Food Giant Improves Reporting, Streamlines Development with Collaboration Pla...
Kellwood Apparel Company Chooses Hosted Services to Save 55 Percent
1. Microsoft Online Services
Customer Solution Case Study
Apparel Company Chooses Hosted Services
Over On-Site Software to Save 55 Percent
55 Percent
Overview ―Per user, Lotus Notes costs me three times as much as
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Retail—Apparel Microsoft. It‘s hard to argue with numbers like that.‖
Charles Pritzl, Chief Technology Officer, Kellwood
Customer Profile
Based in Chesterfield, Missouri, Kellwood
designs, manufactures, and markets
premier fashion brands for women. The
company employs approximately 1,200 Kellwood Company, one of the nation‘s largest apparel
people.
manufacturers and owner of brands such as Vince, Baby Phat,
Business Situation and Sag Harbor sought up-to-date messaging technologies to
Kellwood had a Lotus Notes and
Blackberry solution that was difficult to
increase employee efficiency. The company had been using an
administer and inefficient. The company outdated IBM Lotus Notes e-mail service that was not
sought a streamlined communication
and collaboration solution that would
compatible with its IT environment, which was based on
reduce IT costs. Microsoft technologies, or customers‘ and partners‘ Microsoft
Solution
messaging solutions. Kellwood replaced its Lotus Notes,
Kellwood chose the Microsoft Business BlackBerry, and Web conferencing solutions with Microsoft
Productivity Online Standard Suite to
empower employees with low-cost,
Online Services. The company gained a suite of communication,
hosted communication and collaboration collaboration, and archiving services at one-third of the price of
tools that work well within its IT
environment.
its current Lotus Notes environment. Kellwood also achieved
substantial savings on Web conferencing and e-mail archiving
Benefits
Reduced costs
solutions.
Streamlined IT maintenance
Improved employee productivity
Gained an archive solution
2. ―When we acquired Situation customers, suppliers, and partners. Staff
Established in 1961, Kellwood Company members who wanted to work at home had
companies and brought designs, manufactures, and markets a to take extra steps to sign on to Kellwood‘s
growing collection of premier fashion virtual private network (VPN) to access their
new employees into the brands across a broad range of consumer mail, and the connection was not always
fold who were lifestyles. The Chesterfield, Missouri reliable. Extra frustration awaited staff
company sells its branded and private-label travelling in China who encountered
accustomed to Office goods to specialty stores, department difficulties using the VPN to connect to
stores, national chains, and catalog houses headquarters in Chesterfield.
Outlook, they‘d say, across the United States. Kellwood brands
‗Why are you changing include Vince, Sag Harbor, Baby Phat, Phat ―When we acquired companies and
Farm, Briggs New York, My Michelle, and brought new employees into the fold who
me to Lotus Notes? I Jolt, as well as licensed brands XOXO and were accustomed to Office Outlook, they‘d
David Meister. Kellwood also operates say, ‗Why are you changing me to Lotus
didn‘t know it still Vince and Sag Harbor brand stores. Notes? I didn‘t know it still existed,‘‖ says
existed.‘" Pritzl. ―It had a perception of being old and
In 2009, following a time of rapid growth, clumsy. I began to think of the move to a
Charles Pritzl, Chief Technology Officer, Kellwood entered a period of restructuring. different e-mail service as a key step in
Kellwood The company took the opportunity to providing more up-to-date technology
reflect on its operations and examine ways tools for the workforce.‖
of working smarter and leaner. ―We were
changing from a publicly traded company The IT department spent extra time
to a private company,‖ says Charles Pritzl, managing oversized e-mail inboxes and
Chief Technology Officer at Kellwood. ―In maintaining an outdated tape archiving
the IT department, we wanted to energize system. Many employees used their
employees with better services so they inboxes as informal storage repositories. IT
could work more productively.‖ staff had to trim these inboxes to avoid
exceeding storage limits and to keep the
So Pritzl took a good look at the company‘s system manageable. IT staff members used
IBM Lotus Notes e-mail service, which ran clean-up routines that occasionally deleted
on several geographically dispersed IBM information employees needed. The
Lotus Domino servers. Even though the problem got to the point where Pritzl was
company had been using Lotus Notes for actively looking at deploying a third-party
more than 12 years, it was not universally archiving solution.
