Workgroup and Messaging Case Studies, SuSE Linux Open Exchange Server

SuSE Linux Open Exchange Server (SLES) is based on the well-known components of Postfix (email exchanger), Cyrus (mailbox server) and Open LDAP (directory services), all of which have been extensively deployed both alone and bundled together. These have been agumented by documentation, migration tools and workgroup software. The bundle is not free-of-charge software and is sold by SuSE with various licensing and support options. More about the product is available on SuSE's web site.

The following case study is taken from SuSE's own website. The original can be found here.

Case Study

Background

Nottingham City Council is the single largest employer in the City of Nottingham (UK). The council provides many services directly to the people of Nottingham, ranging from refuse collection, public health, housing and council tax benefits to schools, fostering, daycare, leisure centres and museums.

With over16,000 employees, Nottingham City Council relies heavily on an extensive IT network to support its day to day activity. The 7072 currently operational email accounts within the Council produce millions of email messages a month, translating into 36 Giga bytes of data.

With the increase in demand, Richard Heggs, Systems support analyst for Nottingham City Council, had planned to increase the amount of email accounts to 8,000 by next year and then raise it to 10,000 by the following year. With such heavy usage going through the Council's corporate systems Heggs was well aware that he would need a robust and scalable solution in the near future.

Current situation

It was becoming obvious that the incumbent email system wasn't able to cope with the demands placed on it by the increasing amount of users. The system was starting to crash on a regular basis, leaving email invalid with the user having to re-launch the browser to retrieve email.

Moreover, as email was seen as the key concept of "e-government" and "joined up government", the IT department was loosing credibility fast and, without a new solution, was unable to solve users escalating problems.

Challenges

The current mail system consisting of MDaemon and Worldclient was very limited, and the WorldClient browser-based technology in particular was becoming increasingly unpopular with the majority of the Council's email users.

Because of the relatively recent migration from Microsoft Mail to MDaemon, Heggs was under pressure to implement a workable solution, which was popular with the Council's increasing user base with as little disruption as possible. Heggs and the IT department's credibility was once again at stake!

Solution

The current email problems meant that Heggs couldn't afford to spend six months looking for a product and was keen to get a working solution implemented asap.

Having had experience of Red Hat and Mandrake, Heggs felt that a move towards Open Source would give him more control over the system as well as save Nottingham City Council money.

Heggs looked at a number of products and decided that the SuSE Linux Email Server III was the product that offered the best solution. However after consultation, SuSE Linux found that a customized solution would meet the Council's requirements in a better way.

After a few meetings, SuSE Linux decided that the best way forward would be to run the Open Source EXIM mail transport agent with the very scalable client interface HORDE, both running on top of the SuSE Linux 8.0 operating system.

All in all, the project took about 2/3 months to implement and make the switch from MDaemon and Worldclient to the new solution.

Results

Apart from some initial expected teething problems, Nottingham City Council now has a stable, scalable and 'invisible' email system. Heggs reported that where email used to be at the top of any meeting agenda, it now never gets mentioned. The new expectation is that email will function normally and "silently" within the Council.

Throughout this project, Heggs has found SuSE Linux to be approachable and cooperative and states this as one of the reasons for the new system's success. He also added that because the solution is modular it would be easy to upgrade and suit the future changing IT needs and demands of the Council.

Home