"Synology MailPlus has a cost advantage that has helped us save 2-3 times on the overall deployment costs and fulfills our needs of email security and scalability." Zeng, Yi-Wen, IT Manager at CMC

The Company

Established in 1978, CMC started its business with the production of storage media such as video tapes and compact discs, and later expanded its business into film marketing and distribution. In the past four decades, CMC has been a leading innovator in the industry. In recent years, it has actively integrated company resources to expand its business landscape by redirecting investments to the cultural and creative industry, including the Com In Dim Restaurant on Yangming Mountain and the Tsutaya Bookstore Taipei Xinyi and Taichuang Shizheng branches co-established by CMC and Japan's CCC Group.

The Challenge

CMC was using Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, and yet Microsoft ended its support with no vulnerability patches available, leading to frequent email delivery failures. "In the beginning we were considering upgrading Microsoft Exchange, but then we found that we also had to upgrade Microsoft AD and the whole Office packages at the same time, which adds considerably to the overall costs," said Yi-Wen Zeng, IT Manager at CMC. CMC has plenty of affiliated companies with over 600 users. In addition, its branches are scattered everywhere in Taiwan, which comes with an increasing demand for mobility; the internal and external communication is also a significant challenge. These are the reasons why CMC needs an all-round mail system.

The Solution

Taking ease of use, scalability, and cost into consideration, CMC adopted Synology MailPlus and formed a high-availability cluster with two RS3617xs+, which provides uninterrupted services to its more than 600 employees. CMC also leveraged Synology Chat to build an internal communication platform, ensuring security and convenience at the same time.

The Benefits

Flexible budgeting. Get software and hardware at a one-time cost.

"To many enterprises, cost always comes first. Synology MailPlus has a cost advantage that has helped us save 2-3 times on the overall deployment costs and fulfills our needs of email security and scalability, said Zeng. Compared with the formerly used subscription-based mail services which required follow-up maintenance and upgrade costs, MailPlus comes with a flexible user-based licensing plan, allowing you to get software and hardware at the same time, at a one-time cost. MailPlus also bears a striking resemblance to mainstream webmail interfaces, thus reducing the learning curve when CMC implemented the mail system migration.

Help IT take control of email security with its simple, intuitive UI

Zeng also pointed out that the user interface of MailPlus is rather simple and intuitive for IT, especially when it comes to security management. In addition to the built-in visualized monitoring and active auditing mechanisms, 3rd-party antivirus scanning, ad blocking, and spam filtering are also integrated to help IT gain firm control of email security. "The simplified UI and powerful functionality that come with MailPlus help us quickly get to the crux of a problem," Zeng added.

Meet the future needs of diverse business expansion with storage scalability

To meet the future needs of business expansion, storage scalability of the mail server is the major reason why CMC adopted Synology's mail solution. Exchange 2003, however, required users to download mail data to their PCs. Users had to deal with storage management on their own. It was difficult to restore or retain data if employees replaced their PCs or if something went wrong with their PCs. It posed a huge problem for IT when the aforementioned situations occurred. With Synology MailPlus, CMC can now use Hyper Backup to back up their data on a regular basis and thus enhance data safety. Zeng went on to say, "The relatively high levels of scalability and flexibility of Synology's solutions make it possible for IT to take on the management responsibility, which is a huge benefit to both users and IT. Synology can surely meet all user demands, be it security, scalability, data management, or backup."

Build an internal communication platform with Synology Chat to protect information security

In addition to the mail server, CMC also used Synology Chat as its internal communication platform. "The mainstream messaging apps out there in the market are more suitable for external communication with clients. With Chat, we can avoid the risk of leaking internal communications, which is a big plus for information security," Zeng said.

Both Synology MailPlus and Synology Chat have desktop and mobile applications. Since CMC focuses on diverse business development with its affiliated businesses and branches based in various areas, this add-on feature is particularly useful in that employees in different sites or on the road can receive instant messages in real time.

Recommended Models

  • RS3617xs+

Recommended Features

  • Synology MailPlus
  • Get software and hardware with a one-time cost
  • Simple, intuitive user interface
  • Storage scalability
  • Synology Chat
  • Build an internal communication platform
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