Manufacturer Selects Office 365 Cloud-Based Messaging for Secure, Reliable Service

Today we hear from Toyota Boshoku on why they choose Office 365, including Exchange Online, in their move to cloud computing!

 

“It was the summer of 2010 that we took a look at Gmail the first time. The primary appeal was the 25-GB mail capacity per user and inexpensive service fee. However, we found that Gmail has some operational disadvantages for business use; for example, mail is organized by thread and folders cannot be created to organize mail. Therefore, we decided not to employ Gmail”

-- Hiroki Tsunoda, Information System Division’s General Manager, Toyota Boshoku

Toyota Boshoku
Toyota Boshoku Corporation designs and manufactures automotive interior, filters, and powertrain components. Founded in 1918, the company today has almost 28,000 employees and 87 offices around the world. The company has the slogan: “Looking into the future, we will create tomorrow's automotive interior space that will inspire our customers the world over.”

IT Challenges
Toyota Boshoku wanted to replace its disparate and aging messaging solution with a secure, reliable approach that would be the basis for expanding their unified communications globally. Shigeo Fukami, the Information System Division's IT Management Department General Manager, said that they used Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server, and began considering the next mail system around the end of 2008 when support for Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server was ending.

“At the beginning of the selection process, we took a little look at Gmail. The primary appeal was the 25 GB mail capacity per user and inexpensive service fee. However, we found that Gmail has some operational disadvantages for business use. For example, mail is organized by thread and folders cannot be created to organize mail. Therefore, we decided not to employ Gmail. ”Thereafter, we looked for a service that provides a 25 GB mail box, a user-friendly interface, and functionality that suits the mail operations specific to Toyota Boshoku. We finally selected Exchange Online of Office 365 as it fulfilled all of the conditions.”

IT Solution and Benefits
In June 2011, Toyota Boshoku began developing an information-sharing platform to connect its 87 offices around the world and began employing Microsoft's public cloud service, Office 365—a solution that also helps the company reduce CO2 emissions in-line with the Toyota Boshoku Earth Charter it established in 2004. Today, Toyota Boshoku operates an Exchange Online-based, unified mail system in 19 offices in Japan, excluding affiliated companies. The system, which lets users send and receive mail via a browser, allows approximately 500,000 mail messages to be transmitted a day using Outlook Web Apps (OWA).

Changing the mail system to Exchange Online benefitted Toyota Boshoku in these ways:

•  Elimination of on-premise servers has freed the factories from the influence of system shutdowns caused by power outages, resulting in a substantial increase of availability.
•  Every employee can use a 25 GB capacity mail box.
•  Employees in 19 offices in Japan can share address books and schedules.
•  There is a significant reduction in the burden on IT engineers who were involved in security measures guarding against viruses and preventing spam mail.
•  The Transport Rule function allows employees to observe the security guidelines without being aware of them.
•  With the ability to archive mail with no capacity limit, the company can centrally manage data that employees formerly stored locally. The firm can control rules regarding mail storage centrally. For example, an administrator can set a mail storage period.
•  Since servers are located in two sites, including one in Singapore, operations can continue in the event of a disaster.
•  Mail system collaboration with smartphones and slate PCs is now possible, and executives are now testing it.

Read the full case study