Contact information
Address
Mimecast UK & Europe
2-8 Balfe Street,
Kings Cross,
London,
N1 9EG
Telephone: 0207 843 2300
Email: info@mimecast.com
Website: www.mimecast.com
Press Releases
70 Percent of Companies Using Cloud-Based Services Plan to Move Additional Applications to the Cloud in the Next 12 Months
cloud survey release.docx 90.73 kB
Mimecast Launches First Always-On Continuity Service for BlackBerry Smartphone Users
Mimecast Continuity for BB release.docx 92.96 kB
Telefónica O2 Ireland partners with Mimecast to offer customers Cloud-based email
Case Studies
International accountancy firm relies on Mimecast to provide email continuity and disaster recovery
"We took an in-depth look at the solution and were delighted with Mimecast’s comprehensive disaster recovery ability, which meant we could be confident that our email would never go down – even if our own Exchange server failed. And when Mimecast said they could deliver a service that included security, DR, continuity and archiving at a competitive price point to what we were already paying for virus and spam protection alone it was practically a done deal" Jayson Dudley, Head of UK IT, Mazars
International accountancy firm relies on Mimecast to provide email continuity and disaster recovery
At a Glance:
Company: Mazars (http://www.mazars.co.uk/)
Industry: Accountancy
Number of Email Users: 1,500 in UK and 800 in South Africa
Objectives:
Find a solution that would offer email security, continuity and disaster recovery
Run change control windows during office hours
Offer 24/7 email availability to staff
Improve search and retrieval of deleted emails
Improve supplier service levels and support
Implement the most cost-effective email solution
Results:
Integrated solution for email security, continuity and archiving
Unique anti-spam protection by refusing the first email request from suspect emails
Half a million emails blocked a month
Users have self-service access to 6 month email archive
Partners can access their email from anywhere regardless of ongoing patching
Greater functionality than previous vendor with improved ROI
Vastly improved customer service
About Mazars
Mazars is an international, integrated and independent organisation, specialising in audit, accounting, tax and advisory services. It is the 8th largest UK accountancy firm by audit fee income, one of Europe’s largest accounting firms, and on a global scale Mazars relies on the skills of 12,000 professionals in the 55 countries which make up its integrated partnership on the five continents, but it also has correspondents and joint ventures in an additional 10 countries. Mazars is also one of the founding members of the Praxity alliance, which joins together 109 independent organisations and 25,000 professionals, in 72 countries.
A need for business continuity and disaster recovery
Email is a vitally important system for Mazars, so much so that workflow would be hampered if it wasn’t available. Due to bi-monthly updates that needed to run on their email Exchange servers, Mazars needed to find a solution that would cut email downtime and offer 24/7 business continuity.
To avoid disruption the change control windows were always set outside of office hours but this meant that a member of the IT team always had to stay late to run the updates and invariably there was always someone working late who needed access to their email. Updates became less frequent and Jason Dudley, Head of UK IT, recalls how he feared the impact of this on the business, “Some of our users had really oversized email boxes and this together with delaying maintenance on our email servers eventually caused one of our Exchange servers’ databases to fail. Even though we had our systems up and running in minutes, some users lost access to their email history for several days. We knew we needed to review our disaster recovery capabilities and improve our email management.”
Mazars had been using a different SaaS email security and email filtering supplier for some time and it had become increasingly difficult to get the required level of customer support. When asked how they could facilitate email continuity, their original supplier proposed an additional service through a third-party. This transpired to be a costly and technically complex route and Dudley took the decision to review other options.
A strong recommendation
Dudley reviewed on premise and other SaaS email solution providers as they weren’t keen on managing everything internally. However, when he attended the Accountancy IT Directors’ Forum Jim Greenfield, IT Director at PKF, recommended Mimecast.
