Overview
Gusmus Electric Company, Inc. in Memphis, Tennessee has been serving the electrical needs of Memphis and the Mid-South for over 25 years. The 65 employees of Gusmus strive to make the company "the most innovative and progressive in the industry" through the services of its own Engineering Department, an expansive Service Division, and an Exterior Lighting Division. Part of insuring this success in the industry is providing a line of communication between departments, divisions, employees and customers. Like most companies, this line of communication is dominated by email. Successful transferring of email is vital to the success of Gusmus and many other companies.

Problem
In June 2003, Gusmus Electric Company, like countless other companies around the world, was hit with the Sobig worm through its Microsoft Exchange server. The worm brought down the Windows 2000 server, which was the host for Gusmus' Exchange, proxy, and accounting application. Having lost the Exchange server meant that all communication through email was lost. Gusmus Electric was unable to communicate with clients, between divisions, and between departments.

Anxious to fix the Sobig worm problem, Ralph Gusmus, owner of Gusmus Electric, called his principal solution provider for Exchange. What Ralph found was that his contacts and all others were busy servicing complaints just like his. Ralph and Gusmus Electric were forced to wait until a service provider could assist them with their problem. Because waiting meant shutting down communication, Lee Gusmus, IT Director for Gusmus Electric, called Rob Oeding at Network Engineers. Because Network Engineers services primarily Novell clients, many of their representatives were available to help. The Sobig worm had been directed towards Microsoft leaving Novell users unaffected.

After identifying and removing the worm, Rob learned that this had been one of three instances in the past month in which Gusmus Electric had been affected by viruses. Understanding that taking time to fight these viruses cost Gusmus Electric time, resources, money, Rob Oeding offered a solution to Ralph and Lee Gusmus.

Solution
The Network Engineers solution included a new HP ML 330 server with the Novell Small Business Suite 6 and GWAVA. The solution involved moving all Internet applications over to the Novell Small Business Suite's NetWare server. The Novell Small Business Suite's GroupWise 6 application was deployed along with GWAVA for its virus scanning and spam filtering abilities. To protect Gusmus' internal network from attacks, Rob also deployed the Novell Small Business Suite's BorderManager 3.7 product.

All Exchange data was migrated from the Windows 2000 server to the new Novell Small Business Suite 6 server. Following the migration, the role of the Windows 2000 server was changed to be exclusively the application server for the company's accounting application.

Gusmus Electric Company's employees have enthusiastically embraced GroupWise 6 and the new features it provides for collaboration. The proxy cache built into BorderManager has eased the demand on the single channel ISDN Internet connection.

GWAVA, in conjunction with GroupWise 6, has reduced Gusmus' e-mail load by 38%. In a 30-day span between September and October, GWAVA identified 43 e-mails containing viruses.

Most importantly for Gusmus Electric Company, the company has not had to make any service calls related to virus problems. Using the aforementioned three service calls over 30 days as a basis, Gusmus has saved an estimated $409.68 per visit (3 hours of service plus tax) or $1,229 per month. Based on this number, Rob Oeding estimates the Return-on-Investment to be around four and one-half months and will lead to annual savings of $14,748 per year.

Conclusion
Lee Gusmus sums up the company's satisfaction with the Novell Small Business Suite 6 and GWAVA solution best: "I have not had to touch it (the server) - and that's what I like. Because with our Exchange server, once or twice a week I would have to go in and figure out what was wrong. This new solution has been a very smooth running operation. Rob told me that it would be, and I've been very pleased."