groupware via web clients. Essec will soon be opening a mail account with only re-direction through CommuniGate Pro to over 25,000 alumni, and CommuniGate Pro is more than ready to help them along. CASE STUDY /06 01 655 Redwood Hwy Suite 275 Mill Valley, CA 94941 T 800 262 4722 F 415 383 7461 2 www.communigate.com