“We took an in-depth look at the solution and were delighted with Mimecast’s comprehensive disaster recovery ability, which meant we could be confident that our email would never go down – even if our own Exchange server failed” comments Dudley. “And when Mimecast said they could deliver a service that included security, DR, continuity and archiving at a competitive price point to what we were already paying for virus and spam protection alone it was practically a done deal.”
The benefits
Once the Mimecast Unified Email Management solution was in place it immediately started to deliver business continuity during change control windows. Mimecast allows users to send and receive email even when the Exchange server is taken down for patching. Users no longer need to worry about losing access to email and they can continue to work uninterrupted seamlessly through Outlook. Having opted for 6 month email archiving, employees are now guaranteed instant access to recent months email in any DR scenario.
Dudley thinks “The single best thing about Mimecast is that we really don’t need to worry about email continuity or security. Mimecast blocks 30% of emails out of 1.6 million emails that come in a month which means our exchange infrastructure is under less pressure from spam and viruses. Mimecast’s trick is bouncing the first malicious message. If it’s a real email then a new request comes in from the server and the email gets delivered. I have never had any users complaining that Mimecast has blocked a legitimate email, it’s always the system at the other end at fault”.
Since implementation, requests for email Exchange mailbox restores have gone down by over 90%. “Our internal system archives emails after 3 months, but within the 6 month historical window that Mimecast provides we don’t have to go back to tape anymore - we just go into Mimecast. We get about 7 restoration requests a week, of which around 3 are email, and we solve all of those relating to the previous 6 months’ email using Mimecast.”
In fact, aside from the service over delivering on expectations, Dudley has been very impressed with the level of support he receives, “Mimecast isn’t like other companies where you ring the help desk, you log a call and then someone calls you back. I find the person I’m speaking to at Mimecast is very knowledgeable about their own product and how it is implemented at Mazars. They provide a professional, efficient support infrastructure.”
Future holds further integration with Mimecast
Mazars has so far implemented Mimecast in the UK and South Africa but they are considering moving other European countries’ email management to Mimecast, and should this happen, Mimecast will be rolled out even further on a worldwide basis. Dudley is currently drawing up the roadmap for their infrastructure on a global basis, “personally I see Mimecast as integral in helping us integrate our offices, especially as France migrates from Lotus Notes to Exchange”.
Dudley also understands how much money they could be saving on storage if they used Mimecast’s ten year email archive as they could stop email archiving on their own systems and free up terabytes of space. Mimecast’s ediscovery functionality would also help them facilitate the court disclosures they are increasingly asked to provide.
To date Mazars have seen real value in moving to Mimecast. “Previously we were paying a cost per head for email security, and Mimecast offers security and so much more for the same price point. While we may not have saved money we’ve certainly not spent any more, yet we’re delivering a comprehensive solution to the business which means that our employees can always keep on top of their work and commitments, and be 100% professional at all times. I have every confidence in our working relationship and I fully expect Mimecast to be a part of our future roadmap” concludes Dudley.
About Mimecast:
Mimecast delivers SaaS-based enterprise email management for archiving, discovery, continuity, security and policy. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control
of email.
Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves more than 2,500 customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and the Channel Islands.
WWW.MIMECAST.COM
email: info@mimecast.com
Mazars.pdf 361.72 kB
Bolton Wanderers migrate its email management to a unified, web-based email system from Mimecast
Premier League Football club Bolton Wanderers migrated its email management from individual point solutions to a unified, web-based email system from Mimecast. The move was prompted by a desire to reduce the time involved in managing email quarantines, provide a continuous always-on, secure email service, and archive all email communications in a cost-effective manner.
The decision to move to the email Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model formed part of a larger plan to refresh the club’s LAN and move to an IP Centric environment in time for the club’s tenth anniversary in 2008. Based on advice from one of Mimecast’s Systems Integrator partners, Bolton Wanderers’ IT Manager, Dave Atkinson was attracted by the prospect of delegating the responsibility for security, continuity and archiving to Mimecast with the ability to access any email or attachment instantaneously.
