Loyola College Case Study

Loyola College rolls out M+Archive to ensure long-term, platform-independent compliance with email retention requirements

Case Study

Client Since: 2003
Number of Users: 2000
Product: M+Archive

Objective: Ensure long-term, platform-independent compliance with email retention requirements.

Background

Loyola College is a Jesuit Catholic university in Maryland committed to the ideals of liberal education and the harmonious development of the individual. Students are inspired to learn, lead, and serve in a diverse and changing world. The institution has a commitment to the rich tradition of Catholic education with an emphasis on academic excellence, which translates in a rigorous curriculum and high expectations from the faculty. For more than 10 years, the students and faculty at Loyola College have been relying on Novell GroupWise for collaboration. Like all academic organizations, Loyola has to address open records requests, as well as search and retrieve email records in cases of e-discovery. To facilitate the process, the college recently implemented Messaging Architects’ M+Archive.

Optimizing the Storage Infrastructure and Streamlining the Discovery Process with M+Archive

Loyola College has been a Messaging Architects client for several years now, using Guardian technology to protect its messaging infrastructure from spam, viruses and other internet-borne threats. Recently, they worked with the Messaging Architects’ professional services team to ensure a quick and easy deployment of M+Archive.

The M+Archive roll-out was performed on location by the Messaging Architects’ Professional Services unit. In addition to deploying the solution with Manko’s team, they discussed best practices in email archiving and advanced configuration options for optimal system performance. “At the end of the week, the product was working, we had had some good exchange of know-how and overall, it was a really good experience.”

Several reasons weighed in for the selection M+Archive as the email retention solution at Loyola College. Among them were the need for centralized archiving, the attractive educational pricing offered by Messaging Architects, and the fact that M+Archive offers an easy path for migration from GroupWise to Exchange. Oleg Manko, Senior Systems Engineer, talks about the choice of M+Archive: “In general, Messaging Architects already has a good reputation at our institution because of M+Guardian, the other product we’re using. M+Archive received good reviews by Gartner; another strong plus is the fact that it offers us an easy migration to Exchange.”

As the person in charge of messaging at Loyola, Manko discusses the possible departure from GroupWise. “There are talks that we may be moving away from the GroupWise platform. It’s unfortunate, but some of these decisions are made at a higher level and we need to ensure a smooth transition. For us, one of the decisive factors for going with M+Archive is the ability to be able to access the email archives even if we were to move to Exchange. Right now, we don’t know if and when such a project may take place, but we want to be covered for such an eventuality.”

In terms of immediate requirements, M+Archive is being used to solve the storage issue of faculty mailboxes. Even though Loyola College has an “email for life” program, student mailboxes sizes are contained quite well with automatic deletion and quotas. This, however, isn’t the case with the faculty and administrative staff -- their mailboxes have no size restrictions, and the only way to contain their exponential growth is by introducing a centralized system of email archiving. “Besides, even if we did introduce automated rules for automatic deletion through GroupWise, we won’t be able to apply it to every staff and faculty mailbox with the same rigor.”

A third reason highlighting the benefits of M+Archive is that it makes search and retrieval of archived email records much faster. “We are a private college, not a financial institution, so we aren’t as heavily regulated. We don’t get too many e-discovery requests, maybe a couple or so a year,” Manko concedes. “Still, when we do get them, M+Archive does a great job for us. In the past, we would have to restore the entire Post Office to find them and at times we wouldn’t because of our purge-and-delete policy. But with M+Archive we’re able to meet these requests quite efficiently.”

“M+Archive was a good choice for us. The Messaging Architects team helped us with a quick and easy roll-out. With this solution, we’ve able to curb the exponential growth of our storage system without affecting the email habits of our end users and we’re able to meet any discovery requests with minimum time and effort,” concludes Manko.

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