Saving $65,000 a Year with Symantec Archiving and Discovery

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1 Saving $65,000 a Year with Symantec Archiving and Discovery High-tech construction firm Webcor uses for everything, from storing virtual models of buildings to records of its agreements and activities. Symantec Enterprise Vault has reduced total cost of ownership for by 25 percent, and cut administrative time for to virtually zero. In this litigious industry, Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator saves more than $55,000 per year in IT staff and attorney time for discovery searches, and another $20,000 or more in legal fees. When it has to be right the first time Webcor is known for having built some of California s most notable buildings (including the former Symantec campuses in Cupertino and its new one in Culver City), and with these kinds of projects, there is no margin for error. Anytime you build something twice, the second time around you are better at it you know what you are doing, says, senior vice president and CIO of. ORGANIZATION PROFILE Website: webcor.com Industry: Construction Headquarters: San Mateo, California Employees: 800 Founded: 1971 Symantec Builder: Webcor built Symantec s former headquarters in Cupertino, California, as well as its new campus in Culver City, California symantec SolutionS Archiving Discovery & Retention Management Data Protection But Webcor never has this advantage, he says. Every building we build is a unique one-off project. So the company builds each structure virtually first. We are only going to get one shot at building that $500 million prototype, Davis says. So we use virtual models and build them several times on the computer to see how everything fits together. Computer modeling generates a lot of data. For a 60-story building, we wind up with 10,000 pages of drawings, Davis says. Many of these are sent as attachments to mobile devices at job sites. We have 3D, 4D, and 5D models, he says. A 4D model incorporates time as well as dimensions, and a 5D model incorporates cost as well. These are large files, and we are able to snapshots of them to PDA devices at the job site. The people at the site are also sending pictures and video of the actual construction back. In construction, time is money, and this use of technology offers enormous time savings. What that does is, it closes the loop, allowing architects, engineers, and others to make real-time decisions about what to do with these issues, Davis says. You don t have the time delay of going back to your computer, downloading a picture, writing an , and then attaching it. We instantly save that time. Why Symantec? Enables users to search attachments as well as s Better than native Microsoft search Saves costly attorney time during discovery

2 And the solution fits well with Webcor s techfocused philosophy. Webcor is known for technology, explains Davis. We truly believe that our use of technology is what keeps us competitive, drives down costs, and ensures high quality in our work. Second only to radiologists If it sounds like Webcor employees are heavy users of they are. Second only to radiologists, we are probably the industry group that most stores significantly large attachments, Davis says. All these things that help us save time and get information into people s hands so they can make decisions, explodes the size of our system because everything is documented through Microsoft Exchange. The source of record is no longer letters and memos, it s s. That makes our archiving solution more important than ever. The data we used to have in file storage is now stored in Microsoft Exchange. Webcor has used Symantec Enterprise Vault since 2002, when the company first began experiencing overload. As Davis team added more boxes to accommodate Webcor s expanding staff, and users increased their use of , the burden on the servers and Webcor s IT staff continued to mount. We had massive slowdowns because our Microsoft Exchange servers were overloaded, causing complaints from our users, remembers Davis. In addition, with only the search tools built into Microsoft Exchange Server to rely on Webcor s users couldn t find the information they needed. A typical user had years of s in Microsoft Outlook, much of it stored in a hierarchy of folders or archived as PST files. Also, Microsoft Exchange Server tools cannot search attachments, a drawback Webcor experienced when trying to locate a particular document that had been circulated using . And while Davis worried about users being able to find messages, he also worried about the potential for someone else finding them. Our employees have sensitive information contained in personal folders and PST files on their home computers and laptops, SolutionS at a glance Key Challenges Manage constantly growing volumes Allow users to seamlessly access archived messages themselves Provide powerful search capabilities to save attorney time during discovery Create tiered storage system to lower costs Avoid legal risk of having IT staff read s Improve backup speed and reliability Enable backups of open files Symantec Products Symantec Enterprise Vault with Discovery Accelerator PST Agent Implementing SharePoint Agent in 2010 Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Servers with Agent for Microsoft Exchange Server Agent for Microsoft SQL Symantec Services Symantec Education Services Symantec Basic Maintenance Services Technology Environment Server platform: HP ProLiant servers running Microsoft Windows Server 2008, 2003 Applications: Vico Software Constructor, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007, GoodLink Databases: Microsoft SQL Server, CMiC ERP, Oracle 10g, BlackBerry Enterprise Server Storage: Iomega 250d Windows Storage Server NAS, NetApp 3020, Dell EqualLogic SAN he relates. If we kept allowing that to happen, it was just a matter of time until information fell into the wrong hands. So Davis and his team sought out a centralized archiving and information management tool that would consolidate stored s, minimize IT staff time for retrieving archived information, be accepted by the users without training or constant help desk support, and offer powerful search capabilities. Business Results and Technical Benefits Cost Savings Enterprise Vault paid for itself within 10 months Payback for Discovery Accelerator with first use 25% reduction in total cost of ownership for enterprise $10,000 cost savings every two years for servers and storage $35,000 annual savings in IT staff time for discovery searches $20,000 annual savings in attorney time during discovery More than $10,000 annual savings in legal fees Efficiency Gains Five hours of IT staff time savings per week 15-hour backups now nearly instantaneous IT staff time for administration virtually eliminated Users now able to search own data without IT assistance Legal Protection Avoiding subpoena risk by eliminating the need for IT staff to read s 12 weeks of staff time savings per year during discovery 10-minute discovery searches formerly took up to two weeks Yesterday, I was asked to do a legal search that would have taken up to two weeks before. With Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator I did it in about 10 minutes.