Having been the subject of negative publicity surrounding a previous club manager’s contract negotiations with new player signings a year before; and mindful of the strict FIFA guidelines governing the timing of new player signings, the club wanted to be able to provide evidence of all electronic communications between players, agents and the club. To facilitate this, the club has opted for an archiving contract with Mimecast for a rolling ten year archiving service paid as an annual flat per person rate. According to Atkinson another key attraction for the web-based service was the fact that emails are stored on triple-redundant servers at geographically remote locations and offer a continuous 24 x 7 service even in the event of a planned or unplanned server outage.
According to Atkinson the biggest advantage from his perspective has been removing the amount of time spent trawling through email quarantine lists looking for emails that have been incorrectly classified as spam. Eliminating this and other email administration tasks has halved the amount of time he spends on email management. An unexpected bonus from the system has also been the marketing capabilities of the Mimecast service which enables the corporate hospitality and marketing departments at the club to send targeted, branded email campaigns to fans and corporate guests and measure the response rates.
Comments Atkinson, “The impact of the new system which has now been installed for three months has been to eliminate virtually all email borne viruses and spam. It provides the club with an email infrastructure that can support it for the foreseeable future, giving us the peace of mind of an email archiving system that provides an audit trail of communication that could be used in court to defend the club’s reputation should the need occur. The other noticeable difference since moving to the web-based service has been that inappropriate emails are blocked at source and therefore don’t waste valuable disk space and bandwidth on the network.”
About Mimecast
Mimecast delivers Software-as-a-Service based enterprise email management for archiving, discovery, continuity, security and policy. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email.
info@mimecast.com
WWW.MIMECAST.COM
BoltonWanderers.pdf 322.22 kB
PKF: Leading accountancy firm moves to integrated cloud-based archiving
“Having run a cost analysis, the icing on the cake is that Mimecast has drastically reduced our disaster recovery and business continuity costs. Should we have a short to medium term failure of our Exchange infrastructure, we can rely on Mimecast’s business continuity service.” Jim Greenfield, IT Director, PKF (UK) LLP
PKF: Leading accountancy firm moves to integrated cloud-based archiving
At a Glance:
Company: PKF (UK) LLP (http://www.pkf.co.uk)
Industry: Accountancy
Number of Email Users: 1,500 in 20 offices
Objectives:
One solution offering security, continuity and archiving
Replace incomplete in-house email archive with a complete online archive
Boost disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities
Implement the most cost-effective cloud based email solution
Relieve pressure on in-house IT team by selecting vendor with highest service levels
Results:
Combined, integrated solution for email security, continuity and archiving
Acomplete, compliance-ready archive that supports risk management
In-house IT support complemented by Mimecast’s 24/7 support service
Self-service access to email archive and business continuity supports remote and
mobile access
Automatic white listing enhances the accuracy of anti-spam protection
Reduced administrative burden frees up IT resource
Reduced expenditure frees up IT budget
About PKF
PKF is the tenth largest firm of accountants in the UK and part of a top ten international network of firms. In the UK, PKF has 20 offices and 1,500 staff. As IT director Jim Greenfield explains, all IT is centralised at a single data centre in London. “There are no servers in any of our regional offices as we use Citrix to provide everything from London. The way our system is set up enables our staff to receive the same IT services if they are working at any of our offices, at client premises, while travelling or when they are at home.”
Seeking an integrated solution
Before switching to Mimecast in 2007, PKF were using a hosted email security service which provided anti-virus and anti-spam protection. However, this service did not offer an integrated archiving solution. Furthermore, the decision to change the email infrastructure from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange prompted a rethink around email management. Greenfield was seeking an integrated cloud-based solution that would provide anti-virus and anti-spam protection as well as a completely integrated archive. “Mimecast offered additional services that go beyond anti-spam and anti-virus which help us support risk management, business continuity, disaster recovery and compliance. Hosting externally also means minimal management from our end so that our IT team can focus their attention on driving other projects” Greenfield adds.
