General Trading and manufacturers of electronic components and chipsets

In the beginning, we thought Microsoft Windows was only option for email server. Therefore we have always hosted our emails with a local ISP because it is not justify implementing our own email server for 30 users in terms of cost and benefits.

If it were not because of the reasonable investment we could afford with ThizLinux email server. We would have never thought of owning our email server.

Better security and stability on Linux were the main factors drove us to consider deploying our email server as well.

In addition, the excellent ThizLinux support team is crucial to us since we do not have a dedicated IT staff.

We have one office in Hong Kong and two factories in China with a total of 30 employees. We have a total of 6 servers and our Linux implementation vs. Windows is on a scale of 2 to 4.

The types of services provided by the two ThizLinux servers are web mail on Click2Office, which is ThizLinux groupware solution, fax and possibly SMS service in the near future.

The other two servers running on Windows are the file server and application server with our ERP system.

Sales on the road can easily check emails anywhere with an internet connection. It increases their ability to close a business deal faster becuase now they have all the information and quotations, pricing on their fingertips.

We have our China colleagues access company emails through the Internet. This greatly reduces any deployment and configuration time. In addition, through this method, we can manage our China colleagues remotely since there is no IT staff in our China Office. This is a definitely a convenience.

As with ThizLinux e-fax application, colleagues can easily fax out a computer document to vendors and clients without the hassle of first printing the files out and the fax them. It streamlines the daily work operation.

We did not have a big project planning, as the processes are rather simple as described above. In addition, human resistances to backend servers transition is never a big issues because it doesn't involves a lot of end users' participations. Back-end operation is transparent to end users.

The transition was very successful due to a knowledgeable team of consultants from ThizLinux as well. Therefore, part of our project planning is to find a helpful vendor for better risk management. With their abundant implementing experience, they reminded and advised us the dos and don'ts. This helped ensuring a smooth transition.

For ThizLinux Fax server
Step 1: Installation of ThizLinux server OS
Step 2: Configuration of Fax service (Hylafax)
Step 3: Installation of Fax client software to Windows workstation

The setup took about 3 hours.

For mail server
Step 1: Installation of ThizLinux server OS
Step 2: Configuration of Click2Office (ThizLinux groupware solution)
Step 3: Mail accounts creation on ThizLinux server
Step 4: Client informed ISP to update the mail exchange record of the domain.

Total deployment time was about 3 hours.

Since the email is web enabled, security on our server is very important. We have implemented a firewall and on our server we have installed Sophos Anti-Virus software and MailScanner to the mail server. One of the advantages to install anti-virus software on a server level instead of on a desktop level is updates controls. There is only one place need to update the virus definitions that is on the server and not on all 12 PC workstations.

Moreover, virus can be catched beforehand reaching to desktop PCs.

We enjoy much control on email management with our own email server. We no longer have to deal with the inconvenience of change of email addresses when we change the ISP provider.

Moreover, the email address now is our company name and not the ISP name. That in away enhances our company image.

There are a lot of other features with the existing "Click2Office" application we would like to use in the near future. We are planning to utilize its SMS feature as an option to notify our colleagues in China in order to speed up our business workflow.

Often time while salesman engaging with our clients in regard of some specific chip designs, they would need to seek our engineers in China for advices. Sometimes as one engineer is not available, salesman has to try another one.

However with SMS feature from Click2Office, salesman can send a group message to notify all engineers with the question. And whomever is avaliable can quickly response to the salesman.

The cost savings with a Linux email server vs. Windows email server was substantial. Otherwise we would not consider deploying our own email server.

Most importantly, it is the on-going saving we will benefit from Linux. For each addition user we would have to pay Microsoft software user license fee of HK250. However, there is no users license fee with Linux server at all.

If we were to project our growth rate of 3 additional users per year, we would save about 93% on software user licensing fee on Linux platform.

In addition, the groupware we implemented offer us a lot of other features like company facility booking, notice board, SMS etc, which Microsoft doesn't included.

At the moment, we have plans to switch our file server to Linux platform as well after verifying our ERP system can run on Linux.