Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Customer Solution Case Study

Lifetime Products Boosts Productivity and Cuts Costs with Unified Messaging Solution

“By employing unified messaging in Exchange Server 2007, we expect to see a $40,000 reduction in maintenance costs for 2006.” John Bowden, Chief Information Officer, Lifetime Products

Overview Country or Region: United States Industry: Manufacturing Customer Profile Lifetime Products is the world’s largest manufacturer of residential basketball equipment and polyethylene tables. Headquartered in Clearfield, Utah, the privately held company employs 2,300 people. Business Situation To better support mobile employees and improve communication, Lifetime is deploying a unified messaging solution that will eliminate its traditional voice-mail system and expand mobile system access. Solution Using features in Microsoft® Exchange Server 2007, engineers built a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway to replace the existing voice-mail system and a replication strategy that allows for streamlined access to messaging. Benefits

Boosts productivity Reduces costs Increases availability and security Creates an infrastructure to support goals

Lifetime Products manufactures one basketball system every 30

seconds and one folding table every 7 seconds. With facilities in

the United States and China, and customers in more than 50

countries, Lifetime employees depend on messaging technologies

to stay connected to customers and the office. Recently, Lifetime

joined the beta program for the upcoming release of Microsoft®

Exchange Server 2007. Impressed by initial results, Lifetime

decided to undertake a deployment of the beta version of Exchange

Server 2007. As a result, the company has begun to experience

significant savings in IT and business costs, employee productivity,

and system availability and security. In addition, Exchange Server

2007 will eliminate the current voice-mail system and provide the

foundation required for a unified communications environment that

excludes desktop phones.

Situation Lifetime Products is the world’s largest manufacturer of residential basketball equipment and polyethylene tables. Founded as a garage-based business in 1973, Lifetime has grown into an international presence, with approximately 1,700 employees at its headquarters in Clearfield, Utah; 600 employees at facilities in Xiamen, China; and customers, including numerous Fortune 500 companies, in more than 50 countries. The company’s infrastructure includes fifty HP NetServer and ProLiant servers running Microsoft® Windows Server® 2003 Enterprise Edition operating system and Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 communication and collaboration server. Approximately 1,000 HP PC desktops run the Windows® XP Professional operating system and Microsoft Office Professional Edition 2003. These technologies provide business-critical messaging and wireless access, as well as Information Rights Management (IRM) capabilities that protect sensitive data. Approximately 200 employees access the environment through Microsoft Office Outlook® Web Access using wireless mobile devices running Windows Mobile® software. “The deployment of a mobile solution was the first step towards our vision of building a unified messaging environment,” explains John Bowden, Chief Information Officer at Lifetime Products. “We want to use the latest messaging technologies because it is critical to our productivity and bottom line. Our ability to access e-mail from remote locations has saved our company tens of thousands of dollars in annual phone costs and portable computer maintenance. We also found that by incorporating mobile access with Exchange Server 2003, we actually gained an hour a day in productivity for participating employees.”

Solution To be one of the first companies to use the next-generation of messaging technologies from Microsoft, Lifetime enrolled in the Microsoft Rapid Deployment Program (RDP) for Exchange Server 2007 last year. RDP enables customers partnering with Microsoft to provide real-world feedback on Microsoft prerelease products. “We were really excited about deploying Exchange Server 2007 because it would allow us to move forward with several of our goals,” Bowden says. “First and foremost, Exchange Server 2007 provides the key functionality required to deploy a unified messaging solution that will replace our existing voice-mail system and allow us to centrally manage e-mail, voice-mail, and fax messages. In addition, Exchange Server 2007 will enable a remote replication strategy between our offices in China and the United States.” “As a member of RDP, we needed to perform a health check on every system in the infrastructure using the Microsoft Exchange Best Practices Analyzer from Microsoft Premier Services,” says Jared Sahleen, Senior Technology Manager at Lifetime Products. “After completing the analysis, in the second quarter of 2006, we were pleasantly surprised to find 12 recommendations for improving the security and performance of our environment that we wouldn’t have known about otherwise.” The New Server Infrastructure Once the health check was complete, Lifetime set up an environment to thoroughly test Exchange Server 2007, according to the company’s rigorous development cycles. Engineers configured the roles of three new servers, each running Windows Server 2003 Enterprise x64 Edition and Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Enterprise Edition:

One server, located in the United States, supports client access and hub transport functionality. “We configured one server to support both of these roles because we were anticipating the load to be quite demanding,” Sahleen explains, “as our front-end mail servers receive about 1.1 million e-mail messages per month. All of the e-mail for our organization first passes through servers at MailWatch and Message Labs. These third-party organizations scan messages for viruses, spam, and compliance with our HP policies and then forward the messages to this hub transport server for appropriate routing.”

