Email walks the talk with Exchange 2007: Northlands enables workforce with new capabilities

Edmonton's Northlands is a non-profit organization with 300 full-time and 1,800 part-time staff working in a dynamic environment. Job function can vary with each event: Northlands hosts trades shows, Canadian Finals Rodeo, Farmfair International, Capital EX, sporting events, and music concerts. As a result, Ed Barth, IT director for Northlands, deals with the demands of a distributed workforce on a daily basis. Voice and mobility are priorities when he thinks of enabling his workforce. "We are a 160 acre campus," he says. "Our part-time event staff are ushers, trade show staff, people on the floor." But voice and mobility aren't top of mind when people think of Exchange Server 2003. The standard reasons to implement have been to reduce IT complexity and better organize emails. With Exchange 2007, however, the dominant story is voice capabilities within a unified, collaborative, and mobile environment. Otherwise there might be little reason to upgrade from one functional email system to another.Not surprisingly Bryan Rusche, unified communication product manager for Microsoft Canada, presents a bigger picture, focusing on three main areas of improvement."First, there's anywhere access. Exchange 2007 has unified messaging with Outlook Voice Access and integration with the telephony environment - you can call and have your email or calendar read to you, or use voice commands to make changes. Second is operational efficiency: '07 is easier to manage and offers opportunities to consolidate infrastructure and improve security. And third is business continuity in the context of availability, reliability, and compliance."Sounds like a decent marketing pitch, and we all know that any good pitch has plenty of spin. In this instance, however, Vince Londini, research analyst with Info-Tech Research Group, thinks Microsoft's Rusche is in the strike zone."We're pretty bullish on it," says Londini. "Microsoft basically rewrote the Exchange application and included a lot of feedback."However, Info-Tech hasn't gone as far as encouraging enterprises to adopt '07, even though Londini thinks the product is solid enough to consider before the first service pack. Microsoft announced in mid-August that it will be shipping Beta 2 of the first service pack for Exchange Server 2007. "In general we are cautious," says Londini. "Often the initial layer of purchaser functions as the last round of beta tester."Londini is clear, however, that voice and mobility are natural directions for the product. "Email isn't exciting anymore," he says. "People are going to adopt this because they'll want the mobile access and voice capabilities."Microsoft suggested that Northlands's integration issues with Nortel Networks' CallPilot 2.0 for messaging were reasons for sticking with the newer version of Exchange. In fact it wasn't so much a technology compatibility issue, as it was a matter of breadth, cost, training, and continuity. This applied to other possible vendors as well. While not exactly a "hug and mug" situation, it's apparent that Northlands was an easier sell due to its previous use of Exchange '03. Northlands standardized on Microsoft products several years ago. "When the opportunity came up it was an easy decision," says Barth. "Nortel integrated okay, but just provided another, separate tool. We were looking for a more consolidated solution, and Nortel fell short on the single interface web-mail for email and voicemail."Bringing in Avaya or Cisco Systems would have meant implementing additional levels of expertise and infrastructure - an expensive path. The real message seems to be: make sure you're on the right horse, because pulling a rodeo trick mid race has its risks, especially if you're looking for more than email."Exchange is facing increasing pressure from Linux in the server room with the likes of Scalix and by Zimbra," says Info-Tech's Londini. "But we can't say it's Linux versus Exchange. The biggest competition is still IBM's Lotus Notes, with GroupWise by Novell continuing to fade."Estimates of Exchange's market share vary, but 60% is considered conservative. Londini thinks hosted solutions deserve a serious look, and not just hosted Exchange. "You can run Unix web-mail services at pennies a seat. However, many clients don't want their email out in the cloud, and in the end the cost-to-value peters out after three to five years."Northlands didn't consider a hosted alternative. Fortunately the implementation, while not exactly hassle-free, was manageable."From start to finish it was 2 months," Barth says. "Most of that was planning. It's the planning and communication with staff that are the keys to success."With no clear metrics to determine ROI, Barth has had to rely on a qualitative employee survey. "The feedback has been generally positive," he says. "Reported time savings are from fifteen minutes to over an hour a week."And Barth and Northlands aren't done yet. "We're expanding, and would like to roll out next-generation PDAs to staff," he says.

Email walks the talk with Exchange 2007: Northlands enables workforce with new capabilities

News | September 6, 2007

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