popular among employees. For example,
approximately 40 staff members in ―We also needed a searchable archiving
Kellwood‘s outsourcing operations in Asia solution for our attorneys to manage the
were only able to use INotes, the Web mail electronic discovery process, or ‗e-
client for Lotus Notes. These workers discovery‘ process,‖ adds Pritzl. ―As with
wanted the same level of functionality that any company, legal issues can arise. In such
their colleagues had with the full client cases, the IT staff had to spend a lot of time
version. and money restoring tapes and providing
information for our attorneys.‖
Many employees also complained that
Lotus Notes didn‘t operate well with the Lotus Notes frustrated the IT staff because
Microsoft Office Outlook messaging and it didn‘t work with the rest of the
collaboration client used by many company‘s infrastructure. ―I‘m a guy who
3. likes things integrated,‖ says Pritzl. ―Instead, Microsoft Online Services, Kellwood gained
we had to create a user in our Active access to the suite‘s collection of finished
Directory service, and then again in Lotus services—Microsoft Exchange Online,
Notes. We had a distribution list for our Microsoft SharePoint Online, Microsoft
BlackBerry users and another one for Lotus Office Live Meeting, and Microsoft Office
Notes. People had to remember different Communications Online—all for a low
user names and passwords. It was time- monthly per-user fee.
consuming and redundant. ‖
Kellwood also subscribed to Microsoft
For these reasons, Pritzl had been anxious Exchange Hosted Archive services to satisfy
to move away from Lotus Notes for several retention requirements for e-discovery and
years. But because Lotus Notes performed compliance, and encrypt data to preserve
the basic tasks of sending and receiving e- confidentiality.
mail messages, he couldn‘t come up with a
convincing return on investment to make Making the Decision
the change. ―As long as the mail worked ―I looked at many different providers of
well enough, management was not hosted e-mail, including Zimbra
prepared to invest in another on-premises Collaboration Suite, Google, Yahoo,
solution,‖ he says. ―However, with the Hotmail, and third-party hosted solutions
growing acceptance of ‗cloud‘ or Web- using Exchange,‖ says Pritzl. ―Google has
hosted computing and software as a Google Docs and Google Sites, but what‘s
service, I had a new argument to make. The the point of having Google Docs when
improved reliability and security of the everyone is working in Office Word? We
Internet make hosted services more use Microsoft business intelligence tools
appealing today than they were a couple of and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server
years ago. Everyone understands that e- 2007. If I threw Google in the mix, I‘d have
mail is now a commodity service. There‘s to code all that integration. I was driving
no value to Kellwood in managing our own toward an integrated, consistent
e-mail servers.‖ environment. Microsoft Online Services had
a great price point, and we got an entire
Pritzl decided to evaluate different hosted suite of collaborative technologies. After we
e-mail services and build a business case did our analysis, we surveyed our
for outsourcing e-mail for his next budget. employees: They voted overwhelmingly for
―I knew the return on investment with a Office Outlook as their mail client.‖
hosted service would be much higher; I just
needed to find the right choice for Taking advantage of the Microsoft partner
Kellwood,‖ he says. ecosystem for support, Pritzl enlisted
Microsoft Gold Certified Partner
Solution MessageOps to assist with the pre-
Kellwood Company found its solution with migration configurations, providing
the Microsoft Business Productivity Online scripting that streamlined the entire
Standard Suite. Part of Microsoft Online process.
Services, the suite offers interoperable
services that include desktop and mobile e- Then, in October 2009, Pritzl evaluated two
mail, instant messaging and presence, vendors to perform the actual migration,
shared workspaces, and live audio-visual eventually selecting Microsoft Gold
Web-conferencing applications. Through Certified Partner, Binary Tree. The partner
4. immediately performed an analysis of the real-time meetings and Web conferencing,
company‘s Lotus Notes environment and as well as Office Communications Online
recommended a timeframe for the project. for presence awareness and instant
Kellwood wanted to get the migration messaging. ―We did very little training for
completed before the end of the year to the new suite, and in hindsight, we could
avoid renewing licenses for Lotus Notes. have provided more tips and tricks for our
users. But considering that everyone had
Expediting the Migration been on Lotus Notes for 12 years, user
Kellwood took advantage of the Weekend adoption has been phenomenal,‖ says
Express Migration Program offered by Pritzl.
