1. Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Customer Solution Case Study
Qualcomm to Cut E-Mail Recovery Time
from 10 Minutes to Less Than 30 Seconds
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Telecommunications─Wireless
telecommunications
Customer Profile
Qualcomm is a leading developer of
technologies and products for the
telecommunications industry. Based in
San Diego, California, Qualcomm has
offices worldwide and more than 16,000
employees.
Business Situation
Qualcomm wanted to ensure that e-mail
and other communications tools were
continuously available. But if a site or
server failure occurred, users could spend
up to 10 minutes without service.
Solution
To improve availability, Qualcomm is
implementing Microsoft® Exchange
Server 2010. Qualcomm is also
integrating the solution with Microsoft
Office Communications Server 2007 R2.
Benefits
• Increases availability
• Eases deployment
• Improves administration
• Enhances collaboration
“In moving from Exchange Server 2007 to Exchange
Server 2010, the big driver will be the changes to
service availability…. We can design a system that will
have a much higher level of uptime.”
Steven Presley, IT Engineer—Staff, Qualcomm
Qualcomm, a leading developer and innovator of advanced
wireless technologies, products, and services, wanted to reduce
e-mail downtime. A data center outage could interrupt service
for thousands of users across the country. To improve
availability, Qualcomm is deploying Microsoft® Exchange Server
2010 and using its new Database Availability Group feature and
continuous data replication to automate recovery and improve
site resilience. As a result, Qualcomm expects to recover from
any type of failure in less than 30 seconds, compared to the 10
minutes it has taken with traditional failover clusters. The
company anticipates easier and faster deployment, and more
options for designing and managing its infrastructure.
Qualcomm employees will also benefit from a unified
communications solution that includes better access to instant
messaging and other communications tools.

2. Situation
Established in 1985 in San Diego, California,
Qualcomm is a pioneer in wireless
communications. It introduced Code
Division Multiple Access technology in
1989, and its current intellectual property
portfolio includes more than 11,000 United
States patents for wireless technologies. Its
products and services include chipsets for
mobile devices in addition to consumer
electronics and mobile content
management services. Qualcomm has more
than 16,000 employees and 146 locations
globally.
With a geographically distributed work
force, the company looks for innovative
solutions to help employees stay
connected. In addition to e-mail,
Qualcomm employees use a variety of
communications tools including instant
messaging (IM) and an internal blog. In
May 2009, Qualcomm deployed a unified
communications solution based on
Microsoft® Office Communications Server
2007 R2 and Microsoft Exchange Server
2007, and a pilot group of employees are
using it for Web and audio conferencing.
After giving employees access to multiple
communications tools, Qualcomm decided
to improve availability. The company has 74
offices in the United States, supported by
five main data centers including a disaster
recovery site. The company also has branch
offices and regional data centers
worldwide. Qualcomm had implemented
failover clusters and new replication
technologies with Exchange Server 2007,
but the clusters in each data center were
still managed independently. If a mailbox
server failed, it could take up to 10 minutes
to fail over to another node in the same
cluster. In the meantime, users suffered
from disrupted service.
“Areas that we’ve been focusing on lately
are business uptime and disaster recovery,”
says Steven Presley, IT Engineer—Staff at
Qualcomm. “We started seriously looking
at ways to keep mailboxes online and data
moving even if one of our main data
centers goes offline.”
Solution
When Qualcomm learned that Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010 would be released, it
became an early adopter to take advantage
of new features that it believed would
improve availability and site resilience. For
example, Qualcomm could use the
Database Availability Group feature in
Exchange Server 2010 to replicate e-mail
data between data centers. A Database
Availability Group is a set of mailbox
servers that uses continuous replication to
automate recovery from failures at the disk,
server, or data center level. “Exchange
Server 2010 offers site-to-site resiliency,
which is something we’ve been interested
in for some time,” says Presley. “One of the
big drivers for this migration is to move to
a site-to-site failover design.”
Next, the company tested Exchange Server
2010 with assistance from Microsoft
Services. “It was helpful to have consultants
available to us when we had a question,
because initially there wasn’t a whole lot of
documentation available,” says Presley. “So
our best resource was a phone or an IM
conversation with Microsoft Services
consultants, who answered all of our
questions for us.”

