As Arnold Bloch Leibler modernises its email, Mimecast is on the case

At A Glance

• Legacy on-premises email archiving solution was overloaded
• ABL migrated 16 years of email to the Mimecast cloud
• Users are enjoying faster, more comprehensive searching from Web and mobile
• Mimecast kept the business running during an extended third-party email outage
• Enthusiasm about the cloud paved the way for Microsoft Office 365 and other software as a service applications

With more than 250 staff in Sydney and Melbourne, Australia, Arnold Bloch Leibler provides commercial legal services, strategic guidance and problem solving across 13 practice areas for a broad range of private and corporate clients.

Challenge

As a multidisciplinary commercial law firm, Arnold Bloch Leibler (ABL) relies heavily on the smooth operation and timely retrieval of information. Its 250 staff have long used email inboxes to store masses of information, overworking an on-premises email archiving system that was struggling to keep up.

“Our existing solution wasn’t meeting our needs, and users were frustrated that it wasn’t performing,” said Chief Information Officer David Leong. ABL moved to improve email archiving and access, while paving the way for adoption of collaboration platforms like Microsoft Office 365™.

Solution

It became clear that a cloud platform would scale to meet ABL’s needs, and evaluation of market options soon led Leong to identify the benefits of Mimecast email archiving. ABL spent nearly 2 years working closely with Mimecast on a “challenging” project to progressively migrate more than 10 terabytes of email data – comprising every email sent or received by every employee since 2001 – to Mimecast Cloud Archive for Email.

Time is money in the legal profession, and users quickly warmed to the Mimecast solution’s rapid, powerful search capabilities and its easy access through mobile devices. But it was during an extended outage of the email system – which was run in parallel with Mimecast during the migration – that the new environment proved its real value by enabling staff to continue working uninterrupted.

“Email being unavailable at a law firm is a significant problem,” Leong said. “Mimecast understood the critical nature of this event, and they were relentless in getting email continuity right.”

In Summary

Arnold Bloch Leibler’s migration to Mimecast email archiving marked its first major commitment to cloud services. The platform proved itself by keeping the business operating during a third-party service outage, boosting confidence in the cloud and paving the way for adoption of Microsoft Office 365 and future cloud services.

“There was initially some apprehension around what a cloud service would provide and how cloud services would affect the user experience,” said David Leong, Chief Information Officer, Arnold Bloch Leibler. “But Mimecast has been brilliant. It is returning search results more efficiently than Outlook, and searching every piece of email our users have ever sent or received since 2001.”

“Staff were delighted at the results after we architected our mail system with Mimecast as the centrepiece of our email topology – and this gave the firm an appetite for cloud computing Mimecast clearly understand what users need: it’s tying in the importance of email and everything that integrates with email. ”

David Leong, Chief Information Officer, Arnold Bloch Leibler