One server, residing in the United States, stores mailboxes and provides unified messaging services. “This server will eventually host approximately 300 unified inboxes and about 1,000 mailboxes,” says Sahleen.

One server, located in China, provides mailbox, client access, and hub transport functionality. “This server supports all messaging services for the 300 employees in China that use desktop systems,” Sahleen notes, “and allows employees to log on to Exchange Server using Microsoft Office Outlook rather than Outlook Web Access, as they have done in the past.”

Building a VoIP Gateway To enable unified messaging, engineers had to convert circuit-switched data coming into the company’s existing Siemens HIpath 300H PBX into Internet Protocol (IP) voice data. “One of the biggest fears we had going into this project was how we were going to implement the voice integration component with our existing infrastructure,” explains Sahleen. “Building a Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) gateway that would allow Exchange Server to communicate with our PBX system was something we had no experience in doing.”

To help in the process, Lifetime engaged Enabling Technologies, a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with extensive experience in messaging and speech-enabled applications. “Engineers from Enabling Technologies were a big help because they were very knowledgeable in integrating PBX and VoIP,” Sahleen says. “Integrating our PBX system with Exchange Server and transferring voice mail over to the new environment only took us one and one-half days. We really thought the process was going to be much harder. Once we got the necessary components and started working through the process, it turned out to be quite simple.” Engineers spent approximately five more days testing the gateway and addressing issues such as configuring a third-party solution message-waiting indicator product by Geomant to light up the call-waiting light on desktop phones. Establishing a Replication Strategy Engineers employed the local continuous replication (LCR) feature in Exchange Server 2007 to provide failover protection and enable a remote backup strategy. LCR creates a complete replica of each of the Exchange Server databases, storing replica files on a separate disk residing on the same server. At any time, engineers can make the replica database active. Because access to messaging data is critical, engineers configured the Distributed File System (DFS) technologies in Windows Server to back up the replica databases every day to a separate server in the United States. “We transfer the backup files from the Exchange Server database in China across our private T1 lines,” explains Bowden. “This prevents us from having to create a backup infrastructure in China.” Impressed by the stability of the beta environment, Lifetime is deploying Exchange Server 2007 to 100 employees this week—only three weeks after officially launching the project. “Even though Exchange Server 2007

“Integrating our PBX system with Exchange Server and transferring voice mail over to the new environment only took us one and one-half days. We really thought the process was going to be much harder.” Jared Sahleen, Senior Technology Manager,

Lifetime Products

is still in beta, our list of issues is not even close to the length of issue lists we have for some of the other products we use that have been officially released,” Bowden notes. In addition to its use of Exchange Server, 500 Lifetime employees are testing mobile access through the beta version of Outlook Web Access. In addition, Lifetime plans on deploying the upcoming releases of Microsoft Office, Microsoft SharePoint® Portal Server, and Windows Mobile for Pocket PCs—all over the next 12 months. Benefits By building a unified messaging solution on Exchange Server 2007, Lifetime Products has been able to boost productivity, reduce costs, increase availability and security, and create an infrastructure that can support the company’s long-term goals. Boosts Productivity With users and administrators accessing all messages through a single application, Lifetime has been able to realize significant productivity gains. “From a technology perspective, the biggest motivation for deploying Exchange Server 2007 was its ability to centrally manage e-mail, voice-mail, and fax messages,” says Sahleen. “This is especially significant to us because we have had to support disparate PBX and e-mail systems that couldn’t talk with each other. Adding a new user meant a lot of duplicated effort. Not only did we have to set up a new mailbox in Exchange, but then we had to create a new account for the employee in the PBX system. With Exchange Server 2007, we only need to set up one mailbox.” Lifetime also is gaining faster response times through the deployment of Exchange Unified Messaging. “Our customers expect a very rapid reaction to inquiries and orders, usually within the same day,” says Bowden. “Responding immediately to all messages,

whether e-mail or voice-mail, is absolutely required. With Exchange Unified Messaging, voice messages are never neglected, because users see the messages immediately in Office Outlook, Outlook Web Access, and even on their Windows Mobile phones. This capability will dramatically improve our business results in coming years.” Employees in China can now access the Exchange Server environment on a local server, rather than logging into the environment in the United States. “We didn’t have an Exchange Server environment running at our facility in China in the past because we feel that our backup infrastructure should be in the United States,” Sahleen explains. “We also didn’t want to create an infrastructure thousands of miles away, including duplicated management tools and IT personnel. LCR and DFS will allow us to manage our Exchange environment in China from our corporate headquarters.” Lifetime executives are also anticipating additional boosts in productivity as a result of new features. “One benefit of Exchange Server 2007 that is easily overlooked is the ability to tag a note to a voice mail directly from Office Outlook 2007 or Outlook Web Access and archive it with the message,” says Sahleen. “You can’t get that with a traditional voice-mail system.” “There are a lot of other features we are really excited about,” continues Sahleen. “We have a huge interest in the Calendar Concierge, so we can start scheduling meetings, conference rooms, and resources through Microsoft Outlook instead of using a manual process. We’re also looking forward to the managed e-mail folders function, so we can streamline some of our mailbox content and filter through some mailboxes that have