3. Qualcomm is currently collecting feedback
from a pilot group of 150 users, and it will
use the information to plan the next phase
of implementation. The company is already
anticipating major changes in data center
management with Exchange Server 2010.
By using Database Availability Groups, the
company can implement a high-availability
solution that handles both on-site and off-
site data replication. Instead of using
storage groups and a single copy cluster as
it did with earlier versions of Exchange
Server, Qualcomm will continuously
replicate e-mail data and maintain two
database copies on a server at each data
center. If a site-level failure happens at the
active data center, the mailbox databases
will automatically fail over and activate
another location.
Deployment will also change. Before,
Qualcomm would build a failover cluster
and then install Exchange Server at each
data center. With Exchange Server 2010,
the company will add new mailbox servers
and database copies to an existing
Database Availability Group as it rolls the
solution out worldwide. Qualcomm
administrators also expect that migration to
Exchange Server 2010 will be easier
because they can move mailboxes between
databases without taking users offline. The
company will begin wide-scale deployment
in early 2010.
In addition, Qualcomm is implementing a
new feature called Role Based Access
Control (RBAC). By doing so, the company
can create management roles for
individuals or groups that are limited to
certain tasks such as increasing users’
mailbox storage quotas. Presley says, “We
can use Role Based Access Control to
manage in fine detail the tasks that people
can perform.”
The changes will affect more than
administrators—Qualcomm is also using
Exchange Server 2010 to move its unified
communications strategy forward.
Qualcomm employees can already use
presence information available with the
Microsoft Office Communicator 2007 R2
client to see who is online and available.
Exchange Server 2010 extends this
capability by providing presence data
within the Microsoft Outlook® Web App
messaging and collaboration client so that
Qualcomm employees know immediately if
they should call, IM, or send an e-mail.
They also use new features such as
Conversation View to quickly identify the
most recent messages and the chain of
responses, and MailTips to get alerted
when Exchange Server 2010 detects a
potential problem with an e-mail message
before it is sent. For example, MailTips can
alert users if a file size is too large, or a
recipient is unavailable. For even more
extensibility, Qualcomm is taking
advantage of enhanced Exchange Web
Services—an application programming
interface introduced in Exchange Server
2007—to give employees with Linux and
other operating systems access to
Exchange Server functionality such as
calendar and contact sharing.
Benefits
By implementing Exchange Server 2010,
Qualcomm is improving availability while
simplifying management. Employees
experience better uptime and new features
that enhance collaboration.
Increases Availability
“[Previously] we had to
do all of our migration at
night outside of business
hours…. But with
Exchange Server 2010,
we can move mailboxes
while users stay online
and migrate much
faster.”
Steven Presley, IT Engineer—Staff,
Qualcomm

4. With each Exchange Server upgrade,
Qualcomm has gained usability features
such as better calendaring and meeting
management. Now the company expects to
improve service further by increasing
availability. “Before, there was a single copy
of the data on the cluster, so the only thing
that was really high-availability was the
hardware,” says Presley. “But with Exchange
Server 2010 and Database Availability
Groups, you get both hardware and
application resilience.”
Instead of using traditional failover clusters
and restoring from backups if there is a
failure, Qualcomm will use Database
Availability Groups for built-in redundancy.
As a result, the company expects to recover
from a failure—whether at the mailbox,
server, or site level—in less than 30
seconds. “In moving from Exchange Server
2007 to Exchange Server 2010, the big
driver will be the changes to service
availability,” Presley says. “The new high-
availability framework, combined with Role
Based Access Control, was a driving factor
for me to roll this out, because we can
design a system that will have a much
higher level of uptime.”
Eases Deployment
Because Qualcomm has global operations,
the enterprisewide deployment of any
product can be complicated. However, the
company looks forward to simplifying
implementation with the easy deployment
process for new solution’s Database
Availability Group. “One of the best things
you can ask for in a large environment is
that every server deployed is the same as
all the others,” says Presley. “So we look
forward to less troubleshooting and faster
deployment with Exchange Server 2010.”
He points out that deployment will also be
easier because his team can migrate
mailboxes during business hours. “When
we upgraded from Exchange Server 2003 to
Exchange Server 2007, we had to do all of
our migration at night outside of business
hours,” he says. “That really affected
migration speed. But with Exchange Server
2010, we can move mailboxes while users
stay online and migrate much faster.”
Improves Administration
By implementing Exchange Server 2010,
Qualcomm has more opportunities to
transform its IT infrastructure. For example,
the company is currently evaluating
different storage possibilities. The new
version of Exchange Server requires less
storage performance, which means that
Qualcomm can use lower cost storage
products while improving availability.
“Exchange Server 2010 opens up some
options that we didn’t have before,” says
Presley. “Even if we decide to continue
using a storage area network, we don’t
necessarily have to use a Tier 1
configuration. We can use a lower tiered
storage solution and still cut costs while
increasing our mailbox size.”
Administrators also benefit from more
flexibility, says Presley. “We can delegate
routine tasks to other groups with Role
Based Access Control—a perfect example is
changing a user’s storage quota. Because
we can hand off those tasks more easily
with Exchange Server 2010, our core
messaging team can refine its own projects
and have more time to do other things.”
Enhances Collaboration
“Using MailTips in
Exchange Server 2010 to
see if someone is
available before you
send the message is
straightforward
timesavings.... It makes
the workflow much more
efficient.”
Steven Presley, IT Engineer—Staff,
Qualcomm

