Banking Corporation Provides Unified Communications with Cloud-Based, Office 365 Services
Today we learn from 1st Source Bank on why Microsoft was the best decision for their business in their move off Novell Groupwise to embrace cloud computing!
1st Source Bank
1st Source Corporation was founded in 1863 as the First National Bank of South Bend, Indiana. Today, the bank provides commercial and consumer banking services and operates more than 76 banking centers in 17 counties across northern Indiana and southern Michigan. The bank employs 1,200 people, half of whom work at headquarters and another half work at regional branches. In addition, it has a nationwide financing group of about 50 people who work remotely from locations around the United States.
IT Challenges
Employees relied primarily on the telephone or email to communicate with colleagues and customers. If employees wanted to access the corporate network from remote locations, they had to connect through a virtual private network (VPN). Some remote employees could also receive email on their RIM BlackBerry devices to help stay in contact with the office.
For messaging, 1st Source had deployed Novell GroupWise. Cecil Murray, Chief Technology Officer for 1st Source Corporation, explains, “We had not upgraded our email system in a decade. It was secure and reliable, but it did not offer us a lot of capabilities we wanted, like contact lists, distribution lists, and other features to help us manage customer information.”
The bank occasionally used WebEx for online meetings, and it had deployed an analog videoconferencing solution between its main offices, with a small number of endpoints. “We really wanted to provide more capabilities like conferencing and desktop sharing for a wider group of employees,” says Murray. “We wanted seamless access to a suite of collaborative tools.”
IT Solution and Benefits
1st Source decided to consider a hosted messaging solution to upgrade its messaging service and keep its IT team free to focus on other projects. The bank looked at several cloud-based solutions, some based on Microsoft Exchange Server technology, but it was still concerned about security issues. “We needed a major player to be our provider,” says Murray. “We wanted to make our executives comfortable with the security and reliability of whatever solution we chose.”
In its search for a hosted messaging solution, 1st Source learned about Microsoft Office 365 and joined the Office 365 Rapid Deployment Program to test the suite of services. They ultimately decided to transition their messaging solution from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange Online to provide encrypted email service over the Internet. Additionally, with a subscription to Office 365 the bank could provide unified communications capabilities such as presence, instant messaging, ad-hoc collaboration and online meetings, and desktop and application sharing through Microsoft Lync Online.
Because employees already had Microsoft Office 2010 on their desktops, they could immediately take advantage of capabilities in the Microsoft Outlook 2010 messaging and collaboration client that Exchange Online provides. “People who participated in the pilot found it much easier to manage their email and schedule online meetings through Outlook 2010,” says Murray. “However, the biggest advantage over other solutions comes from Lync Online, because people can view presence information for their colleagues.”
With Office 365, 1st Source will not only replace its aging GroupWise messaging solution, but it can provide a full unified communications experience for its employees—without the need to deploy additional hardware or hire more IT administrators. Employees can be more productive wherever they work, and 1st Source can take advantage of better ways to communicate with customers.
1st Source chose a Microsoft cloud-based solution for messaging because it knew that Microsoft could offer it both the level of security and service it required. “We fall somewhere between large enterprises that require secure, dedicated backend servers running Exchange Server and small businesses that require the low-cost economics of a multitenant, hosted environment,” says Murray. “Microsoft provides us with a secure, hosted service that we can scale to meet our needs.” The bank can also take advantage of premium antispam and antivirus protection, 24 hours a day, seven days a week IT-level phone support, and a financially backed, 99.9 percent uptime service level agreement.
