Stellar Materials, Inc.

Hosted SharePoint and Exchange Server Case Study

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Business Situation
As a part of day-to-day business, Stellar Materials Incorporated was becoming increasingly dependent on their SharePoint site, as both a company intranet and a public-facing website. At that time, Stellar hosted their SharePoint site in a shared server hosting environment through a third-party hosting company in Virginia. Their Exchange Server, however, was hosted in-house on a Stellar owned dedicated server in Tampa, FL. With these servers operating under separate IT management, it was becoming more and more evident that the two applications had a growing disconnect.

One setback was that users needed two different sets of login credentials to even access the systems. In addition, their in-house Small Business Server was improperly configured, resulting in a significant amount of errors and drops in service. To improve business efficiency, Stellar realized that they needed centralized management for all dedicated servers and software, including data backup. To increase continuity, they required a single Active Directory to manage sign-on access to SharePoint, Exchange, FTP and even a member server in their administrative office. Plus, they would need a VPN solution for two main offices and remote users around the world.

Solution
Fpweb.net developed a managed solution to meet Stellar’s needs. They provided two dedicated servers, one for Microsoft hosted Exchange 2007, and one for hosted WSS 3.0, along with single Active Directory sign-on. To accommodate Stellar’s remote users, Fpweb.net recommended and then configured a Cisco ASA 5505 VPN security device. They managed all configuration services, plus data & Exchange mailbox migration from Stellar’s previous SharePoint site. In order to direct focus back to their core business, Stellar subscribed to the TotalCare^® service, in which Fpweb.net handles all server monitoring, installation of updates and data backup.

Benefits
“Our new SharePoint server runs circles around the old hosted solution, and our robust Exchange 2007 server performs great,” said Brian Mintz, Director of Marketing and Communications for Stellar. “Through the use of our new solution, SharePoint continues to grow and add value to our business operation. Our goal is to encourage employees to utilize the workgroup collaboration tools in SharePoint, thus decreasing their dependency on email.”

“I have been very happy with Fpweb.net’s systems and services. They delivered what they promised,” Mintz commented.