Binary Tree. ―This is a hosted migration,
where we can migrate up to 5,000 users in Now that Kellwood employees have
a weekend,‖ explains Mark DeAngelis, incorporated Microsoft Online Services into
Project Manager at Binary Tree. ―We their daily work lives, the IT department can
created replicas of Kellwood‘s mail files on turn its attention to Microsoft Exchange
―Microsoft Online staging servers in our environment. The Hosted Archive services. By subscribing to
Services made an replication cleans up corruptions that may
be in the mail files. For each employee,
this service, Kellwood gained a centralized,
searchable e-mail and instant messaging
Exchange-based e-mail Kellwood wanted to migrate 90 days of e- repository so Pritzl and his staff can more
mail messages and one year of calendar easily adhere to retention, compliance,
solution possible. We history, contacts, and tasks. Before the electronic discovery, and regulatory
got all the rich actual migration, we sent templates to the
company‘s employees to do some pre-
requirements.
communication migration tasks such as synchronizing their Benefits
contacts from their personal address book Kellwood Company employees are excited
capabilities you‘d expect into their mail file so we could reach that to be working with an up-to-date suite of
communication and collaboration
from an on-premises data and migrate it as well.‖
technologies that fit the expectations of a
solution, at a fraction of During the weekend of December 18, 2009, modern workforce. ―Kellwood employees
are pleased to be using technologies that
Binary Tree migrated 1,350 Kellwood
the cost.‖ employees from the Lotus Notes
meet both the needs and expectations of
the modern workforce,‖ says Eric Hunter,
Charles Pritzl, Chief Technology Officer, messaging platform to Office Outlook and
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing
Kellwood Exchange Online. This amounted to
Officer at Kellwood.
approximately 2.5 terabytes of data. ―Binary
Tree‘s experience and their understanding
Also, the IT department is benefiting from a
of the inner workings of Lotus Notes were
simpler way of consuming and managing
critical to the success of this project,‖ says
technology that works well within its
Pritzl. ―I talked to our chief operating officer
Microsoft technology–centric IT
and he said, ‗I‘m impressed beyond belief.‘
environment.
It was truly Lotus Notes on Friday and
Microsoft on Monday. The icing on the
Reduced Costs
cake was that our migration cost with
Thanks to Microsoft Online Services,
Binary Tree was almost one-quarter of the
Kellwood IT staff members could finally
quote we got from the other vendors.‖
deploy the messaging and collaboration
technologies they felt would better serve
Since the migration, employees have been
the company. ―Microsoft Online Services
using Office Live Meeting for impromptu,
5. ―Instead of acquiring and made an Exchange-based e-mail solution time ensuring that it works well with the
possible,‖ says Pritzl. ―We got all the rich rest of the IT environment.
managing disparate communication capabilities you‘d expect
from an on-premises solution, at a fraction ―While we were probably only spending
solutions for mobile e- of the cost.‖ five percent of our time directly managing
mail, spam protection, Lotus Notes, it was an irritant because we
Deploying the Business Productivity Online didn‘t feel as though we were providing the
and Web conferencing, I Standard Suite through Microsoft Online best service to our users,‖ says Pritzl. ―And
Services saved Kellwood from expenses there‘s no direct value to Kellwood for us to
get them all in one suite that would have been required to license manage commodity services that Microsoft
of services.‖ and support new messaging and can host and support with better security at
collaboration solutions. To make his less cost. However, there is a benefit to
Charles Pritzl, Chief Technology Officer, business case, Pritzl compared the costs of Kellwood if we can spend more time on IT
Kellwood continuing with Lotus Notes with the costs services that are directly related to the
of moving to Microsoft Online Services, business.‖
estimating a savings of 55 percent. ―Per
user, Lotus Notes costs me three times as Kellwood‘s recent experience with
much as moving to Microsoft,‖ he says. ―It‘s Exchange Hosted Archive illustrates how
hard to argue with numbers like that.‖ easy it is for the IT department to deploy
new services to the company. ―Subscribing
And with regards to the archiving solution to Online Services decreases the support
Kellwood had been contemplating, and the engineering and the upfront work
Exchange Hosted Archive services provided that needs to go into building a solution,‖
the e-mail retention capabilities that the says Pritzl. ―I wanted to enable archiving;
company needed at 50 percent of the cost. we subscribed to the service, turned it on,
Pritzl deployed the Microsoft solution. and it‘s already configured and ready to go.
