Reduced administration costs

Super smoothie make Innocent saved money with software services

Innocent, the company that makes those delicious smoothies, was feeling the pinch. It was using an old-fashioned email server and Andrea Kalavsky, the company's self-styled Systems Magician, was spending a lot of her time keeping it going.

It was taking so much of her time and causing so many problems that she decided to replace it at the beginning of 2005.

With seventy-five users, and plans for over a hundred soon, the choice was simple: either install a cutting-edge server in the company's office and hire another techie to look after it, or go with hosted Exchange.

Simple switchover

By Easter she had selected Cobweb as the provider and begun the process of switching over to the new system. Migration took about a month but most of the time was spent in administrative tasks, such as cleaning up addresses and phone numbers and making sure they were current.

The actual switchover took place over a weekend so that everyone was up and running on the new system the next day. "I hate stopping a user from doing their job," says Kalavsky, "but this felt like the flick of a switch."

Kalavsky finds the hosted arrangement good value, but the real saving is in the removal of the need to hire another technical support person, not to mention the time and expense of recruiting someone and the time and effort that goes into keeping up with the times. "I trust Cobweb to always bring us the best technology."

New user? No problem

�Having Hosted Exchange has changed our lives�
Andrea Kalavsky

Instead, thanks to the hosting company, she can add or remove a user in a few minutes using an online control panel. Setting up a new hire with a mobile email device takes a few minutes: a phone call to the phone company to order the device and a click to get the activation code from Cobweb.

Dealing with technical support enquiries is easy too as the service provider has a 24/7 helpdesk: "When I get a problem report from a user, I can forward it to Cobweb and then forward their reply to the user."

As Innocent has offices in London, Manchester, Dublin, Amsterdam and lots of sales people on the road in their grass vans, having a single, well-managed email server that is properly run and supervised 24/7 is a comfort. People access their email at all hours but most in-house servers are left unattended outside office hours, and few employee technical support people enjoy getting calls at 3am!

Kalavsky has the final word: "I'm going to blow their trumpet. Having Hosted Exchange has changed our lives."

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