3 Symantec Enterprise Vault software is almost completely transparent to the user. Other than a small icon in Microsoft Outlook that identifies an archived , users literally can t tell the difference. Whether the is resident in Microsoft Exchange or archived using Enterprise Vault, the user can access it the same way, with no noticeable difference. Enterprise Vault runs in the background, without interfering with our network systems or servers. It actually speeds up our Microsoft Exchange-based server by keeping the disk usage below Microsoft s recommended 50 percent level. Almost completely transparent After evaluating several options, the company chose Symantec Enterprise Vault, a solution Davis says is the perfect choice for Webcor. One reason is its seamless interface with Microsoft Outlook, meaning that users needed little or no training. Competitive products required users to archive s explicitly when their mailboxes were full, or worse, did so automatically in a way that made the s suddenly disappear from the user inboxes, without warning. By contrast, Davis says, Symantec Enterprise Vault software is almost completely transparent to the user. Other than a small icon in Microsoft Outlook that identifies an archived , users literally can t tell the difference. Whether the is resident in Microsoft Exchange or archived using Enterprise Vault, the user can access it the same way, with no noticeable difference. They can also easily search for items in archived including in attachments without needing help from IT. They use Enterprise Vault every day in the course of their daily work to do searches we don t even know about, Davis says. On the IT side, Enterprise Vault is just as unobtrusive. Davis explains: Enterprise Vault runs in the background, without interfering with our network systems or servers. It actually speeds up Microsoft Exchange Server by keeping the disk usage below Microsoft s recommended 50 percent level. Growing mailboxes 50 percent without adding storage or staff Enterprise Vault delivered savings as well. In one year, we went from 200 to 300 mailboxes, a 50 percent increase, while maintaining our volume of Microsoft Exchange storage at 70 gigabytes without adding staff to manage , asserts Davis. Without Enterprise Vault, we would have spent $10,000 on additional servers and storage this year and incurred $35,000 in additional staff time to management. When you total up those savings, we recovered our initial investment in Enterprise Vault in just 10 months and reduced our total cost of ownership by 25 percent. In addition, by shrinking our Microsoft Exchange stores to a manageable size, our maintenance cycle times are shorter, with maintenance costs 45 percent lower. Today, Webcor has about 550 Microsoft Exchange mailboxes, and about 400 gigabytes of Microsoft Exchange data. But Enterprise Vault saves money on both administration and storage. administration work has gone down to virtually none, Davis says. That s the beauty of the Enterprise Vault system. The way it moves messages and attachments requires little or no maintenance anymore. And we are saving on Microsoft Exchange storage as well. We use a three-tiered storage system and we can move Enterprise Vault data that we aren t using continuously to slower, less expensive storage. That also keeps our top-tier Microsoft Exchange storage running in tip-top shape. Searches go from two weeks to 10 minutes For all the benefits of archiving , Davis says, the biggest value of Enterprise Vault comes with its Discovery Accelerator feature, especially in the highly litigious world of construction. Discovery Accelerator allows us to find things, sort them, and use them in closing out a project, Davis says. As each project is completed, Webcor IT staff members create a DVD containing all the job records. We can search by keywords within that project and save the information in the vault or use it for litigation purposes, he says. That s the power of having a system with the indexing and functionality of Enterprise Vault. It s not just a repository, it s an intelligent repository where we can find and retrieve what we need. And find it very quickly. Yesterday, I was asked to do a legal search that would have taken up to two weeks before, Davis recalls. With Enterprise Vault Discovery Accelerator I did it in about 10 minutes. Since Webcor is involved in 12 to 15 lawsuits per year, this works out to an annual savings of at least 12 weeks of IT staff time. It also saves considerable legal fees. We save more than $20,000 a year because if we did not have the ability to go through our and discovery information ourselves, we would have to pay a law firm to do it, Davis