5. Qualcomm is already receiving enthusiastic
feedback from employees, many of whom
rely on the company’s unified
communications solution to collaborate.
They have access to all of their
communications in their inbox from almost
any device or Web browser, and they can
use new features such as Conversation
View to stay organized. Because messages
from a single conversation are grouped
together, users can identify the most recent
communication quickly and delete, move,
or otherwise manage an entire
conversation chain.
Employees also use the MailTips feature to
work more productively. MailTips are
informative messages that are
automatically displayed to users when
they’re composing an e-mail message. They
address a variety of scenarios, such as when
a colleague is unavailable or an attachment
is too large to send. “Using MailTips in
Exchange Server 2010 to see if someone is
available before you send the message is
straightforward timesavings,” says Presley.
“From the perspective of end users, it
makes the workflow much more efficient.”
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can help
you achieve better business outcomes
while controlling the costs of deployment,
administration, and compliance. Exchange
Server 2010 delivers the widest range of
deployment options, integrated
information leakage protection, and
advanced compliance capabilities, which
combine to form the best messaging and
collaboration solution available.
For more information about Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010, go to:
www.microsoft.com/exchange
For more information about Microsoft
unified communications, go to:
www.microsoft.com/uc
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers in the United States and
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing
can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.
Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access
information using the World Wide Web,
go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Qualcomm
products and services, call (858) 587-
1121 or visit the Web site at:
www.qualcomm.com
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2009
Software and Services
• Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Enterprise
• Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007 R2
− Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
R2
• Services
− Microsoft Services
• Technologies
− Microsoft Outlook Web App

6. Qualcomm is already receiving enthusiastic
feedback from employees, many of whom
rely on the company’s unified
communications solution to collaborate.
They have access to all of their
communications in their inbox from almost
any device or Web browser, and they can
use new features such as Conversation
View to stay organized. Because messages
from a single conversation are grouped
together, users can identify the most recent
communication quickly and delete, move,
or otherwise manage an entire
conversation chain.
Employees also use the MailTips feature to
work more productively. MailTips are
informative messages that are
automatically displayed to users when
they’re composing an e-mail message. They
address a variety of scenarios, such as when
a colleague is unavailable or an attachment
is too large to send. “Using MailTips in
Exchange Server 2010 to see if someone is
available before you send the message is
straightforward timesavings,” says Presley.
“From the perspective of end users, it
makes the workflow much more efficient.”
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Microsoft Exchange Server 2010 can help
you achieve better business outcomes
while controlling the costs of deployment,
administration, and compliance. Exchange
Server 2010 delivers the widest range of
deployment options, integrated
information leakage protection, and
advanced compliance capabilities, which
combine to form the best messaging and
collaboration solution available.
For more information about Microsoft
Exchange Server 2010, go to:
www.microsoft.com/exchange
For more information about Microsoft
unified communications, go to:
www.microsoft.com/uc
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft
products and services, call the Microsoft
Sales Information Center at (800) 426-
9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft
Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-
2495. Customers in the United States and
Canada who are deaf or hard-of-hearing
can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234.
Outside the 50 United States and
Canada, please contact your local
Microsoft subsidiary. To access
information using the World Wide Web,
go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Qualcomm
products and services, call (858) 587-
1121 or visit the Web site at:
www.qualcomm.com
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR
IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published October 2009
Software and Services
• Microsoft Server Product Portfolio
− Microsoft Exchange Server 2010
Enterprise
• Microsoft Office
− Microsoft Office Communications
Server 2007 R2
− Microsoft Office Communicator 2007
R2
• Services
− Microsoft Services
• Technologies
− Microsoft Outlook Web App