Simple.‖
Pritzl also increased Kellwood‘s savings by
retiring its BlackBerry servers and its third-
Improved Employee Productivity
party Web conferencing solutions.
Since deploying Microsoft Online Services,
Kellwood employees are using Live
―Instead of acquiring and managing
Meeting and Office Communications
disparate solutions for mobile e-mail, spam
Online to streamline collaboration and
protection, and Web conferencing, I get
keep the business running at maximum
them all in one suite of services,‖ says Pritzl.
efficiency. ―Before, we could only provide
Plus, Kellwood gets the benefit of
Web conferencing to select associates; now
predictable, ongoing IT costs.‖
everyone can use it,‖ says Pritzl. ―We are
seeing spontaneous online meetings and
Streamlined IT Maintenance
conference calls happening all over the
Not only did Kellwood successfully lower
country. People are thrilled that they can
the total cost of ownership of its messaging
take their laptops home, or on an Asian
and collaboration solution, but it also
trip, open them up and get their e-mail. We
reduced day-to-day maintenance, freeing
routinely had around one hundred VPN
valuable IT resources to focus on strategic
users through the network every day
initiatives that move the business forward.
because they wanted to access their mail.
Today, staff members no longer have to
Now we are running less than 10. Our staff
manage an on-premises solution or spend
can now use Blackberry, Windows phones,
6. For More Information iPhones, and Motorola Droids to access our Microsoft Online Services
For more information about Microsoft mail. The usability of Microsoft Online Microsoft Online Services are business-class
products and services, call the Microsoft Services has been a real productivity communication and collaboration solutions
Sales Information Center at (800) 426- enhancer.‖ delivered as a subscription service and
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft hosted by Microsoft. With these offerings,
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568- Gained an Archive Solution customers can cost-effectively access the
2495. Customers in the United States and With Exchange Hosted Archive services, the most up-to-date technologies and
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing IT department can begin archiving e-mail immediately benefit from streamlined
can reach Microsoft text telephone messages, offering employees a more communications, simplified management,
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234. secure alternative to purging mailboxes. and business-class reliability and security
Outside the 50 United States and Because the archive is searchable, it‘s easy features. For IT staffers, Microsoft Online
Canada, please contact your local for staff members to locate a file that they Services are backed by strong service level
Microsoft subsidiary. To access stored in their inbox even a year ago. agreements and help reduce the burden of
information using the World Wide Web, performing routine IT management, freeing
go to: ―With the Online Services archiving up time to focus on core business
www.microsoft.com solution, I can give our attorneys a initiatives.
searchable environment for e-discovery,‖
For more information about Binary Tree adds Pritzl. ―We want our attorneys to have For more information, visit:
products and services, call (212) 244- self-serve capabilities for doing their own www.microsoft.com/online
3635 or visit the Web site at: recovery work. Now I don‘t have to worry
www.binarytree.com about my IT staff spending days or weeks
doing discovery for our legal staff. With this
For more information about Kellwood service for our attorneys, I estimate that
products and services, call (314) 576- we‘ll see a 100 percent return on
3100 or visit the Web site at: investment in the first year.‖
www.kellwood.com
Software and Services Solutions
Services − Software-plus-Services
− Microsoft Business Productivity
Online Standard Suite Partners
Binary Tree
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published May 2010