Avoiding missed messages with integrated archiving
While other suppliers did offer email archiving, this was not necessarily integrated into the same core system – i.e. messages were delivered before being copied to the archive. With Mimecast’s integrated archiving solution, as each message is sent or received, it is automatically copied into the archive. “I wanted a reliable, foolproof archiving solution,” says Greenfield. “The concept of having messages delivered and then archived seemed inefficient and potentially prone to error. If a copy is taken as part of the send-and-receive process rather than as a separate journaling process, the system will be more accurate and messages will not be missed.”
PKF had previously used Lotus Notes archiving, however this did not provide a complete archive because it relied on users to archive their own messages. It therefore depended on users’ efficiency and willingness to follow the firm’s guidelines correctly.
The business needed a complete archive that would support risk management and compliance by minimising the potential for user error leading to missed or lost messages. Client communication and email retention are business critical for PKF. Accountants are particularly busy in a downturn and Mimecast’s self-service search and retrieve facility meant that users could access the archive without involving the IT team. This was a particular benefit to those working remotely or outside office hours.
Having already experienced remotely hosted email, Greenfield was looking for the best integrated solution and the best value for money. He wanted to avoid creating an in-house archive as this would require additional maintenance and disaster recovery planning whereas a hosted solution would require minimal management and offer cost savings.
Improving anti-spam protection
Implementation was simple and straightforward. PKF used the implementation to create white lists that enhanced the accuracy of Mimecast’s anti-spam protection. “We used Mimecast for outgoing emails for five weeks before enabling the incoming function,” explains Greenfield. “This enabled the system to learn users’ contacts and effectively white list them. Every time you send an email, the system automatically allows emails to come in from that contact. This ensures that none of your contacts are blocked by the anti-spam function.”
Users can use the white listing facility to unblock emails from existing and new contacts without involving the IT department. “For example, users working remotely or outside office hours can prevent client email addresses from being blocked simply by sending them an email,” says Greenfield.
As PKF did not have a complete archive before implementing Mimecast, Greenfield decided to lock down the Lotus Notes archive when PKF switched to M/S Exchange, and retain its contents. This gave them the opportunity to start a complete ten-year rolling archive with Mimecast.
Cost savings, business continuity and disaster recovery
Although integrated email management and archiving was Greenfield’s main reason for choosing Mimecast, there were major benefits in terms of business continuity and disaster recovery. “Having run a cost analysis, the icing on the cake is that Mimecast has drastically reduced our disaster recovery and business continuity costs. Should we have a short to medium term failure of our Exchange infrastructure, we can rely on Mimecast’s business continuity service.”
PKF recently implemented Mimecast Services for Outlook enabling users to access the Mimecast service from within Outlook. “The fact that we have had no significant unplanned downtime in the past two years is in itself justification for deciding not to invest in a comprehensive internal business continuity solution, particularly as Mimecast automatically provides users with online access via any internet connection,” observes Greenfield.
Benefiting the IT department and the business
Greenfield explains that switching to Mimecast has had a minimal impact on users. “Other than when users want to access the archive, Mimecast operates in the background. It is user-friendly and requires no additional training,” he says. However, PKF’s 35-strong IT department enjoy significant benefits:
- Mimecast’s anti-virus and anti-spam protection is just as accurate as the previous solution, • but Mimecast includes additional integrated services
- The presence of a complete archive of all emails sent and received, accessible to all users • without the involvement of the IT department and that supports the firm’s risk management strategy
- Business continuity aspects of Mimecast have saved considerable costs in time and • resources as PKF do not have to run equivalent in-house functionality
- The Mimecast system represents an absolute minimal management overhead for IT , • whereas an in-house archive would involve an investment in back up and disaster recovery requiring additional budget and representing a drain on IT resources
- Previously, the IT department managed and maintained the Lotus Notes archive. Mimecast • has freed up IT resources to concentrate on providing higher level services to the business rather than focusing on managing the archive.
