BenQ meets user expectations with high-performance Microsoft Exchange platform in Europe.
With employees spread across ten European countries, BenQ needs to ensure that its email system in Europe delivers high performance and exceptional availability. It installed Loadbalancer.org products as part of a new centralized Microsoft Exchange platform and they work so effectively, they are almost forgotten.
“There are so many hassles you can have in an IT department that when you find a piece of equipment that simply does its job it’s a huge relief. I don’t even need to think about my Loadbalancer.org products. And that’s the best recommendation an IT director can give.” -Patrick Starrenburg, ICT Director, BenQ Europe
Challenges
- Consolidate Microsoft Exchange servers at one centralized European location
Solution
- Loadbalancer.org Enterprise R20 hardware solution
- Loadbalancer.org Enterprise VA R20 virtual solution
Benefits
- Ensures the high performance and availability of Microsoft Exchange
- Enables business continuity during an Exchange platform migration
- Does not place an additional management burden on the IT team
- Has the scalability needed for the future
Challenges
All international businesses rely heavily on email and BenQ Corporation is no exception. This global manufacturer of monitors, projectors, interactive flat panels and digital signage uses the Microsoft Exchange email platform and has to deliver a consistent and reliable service for users. As Patrick Starrenburg, ICT Director for BenQ Europe, explains, “Email is one of those systems for which users have the highest expectations of service – and the least tolerance of problems.”
BenQ Inc. decided to upgrade to the latest version of Microsoft Exchange worldwide and, at the same time, BenQ Europe planned to consolidate the number of Exchange servers in use in Europe, where the business has offices in ten countries, spanning the UK to Russia. It wanted to create a single European-wide Exchange platform in the regional headquarters’ data center in the Netherlands to meet the needs of all European users, and knew that it would need a dependable load balancer to optimize reliability and performance.
Solution
BenQ selected products from Loadbalancer.org, because they were certified by Microsoft for load balancing Exchange installations and they offered strong functionality for a highly competitive price. It installed a Loadbalancer.org Enterprise R20 product to balance traffic between user-facing Exchange servers, which connect to synchronized back-end Exchange database servers.
A couple of years later, the company enhanced its global Windows Active Directory domain structure, consolidating a number of regional sub-domains. This project necessitated an Exchange platform rebuild in Europe. To facilitate this migration, while keeping the existing Exchange platform running, a temporary, parallel infrastructure was set up with the new Exchange infrastructure behind a second load balancer, a virtual edition of Loadbalancer. org’s Enterprise products. After the migration BenQ Europe simply reconfigured its existing hardware based Enterprise R20 products for the new Active Directory environment.
Results
By balancing traffic across Exchange servers, the Loadbalancer.org products ensure the high performance and availability of email, one of the most critical business systems within BenQ. “Wherever our employees are in Europe, whether they are in an office, working from home or using mobile devices, they get the email performance that they expect,” says Starrenburg.
The Loadbalancer.org products are very reliable and require so little maintenance that the IT team almost forgets about them entirely. “Loadbalancer.org gives us ‘set and forget’ products that do their job without fuss,” Starrenburg comments, adding, “They just work.” He particularly appreciates the management interface, which he describes as “highly effective and straight forward to use.” Of course, the systems are also monitored and firmware updates applied, as necessary, which also “is a very straightforward task,” Starrenburg says.
During the major IT project to consolidate domains, the use of virtual Loadbalancer.org solutions on a temporary basis helped BenQ to ensure business continuity. “Loadbalancer.org was exceptionally helpful and offered us good advice,” Starrenburg says. “The company’s flexibility helped us in the rebuilding of our European Exchange platform, without disruption for users.”
The installed Loadbalancer.org solutions have all the functionality and scalability to meet BenQ’s Exchange platform requirements for the foreseeable future. However, if Starrenburg decides to add load balancing functionality to any of the company’s other IT environments in Europe, he will be putting in a call to Loadbalancer.org. “I wouldn’t buy another brand,” he says. “I have something that works well and I’m going to stick with it.”
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