"The biggest motivation for deploying Exchange Server 2007 was its ability to centrally manage e-mail, voice-mail, and fax messages. . . . With Exchange Server 2007, we only need to set up one mailbox.” Jared Sahleen, Senior Technology Manager,

Lifetime Products

become too large or contain messages that do not comply with our corporate guidelines.” Reduces Costs One of the biggest benefits in adopting Exchange Server 2007 is the ability to eliminate our existing voice-mail system and desktop phones. “Exchange Server 2007 really catapults us into realizing our vision of how employees will communicate using unified messaging and mobile devices,” Bowden says. “The cost savings we will realize by eliminating our desktop phones pretty much blows away any of the other IT project we have planned for 2006. “Our desktop phones are proprietary and are very expensive, costing us about U.S.$1,200 per year, per user,” continues Bowden. “By employing unified messaging in Exchange Server 2007, we expect to see a $40,000 reduction in maintenance costs for 2006. We are currently eliminating 15 phones per month, and that number will increase as we move forward with our deployment. Instead of using a desktop phone, our employees will use a smart phone or Pocket PC to access all of their messages.” In addition, Lifetime expects to reduce administrative costs by gaining the ability to centrally manage the messaging environment in the United States and China. Increases Availability and Security By enabling a replication strategy through LCR, Lifetime can avoid system downtime resulting from scheduled backups or system outages. “We can back up our Exchange Server databases at any time without affecting system availability because we back up replica files,” Sahleen explains. “The replica files are not continuously in use like the native database. By storing the system backups on a separate server in the United States, we also protect ourselves against natural disasters.”

Exchange Server 2007 also offers opportunities to boost security, through features such as the Edge Transport Server role and new spam and virus filtering tools. “We are excited about tools like Microsoft Forefront™,” notes Bowden. “We currently use third-party services to provide spam and virus filtering. However, we’ll be investigating the new e-mail filtering options that are available through Microsoft as a way to further standardize our environment.” Creates an Infrastructure to Support Long-term Goals Exchange Server 2007 provides the functionality required to build a unified messaging solution and expand upon mobile computing capabilities. “Exchange Server 2007 is a keystone to a lot of other technologies, so it really made sense to install it as soon as possible” says Sahleen. “For example, Exchange Server 2007 will enable a lot of exciting new functionality inside the next releases of the Windows Mobile for Pocket PCs, SharePoint Portal Server, and Microsoft Office.” Lifetime plans to deploy the upcoming releases of Windows Mobile for Pocket PCs and SharePoint Portal Server so that mobile users can access files and applications that reside on corporate servers. “We have an internal product life-cycle management tool that is currently unreachable from a mobile device because the data is proprietary,” explains Bowden. “Employees can currently receive notifications on their mobile device that certain tasks have occurred, but the mobile employees are unable to enter any information into the application until they return to the office or log on to the network from a PC. Exchange Server 2007 and the next release of SharePoint Portal Server will enable remote users to access such applications through Outlook Web Access or through mobile devices running the next release of Windows Mobile for Pocket PCs.”

“In addition to unified messaging, we want to provide a higher level of integration between our mobile devices and our workflows,” concludes Bowden. “For example, allowing mobile employees to click on links in their e-mail and actually access files through our SharePoint Portal Server. Exchange 2007 will have an additional huge return on investment just because it will facilitate these types of mobility capabilities.”

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio For more information about the Microsoft server product portfolio, go to: www.microsoft.com/servers/default.mspx For more information about Microsoft Exchange Server, go to: www.microsoft.com/exchange

For More Information For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: www.microsoft.com For more information about Enabling Technologies products and services, call (800) 923-4310 or visit the Web site at: www.enablingtechcorp.com For more information about Lifetime Products products and services, call (800) 225-3865 or visit the Web site at: www.lifetime.com

This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. Document published October 2006

Software and Services

Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 − Microsoft Windows Server 2003

Enterprise x64 Edition

Hardware HP PC and NetVectra desktop computers AT&T Wireless Pocket PCs HP NetServer and ProLiant server computers

Motorola Smart phones Partners

Enabling Technologies