Mimecast supports people’s ability to work flexible hours and in different locations. “Unlike an internal system, Mimecast provides business continuity and support 24/7 without involving the IT department.”
“Email is one of the most critical applications we run,” observes Greenfield, “which is why the amount of acceptable downtime becomes less and less over time. Mimecast offers us continuity at all times so we can run updates to our mail server even during business hours. But most importantly, Mimecast supports our business by enabling all our staff to remain professional, operational and contactable at all times. By enabling us to minimise our expenditure on internal disaster recovery and business continuity, Mimecast has allowed us to direct our IT investment into a resilient, high-availability architecture.”
According to Greenfield, Mimecast offers a truly comprehensive solution. “The best thing about Mimecast is that it provides a single core email management system with all the features included. It delivers what it says on the tin!”
WWW.MIMECAST.COM
email: info@mimecast.com
PKF.pdf 386.45 kB
The Salvation Army UK Territory Selects Mimecast Software-as-a-Service to Improve Email Security
“Selecting Mimecast means our email is in the hands of experts, and is managed more effectively than dealing with email filtering in-house.” Martyn Croft, Head of Corporate Systems for Salvation Army UK Territory
The Salvation Army UK Territory Selects Mimecast Software-as-a-Service to Improve Email Security
About The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is one of the largest providers of social services in the UK after the Government. Founded in East London in 1865, it is now working in 118 countries and has over 1.6million members worldwide, with programs including homeless centers, drug rehabilitation centers, schools, hospitals and medical centers, as well as nearly 16,000 church and community centers. The Salvation Army UK Territory with the Republic of Ireland has close to 7,000 staff in the UK and Ireland as well as more than 750 local Salvation Army churches,
known as ‘corps.’ These are primarily worship centers that also play an active part in the local community.
The spam attack
Like many organizations The Salvation Army UK Territory’s IT resources come under tremendous strain as a result of the large volumes of spam email received on a daily basis. With 80-90% of its inbound emails being spam, its email was becoming more difficult to manage. Even though it has always had an email security service in place, one employee’s inbox had become the victim of a backscatter attack, meaning they were receiving a heavy volume of spam email. Not only was this blocking up the inbox but it was also using valuable bandwidth that the organization needed to maintain for its many other services.
Minimizing the mailbox size
Mailbox size limits can also be a major issue for any organization. The Salvation Army was trying to be quite generous with the limit it gives to its staff, but inboxes still quickly fill-up with large files and attachments. This meant staff have the onerous task of deleting emails and mailbox management, which is time consuming and often met with resistance.
Avoiding loss of legitimate email
The Salvation Army UK Territory was also keen to limit the number of false-positives being caught by anti-spam software, to ensure that legitimate emails were not incorrectly assessed and thus delayed, which can be frustrating for staff waiting for important and often sensitive emails.
Finding value for money
The Salvation Army UK Territory had decided it was time to find a new solution that would not be a drain on their resources and would enable the organization to remain focused on its core objectives. Martyn Croft, Head of Corporate Systems for Salvation Army UK Territory with the Republic of Ireland says: “As a charity, our benchmark is always to provide value for money and we must be able to demonstrate that we are spending money wisely. It was obvious from some of the issues we were experiencing that it was time for a change.
We began looking for a new solution to replace our existing email filtering system. We needed a solution that could provide us with a secure email management environment that we could trust and afford.”
After a thorough evaluation process, The Salvation Army UK Territory selected the Mimecast solution. Martyn Croft knew that Mimecast’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) email management solution met his requirements of providing comprehensive email security and eliminating spam and viruses before they hit the network. Having full visibility of the email trail is also crucial if there was ever a need to investigate inbound or outbound email. Being protected by an industry leading SLA gives Martyn Croft the final boost of confidence that he made a sound decision.