4 says. We have a case going on right now where the initial discovery covered 165,000 s. We are narrowing it down, and we are able to do that work ourselves. And their doing so no longer puts Webcor in legal jeopardy. Before implementing Discovery Accelerator in 2004, Davis s staff was spending increasing amounts of time retrieving archived data from tape, searching for relevant s, and even double-checking the message text in many cases. It was that last activity that especially concerned Webcor s legal counsel. Unlike attorneys, IT technicians are not covered by attorney-client privilege, Davis explains. So when one of my staff reads an , he can be compelled to testify about it. I had nightmares about the county sheriff showing up with a subpoena for our Microsoft Exchange administrator. Today, Davis says, My staff never reads the s, so we avoid the legal exposure we previously faced. Discovery Accelerator pays for itself with first use Because reports produced by Discovery Accelerator are very detailed, attorneys can submit them as is to opposing counsel and depend on them to stand up in court. This saves an estimated $20,000 in on-staff attorney time per year. At the same time, Davis estimates savings of about $35,000 per year in IT staff time no longer spent performing legal searches. These savings add up to instant return on in investment. We paid for Discovery Accelerator the first time we used it, says Davis. Beyond saving on legal fees, Discovery Accelerator is a boon to the Webcor in-house legal team and to its top executives when facing a legal conflict. They may plan to negotiate with a client, and so they come in and ask us to run many different searches. This lets them study every angle of their case the pros and cons, where to push, and where they might expect problems, Davis says. As a result they can reach a better conclusion in a settlement, with less animosity and less back and forth. That s an important benefit. Likewise, when internal problems arise, Discovery Accelerator helps provide quick answers. If we get a claim of harassment or misconduct at one of our offices, there s almost always going to be information in the system to either support or disavow that claim, Davis says. We can very quickly search people s mailboxes and tell our executive team whether the claim is substantiated or not. We can give people quick answers and we don t have to spend thousands of hours pulling up PST files and using Microsoft Outlook searches. That wouldn t be practical and it wouldn t give us the information we need. Davis has also found there s an unexpected legal benefit in the simple fact that is now completely searchable and Webcor employees know it. They have learned that we can pull up anything they ve ever typed or done, he says. That has kept a few people on the straight and narrow. Saving administrators five hours per week Up until 2004, Webcor faced ongoing backup problems. Since 1992, the company had relied on CA s ARCserve for enterprise backup and restore. But releases of the product in recent years did not provide the functionality Webcor needed to meet new, emerging business requirements. Backups were taking longer and failing more often. If an employee left a file open, that file would not be backed up. Restoring a corrupted database from backup required a lot of extra steps to ensure accurate point-in-time fidelity. Backup isn t primarily a cost or time issue for me, it s peace of mind, Davis notes. If I can t count on my backup solution, it s time to switch. So Webcor switched to Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Servers in February Backup Exec handles data protection for all nine of Webcor s sales offices, the primary data center in San Jose, California, and the disaster recovery site in Hawthorne, California. Backup Exec performs nightly backups of Webcor s full complement of enterprise data, some 9.5 terabytes in all. Without Enterprise Vault, we would have spent $10,000 on additional servers and storage this year and incurred $35,000 in additional staff time to manage. When you total up those savings, we recovered our initial investment in Enterprise Vault in just 10 months and reduced our total cost of ownership by 25 percent.

5 One big advantage is the tight integration among Symantec products. For example, the icons in Enterprise Vault that show archiving as pending don t clear until an item has been both archived in Enterprise Vault and backed up by Backup Exec, Davis says. It s a twostage process that ensures that an item is both stored in the vault and backed up. Davis also selected Backup Exec Agent for Exchange Server and Backup Exec Agent for Microsoft SQL Server. These agents perform smart backups of their respective databases that allow precise, point-in-time recovery of the database state in the event of data loss or corruption. Files are now backed up even when open. We use the Continuous Protection Server feature of Backup Exec very heavily to back up servers on job sites, so that data is completely protected, Davis says. So Davis now has the peace of mind he was seeking. With Symantec Backup Exec for Windows Servers, we have extremely reliable backups, he says. We spend far less time monitoring backups, saving an average of 5 hours a week in IT technician time. Webcor also nearly eliminated its 15-hour backup window taking automated, near-instantaneous snapshots of its data and backing up the snapshots while concurrently accommodating 30 percent annual growth in data volume. Bringing significant value Webcor uses Symantec Basic Maintenance Services for support when needed. Early on, Symantec Education Services helped prepare its staff to work with the new Symantec solutions, and It was well worth it, Davis says. By investing in education, we ensure that our technicians can take better advantage of the Symantec products. In all, these products have brought significant value to Webcor. Symantec products have done everything we ve asked of them, and more. They ve saved us money and time and reduced risks in a number of ways. I have no hesitation recommending Symantec products for any company such as ours. management and Data Protection Architecture symantec Backup exec for Windows servers symantec enterprise ault symantec enterprise ault enterprise ault Discovery Accelerator Copyright 2010 Symantec Corporation. All rights reserved. Symantec, the Symantec logo, Backup Exec, and Enterprise Vault are all trademarks or registered trademarks of Symantec Corporation or its affiliates in the United States and other countries. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.