Posted on 27 January 2009

Johannesburg, January 27 2009:  The pain of over 1200 sent emails from 150 users across the country and 12 000 spam messages a day called for radical action.  Selwyn Schwenk, IT Manager at Dunlop Industrial Products (Pty) Ltd, turned to Mimecast Unified Email Management™ (UEM) to solve these and other email headaches.  

Dunlop Industrial Products (Pty) Ltd has rubber-based product manufacturing and belting plants across South Africa. Almost 90 years old, the company has a rich legacy in South Africa and keeping the technology systems at the cutting edge has, understandably, been a challenge for the IT department.

“We do all the IT support in-house and although we have tight written usage policies in place, with 150 users we couldn’t control everything.  Our anti-virus system was blocking hundreds of mails, which I would have to then manually release on request.  This was most notable when we sent and received emails in Afrikaans,” explains Schwenk.  

Up to an hour-and-a-half each day was spent releasing mails from the spam filter and Schwenk says the company was receiving up to 12 000 spam messages a day.

Within two weeks of implementing Mimecast’s Unified Email Management solution Schwenk says spam was down to a maximum of 40 per day, nationwide, a reduction of 99.7%

Mimecast UEM is a “software as a service” implementation, where Internet email is transparently routed through Mimecast’s carrier-grade data centres.  Here it is stored in a highly secure repository that provides the ability for clients to access mails remotely via the Web, a mobile device or Outlook plugin, to search archives going back months or years in fractions of a second. Mail is transferred from and to the client’s existing servers after being scanned for malware, spam and (if required) intelligent content monitoring.

“Mimecast’s solution was quickly and seamlessly integrated with our existing architecture.  The ability to manage the cost of the solution within our operational budget rather than motivating for a capital outlay was also a big point in Mimecast’s favour when I approached the Directors with the solution.”

Dunlop Industrial Products (Pty) Ltd is currently in the midst of a systems upgrade, which will position the company to better manage its growth strategies.  

Schwenk says that once the upgrade has been completed the company will be looking at implementing other Mimecast functionality such as the intelligent marketing and signature features.  

Mimecast UEM also provides message archival with powerful, split-second search features, which are available through a secure Web Console, directly through MS Outlook or even mobile devices.

 “Dunlop Industrial Products (Pty) Ltd is viewed as a key example of how Mimecast can assist in the rather complex environment of manufacturing.  The levels of IT complexity are enormous – most especially when you are running multiple sites across vast distances.  We look forward to continuing our relationship with Selwyn and Dunlop Industrial Products (Pty) Ltd,” concludes Garth Wittles, MD of Mimecast South Africa.    


 

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