Rapid implementation
The implementation process was very straightforward and in January 2009, The Salvation Army UK Territory was fully functional on the Mimecast service. Martyn Croft comments: “We took a very conservative approach to the implementation process and so only completed it after three weeks. However, we could have very easily completed the implementation in the space of a week or even a few days, it’s really that simple. We now have over 3,000 users
across the UK and Ireland being protected by the Mimecast service. Our employees are so impressed that they are surprised if they receive even a single spam email. They have now come to expect this as the norm.”
Secure with plenty of space
Mimecast now helps the organization to securely send and receive emails without the risk of losing or delaying legitimate mail. Mimecast helps overcome this problem by tracking every email relationship, synchronizing it with the organization’s Active Directory – effectively mapping the good reputations of contacts users deal with.
Martyn Croft adds: “I like the idea of security as a service and allowing somebody else to deal with the problem rather than wasting our time doing it ourselves. Selecting Mimecast means our email is in the hands of experts, and is managed more effectively than dealing with email filtering in-house. I was particularly impressed with imecast’s grey listing option for spam emails rather than just allow or block service that many other vendors offer. This meant that we would not lose any legitimate emails that may have previously been mistaken for spam. It’s the little things like this that give Mimecast the edge.”
Martyn Croft continues: “One of the really innovative features that Mimecast offers and that we didn’t see elsewhere is their attachment strip and link functionality. Mimecast simply provide a secure link to access any large files or attachments, therefore freeing up space in our mailboxes. The Marketing and Fundraising department have remarked on how crucial this is when receiving large art work files, which means we are also keeping our stakeholders happy.”
What the future holds Martyn Croft concludes: “With the number of threats to our businesses growing on a daily basis, we must always be on high alert for what is coming round the corner. The landscape is constantly changing and threats are better disguised compared to a couple of years ago. The Mimecast service also gives us options to address our next objective of email archiving as compliance regulations change. Mimecast was definitely the right decision for
us and I can’t imagine anyone not wanting this service once they see it in action.”
About Mimecast:
Mimecast delivers SaaS-based enterprise email management for archiving, discovery, continuity, security and policy. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email.
Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves more than 3,000 customers
worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and the Channel Islands.
WWW.MIMECAST.COM
email: info@mimecast.com
SalvationArmy.pdf 671.63 kB
Whitepapers
Essential email security...business requirements and competitive landscape
Email security is essential. Email communications provide for efficient and effective collaboration and are extremely important as business records, yet they have long been the target of criminals looking to spread malware and steal the information that they contain.Email security is essential. Email communications provide for efficient and effective collaboration and are extremely important as business records, yet they have long been the target of criminals looking to spread malware and steal the information that they contain.
Essential email security - business requirements and competitive landscape.pdf 397.21 kB
Products
Email Archiving
A highly secure, immutable archive of all email, typically with ten year retention period and unlimited volumes. With near-instant search capabilities and eDiscovery tools sets. Also offering a full audit trail for complete end to end management and compliance. All at a fixed fee/user/annum - irrespective of the size of data store.
Email Continuity
Mimecast offers the ability to continue working normally should primary email servers fail, guaranteeing 100% email uptime regardless of planned/unplanned downtime of email server. Seamless and immediate failover (RTO) with no loss of data (RPO). No high availability needed, so neither offsite back-up or dual application deployments are required. And your reputation and risks associated with downtime are no longer a concern.
Email Security
Industry leading anti-spam and anti-malware SLAs, combined with advanced Data Leak Prevention and encryption capabilities. Mimecast protects against phishing, spam, malware - prevents DHA and DOS and prevents IP leaving organisation with DLP policies.
Email Policy Management
Mimecast offers highly customisable, real-time policy application for all elements of the service - including email disclaimer and branding management as well as a wide range of additional features such as email routing options.
Email Continuity Services for BlackBerry
Planned for release by end of July, Mimecast will eliminate downtime for BlackBerry users by providing an email continuity service which covers outages of the Exchange server, the BES server and even delivers email continuity during RIM NOC failure.
